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[mdav]

I'm going to build a htpc with Media Center and either i3-2105 (2 cores, 3.1 GHz, HD3000) or i5-2405S (4 cores 2.5-3.3 GHz, HD3000), both with TDP 65W. What are the hardware requirements for running Red October HQ? Is the i3-2105 enough?

[fitbrit]

My i3 530 seems to be enough, so your build will be fine if all is set up right and no new bugs are introduced.

[Mike Noe]

I'm going to build a htpc with Media Center and either i3-2105 (2 cores, 3.1 GHz, HD3000) or i5-2405S (4 cores 2.5-3.3 GHz, HD3000), both with TDP 65W. What are the hardware requirements for running Red October HQ? Is the i3-2105 enough?

Will you be using madVR?  There have been reports of performance issues with the Intel xGP using the higher quality madVR scaling options. 

[jmone]

I'm going to build a htpc with Media Center and either i3-2105 (2 cores, 3.1 GHz, HD3000) or i5-2405S (4 cores 2.5-3.3 GHz, HD3000), both with TDP 65W. What are the hardware requirements for running Red October HQ? Is the i3-2105 enough?

There are two parts to the question, the first is the CPU / GPU combo, and the second is the media type you want to playback.  The most taxing content at present is 1920x1080/60fps Interlaced Material (eg found on non film based Blu-rays such as Live Concert Recordings etc).  My Q6600 has a CPU Mark of 2981 ( http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php )and can not play this without it dropping frames in Red October HQ (I had to change my GPU to an nvidia GTS450 so it can do the decoding and deinterlacing instead).  The i3-2105 has a CPU mark of 4,195 and the i5-2405S 4,625.  As when I OC'ed by Q6600 I could play this content fine, I'm guessing that both will be OK (but the more the merrier in my opinion)!

As Mike said.....The other thing to consider is that GPU.  madVR like DDR5 memory based GPU with lots of shaders and cores.  See how you go with the IGP but you may want to add the GPU later if it is not all "good".

[mdav]

Thank you for your suggestions! I think I will start with the i3-2105 and consider other solutions (change settings in madVR, new CPU Ivy Bridge next year?) if that doesn't work. At the moment a dGPU isn't the preferable option, as I want to run completely passive.

[kensn]

There are some nice passive GPUs I would consider....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500175

Unless space "thin" is also a consideration....

Ken

[CountryBumkin]

Thank you for your suggestions! I think I will start with the i3-2105 and consider other solutions (change settings in madVR, new CPU Ivy Bridge next year?) if that doesn't work. At the moment a dGPU isn't the preferable option, as I want to run completely passive.

I have an AsRock H67 board with i3-2100T, and can play 1080p with RO-HQ. No problems so far. I don't have any interlaced content to test, but all my Blu-ray movies seem to play fine. MadVR is setup at its default settings. The JR Benchmark is 2026.

[jmone]

It will be the Blu ray 1080/60i stuff that really tests a system with RO HQ as it is using a software deinterlacer called YADIF (one of the better ones) that not only deinterlaces the content but then frame doubles it so the output is 1080/60p then it is off to madVR for rendering.

[CountryBumkin]

I also have a system that consists of a Intel Core 2 Duo (E8400) with an Asus (nvidia) GT440 dGPU. The JR Benchmark is 1846. I am running RO-HQ (with Lav CUVID) with no issues.

I did discover on that if I have the Display Settings set to 1080x1920/60playback is choppy and unwatchable. If I set dispaly to 1920x180/24 it plays smoothly. This is for BD movie playback.

[CountryBumkin]

I guess I was wrong with my previous post. I just tried a BD that doesn't play smoothly with RO-HQ. This one has more action, which I assume is the reason for the stuttering. I switched back to RO-Standard and it is smooth now. So I don't know if my CPU is too weak or if there is another setting/reason why this movie is jerky.
Nice that I can switch back and forth so easily.

So back to the OPs question - what is the minimum CPU/GPU requirement (or JR BEnchmark) for RO-HQ?

[jmone]

Unfortunately there is no "one number" that dictates what will work and what will not:

- RO Std:  This uses all CPU power only with FFDSHOW doing both the decoding and a reasonable deinterlacer for Interlaced Material.  The rendering is done by EVR.  The CPU requirements are modest though
- RO HQ:  This changes two things, it uses madVR instead of EVR (and this likes a GPU with lots of shaders and fast DDR5 memory) and changes the deinterlacing to YADIF / Double frame rate that can stress the CPU
- nvidia :  If you have a recent nvidia card and the latest drivers RO HQ (and maybe one day RO Std) then MC switches to using LAVCUVID for Decoding of H264, VC-1, MPEG2 and MPEG4-ASP (each given appropriate hardware support) and Full Adaptive Deinterlacing, including Frame Doubling.  This moves the processing from the CPU to the GPU so even modest CPU spec PC's will work well with a modern nvidia GPU.

The impact on each of the above is dependant on the media you are playing.  The "toughest" I've found is Interlaced 1080/60 material when in HQ mode on a non nvidia PC.  My Q6600 is not up to this task, though the addition on a GTS450 meant that the offloading to the GPU has these streams playing fine.

So if you're getting stuttering (dropped frames) in RO HQ, check:
1) the refresh rate equals that of the media.  Eg a std Blu ray should be played back at 24hz, an interlaced one at 60hz (or 50 if a "PAL" version).
2) if using madVR try enabling "Exclusive Mode" as it has better performace than "windowed mode" (the current setting in RO HQ).  If still dropping frames you can try madVR's trade quality for performance settings
3) use RO Std and be happy!

[glynor]

The "toughest" I've found is Interlaced 1080/60 material when in HQ mode on a non nvidia PC.  My Q6600 is not up to this task,

I think there is likely some variability in this though.

My HTPC is a Q9550 @ 3.5GHz.  For MOST video files, ROHQ is fine.  However, when I play a few of my high-bitrate BluRay rips (13-16mbps or higher, usually, @ 1080p), and also H264 compressed TS files (16mbps @ 720p) that I recorded myself, I get stuttering and dropped frames.  I'm bitstreaming and I haven't tried messing with refresh rate changing yet.

Most other content plays fine in ROHQ.

That system has a AMD Radeon HD 6870.  I wonder if madVR has some sort of "preference" for nvidia hardware, simply because that's what he uses to develop it, and there might be something he does that performs poorly on AMD hardware that he doesn't know about?

On the other hand, my basement system is a Core i5-750 (Nehalem) @ 4.0GHz with a weaker GPU (AMD Radeon HD 5850) and it is smooth-as-silk, so...??  In my experience, ROHQ likes Nehalem or newer CPUs, though I don't have a modern-enough nvidia card to have played with LAVCUID yet.

[BryanC]

I have a weak under-volted HTPC and my uncompressed Blu-Ray rips play fine on ROHQ at 1080P thanks to my nVidia video card and LAV CUVID.

For comparisons I have an AMD X2 4400+ at 2.1Ghz/core and nVidia GT240. My system doesn't crack 1000 on JMark, but I think the GDDR5 video memory makes a huge difference.

[glynor]

my uncompressed Blu-Ray rips

[Video nerd pet peeve, ignore me.]

You don't have uncompressed BluRay rips, or if you did, they wouldn't play because you wouldn't have the disk throughput to play them smoothly (unless you were using SSDs, and then you'd fit like one movie per expensive disk).  Uncompressed 10 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 24fps = 127 MB per/sec, or 445 GB per/hr (and that's with 4:2:2 subsampling, 4:4:4 is even bigger).

Yours haven't been recompressed.

The video is compressed-to-hell-and-back on the BluRay disc.

[Daydream]

I have a first-gen Phenom X4 and Ati 5770. Everything plays fine except when 'Double framerate' is enabled in Yadif for ROHQ. The jump in CPU power required is much bigger than going to madVR from EVR. 1080i60 is a mess.

So here's how I see it: either there is going to be some breaking news that madvr support DXVA (and the 2 weeks hope for an answer just hit the one month mark) or we really start to document what works and how. Does an Atom-Ion HTPC works and how. Does a Llano-based system works and how. Preferably real, usable info, not generalities. It shouldn't be that difficult to determine how many shaders are enough. Compare setups with 160-400-800-more than 1000, for a very demanding file and draw a line. "This is up till where the shaders help; the rest is CPU".

On this idea with testing, are we using a comprehensive set of tests? For everything, from video renderring to subtitles. Or it's everybody with their own wacky files? I have the file suite Anantech is using to test streamers and the likes. I can UL it if it's of any help.

[jmone]

I think there is likely some variability in this though.

My HTPC is a Q9550 @ 3.5GHz.  For MOST video files, ROHQ is fine.  However, when I play a few of my high-bitrate BluRay rips (13-16mbps or higher, usually, @ 1080p), and also H264 compressed TS files (16mbps @ 720p) that I recorded myself, I get stuttering and dropped frames.  I'm bitstreaming and I haven't tried messing with refresh rate changing yet.

Most other content plays fine in ROHQ.

That system has a AMD Radeon HD 6870.  I wonder if madVR has some sort of "preference" for nvidia hardware, simply because that's what he uses to develop it, and there might be something he does that performs poorly on AMD hardware that he doesn't know about?

On the other hand, my basement system is a Core i5-750 (Nehalem) @ 4.0GHz with a weaker GPU (AMD Radeon HD 5850) and it is smooth-as-silk, so...??  In my experience, ROHQ likes Nehalem or newer CPUs, though I don't have a modern-enough nvidia card to have played with LAVCUID yet.

There is no madVR preference for nvidia or even generations of GPU (that I know of) but simply for high speed memory and shaders.... the one bit of advice I got from the Doom9 threads is get something with DDR5 as memory throughput is the bottleneck for sending and retrieving frames from the GPU.  madshi has a test filter that will show you the framerate throughput of your GPU card so you can test various settings, including stuff like scaling various material.