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[InflatableMouse]

Hey folks,
I am trying to find a replacement for an old NUC i3, it played 1080p Red October standard with hardware accelleration, videoclock settings enabled. While the fan comes on fairly quickly, it handled playback without any issues.

It's been acting up lately and it's completely inadequate to play 4K.

I am therefore looking for a replacement. I love passive devices, fanless but I wonder if there's anything that could do 4K@60hz on Red October HQ?

I have good experiences with Zotac, but Im not sure will a AMD Vega 3 be able to do what I want? Up the ladder from Zotac are Intel Core i5 and i7 with Nvidia GPU's but they are 900 euros and up, I'm actually looking for something a little cheaper, maybe around the 600 euro range?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[jmone]

New NUC?  - Here is my test of last years NUC8 which works fine as long as you are only going up to 23.976fps for UHD https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,118012.0.html  (it's not good enough for UHD @ 50 / 60 fps)

[wer]

You have good advice from jmone in his review.

The thing to be mindful of is what exactly you mean by "play 4K".

The decent integrated GPUs will all be able to play UHD content at native resolution without too much difficulty. The issue will come when you want to scale other content (SD or 1080p HD) up to 4k for playback.

Some of the scaling algorithms in MadVR can be costly. 

jmone can probably advise as to what scaling algorithms that particular NUC can effectively use, but if you want to scale everything up to 4k using the highest quality algorithms, you will need a powerful GPU.

[InflatableMouse]

Thanks for the replies.

Is gaming performance any measure for MadVR scaling?
https://youtu.be/LhsxAuMcS9o

If the latest generation NUC is 1.5 to 2 times faster in gaming benchmarks than Iris in Intel's 8th Gen core i5, does that automatically mean its also that much better at video scaling algorithms?

[InflatableMouse]

Well, we will see 

Picked up a new NUC10i5FNH2 just now with 2x8GB and 512GB NVMe drive.

Going through setting it up right now and do some tests to see how it will perform.

[jmone]

I think these NUC10's only have the 620 GPU rather than the Iris Pro?

[InflatableMouse]

I think these NUC10's only have the 620 GPU rather than the Iris Pro?

Correct and according to the youtube video I linked to earlier it's 1,5 to 2 times faster than the iris from the previous gen.

It plays and scales everything I have so far, I'm happy!

[jmone]

Glad it's working well  

[wer]

It would be very helpful for others if you could report on which of the MadVR scaling algorithms you're able to use, to rescale lower resolution content up to 4k.  If you keep increasing settings I imagine at some point you will start dropping frames, but it would be nice for people to know what the box can do.

[jmone]

Here is a 30sec sample clip (560MB) that is UHD/50p @ 150mbps that the NUCs struggle with for me using madVR (from my Camcorder).

[InflatableMouse]

From the best quality preset I bring down chroma upscaling to cubic/bicubic60 and leave the other processing settings as they are. This will play 1080p on 4k display without dropping frames. Well almost I got 1 dropped frame in a 10 minute test.

Native 4k plays fine too.

Jmones sample sees framedrops even at best performance preset.

I also set HDR to passthrough and enable exclusive mode rendering if that matters.

If you want anything specific tested please specify and I'll see what I can do.

[jmone]

Thanks for the test.  Mirrors what I see with the NUC8 on the UHD 50p stuff.  I'm wondering if Intel has maxed out what they can do with a GPU in this form factor.

[InflatableMouse]

Turns out its not as good as it seemed at first.

Ive gradually had to bring madvr quality down to the best performance preset because while some 4k video played fine, others still saw dropped frames and Im not too happy about that .

Jmone, would you mind documenting your madvr settings, or perhaps someone has an up2date amd reliable guide on recent madvr versions? Most of what I find seems outdated.

Thanks!

[jmone]

I don't use the NUC as my main HTPCs (both of these are driven by a 1660Ti in a SFF) as it can not play my HFR / HBR camcorder footage. 

Anyway, the first thing to try is to use the MC Presents for madVR as these were tuned up by Hendrik during the testing of the NUC8 in that other thread

MC --> Tools --> Options --> Video
- Video Mode: ROHQ
- Quality Setting --> Best Performance (low end / integrated GPU)  ** Note: this will overwrite all your existing madVR settings
- Hardware accelerate video decoding where possible --> Check
- Optimize hardware decoding for performance --> Check
- Display Settings --> Display Settings automatic change mode --> ON **Note: this is important or madVR will try to output more frames that you need for UHD BD (eg 50 or 60 instead of 23.976 fps).

Try that first, else I'll post my settings.bin file for madVR but the above should work OK for the NUC

[jmone]

I did some more tests on my NUC8 and it is still using the settings above and working fine for all media except the HFR / HBR stuff.

[InflatableMouse]

Thanks for the effort jmone.

Yeah its the presets that I use for starting point. It seemed at first that the balanced option was doable, and for certain FHD material it works fine. Then I get to the next episode and it starts dropping frames.

So I ended up bringing it down to best performance preset and I am testing if I can bring it up a little from there. What I have set currently:
> Display, propertyies, PC levels, 10-bit, 3D none.
> Display, calibration, already calibrated
> Display, hdr, passthrough with send hdr metadata to display
> Processing all defaults
> Scaling, Chroma, Lanczos, 3 taps, activate anti-ringing filter
> Scaling, Image up, Lanczos 3 taps, activate anti-rining
> Rendering, general, delay playback at start and after seeking
> Rendering, enable automatic fullscreen exclusive mode
> Trade quality, all enabled except last two

But now that I am typing this up, I see that my current settings are actually similar maybe even better than balanced, so either I am confusing myself (likely ) or I didn't save the latest changes last night.

I need to sit down over the weekend and start making notes to track what I do and what effect it has on a video that is known to stutter on balanced preset.

I think banding is one of the most visual effects from compression, at least the one that bothers me the most. I see artifacts too of course but they are not as prominent as banding, and while the artifact filter does help a little, it seems to me its more costly in terms of performance while its effect is much less visible than the anti-banding against lower performance cost.

The anti-ringing options also seem to come with a performance hit, and I don't really notice their effect (likely because I dont know what to look for).

I might settle on best performance without anti-ringing but with anti-banding enabled.

Over the weekend I am also going to test my gaming laptop for 4K video playback. It runs a GTX 1070. Hardly play any games anymore so if I am happier with it playing videos, I'll swap it with the NUC.

[jmone]

Good luck!  I spent ages on the NUC's trying to wring out the "best" you could get and that ended up (thanks to Hendrik) part of the "Best Performance" profile.  If you manage to squeeze some other combo out I'd be keen to try it as well, but I find the NUCs GPU are right on the edge as it they are.