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[cgott42]

Does anyone have screen shots or can describe the magnitude of the difference?  I was wondering if it's worth it to upgrade my Video Card in order to use the HQ?
My current setup is a Dell 1st gen i3 PC  with Radeon HD 6450 DDR3 video card feeding a Denon AVR (I think 3809ci) feeding a Darbee Darblet which goes to a BenQ W6000 projector

thx

[Trumpetguy]

Not screen shots, but I once tested and wouldn't even consider going back to RO STD. Dark scene (Victorian gate and huge trees at night).
RO STD: Black, dark grayish muddy screen with some light details (candle-lit windows in the back)
RO HQ: Dark picture with black shadows, quite detailed, swaying trees, a man,  a scary vallain with a cloak waving in the wind, walking through the clearly visible iron gate. The Victorian house is seen in the back with candle-lit windows.

[cgott42]

thanks that's helpful, does anyone also have a Darblet and can comment on how much add'l benefit there is to the HQ version?
thx

[gvanbrunt]

Red October HQ isn't just about the video card. It also uses Mad VR and it uses a lot of cpu. In fact I would suspect your Video card is up to the task already but your CPU is not.

If you are interested on what HQ has to offer I would suggest do some reading up on Mad VR. There are some screenshots here as well as more info on it:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228

[BryanC]

Red October HQ isn't just about the video card. It also uses Mad VR and it uses a lot of cpu. In fact I would suspect your Video card is up to the task already but your CPU is not.

This isn't true. madVR mimics a DirectX game and is almost completely GPU dependent.

[Hendrik]

This isn't true. madVR mimics a DirectX game and is almost completely GPU dependent.

And games don't need a CPU to work?

[cgott42]

thanks - impressive difference.  (perhaps I should be posting this question there, but) which computer specs do I need (actually just checked I have 2nd gen i3 -2100 PC, 4GB Ram, SSD HDD, Radeon HD 6450.  Do I need a new PC? Video Card? and if I do go the new PC route - what specs do I need?

[CountryBumkin]

With RO+HQ (madVR) you can "adjust the settings" in madVR for lower performing computers (of course the lower you go, the more like RO+STD it becomes).

I have one computer with the i3-2100 running an NVidia GTS450 video card and it does pretty well with madVR (about mid-level settings). I was running the same computer with a NVidia GT430 card (but the card failed/died) and it also did pretty good at the mid-level settings.

I have a second computer with an i5 and NVidia GTX750Ti (so the madVR settings can be higher) but it is only a little better than the GTS450 in picture quality. This is totally subjective of course.

So, in my opinion, your CPU and any discrete video card higher than the GT430 would be fine for mid-level madVR performance.

[BryanC]

And games don't need a CPU to work?

almost

It's amazing the games you can play on an old P4 with a decent GFX card. A high-end CPU is really only necessary when playing large multiplayer games.

Keeping the FPS above 30 can be done on pretty much any desktop CPU from the last 7-8 years.


http://techreport.com/review/23246/inside-the-second-gaming-performance-with-today-cpus/8

[gvanbrunt]

With RO+HQ (madVR) you can "adjust the settings" in madVR for lower performing computers (of course the lower you go, the more like RO+STD it becomes).

I have one computer with the i3-2100 running an NVidia GTS450 video card and it does pretty well with madVR (about mid-level settings). I was running the same computer with a NVidia GT430 card (but the card failed/died) and it also did pretty good at the mid-level settings.

I have a second computer with an i5 and NVidia GTX750Ti (so the madVR settings can be higher) but it is only a little better than the GTS450 in picture quality. This is totally subjective of course.

So, in my opinion, your CPU and any discrete video card higher than the GT430 would be fine for mid-level madVR performance.

I agree with most of this. The GPU I use is also the GT430. Had a higher end one and switched it out because this one is fanless and better for my Home Theater room. Performance was about the same. Very minimal difference. However a CPU upgrade did make a big jump at one point. Not sure about the ATI though. I seem to remember MadVR favoring NVidia for quite some time for acceleration. There is now DXVA2 but it had lots of issues at one point. Personally have not tested with ATI so I can't comment on performance between the 2.

So to the OP I would suggest trying it out and experimenting with settings. There is some good information here:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/MadVR_Expert_Guide

[cgott42]

thanks some good info, and I read through the threads linked.
Most all of what I watch is HD source watched on a 1080p projector (not yet going to upscale to 4K)
Is there still much of an improvement via MadVR? (as it seems like it'll cost a lot to get a suitable video card to handle the HD processing)

[|Tch0rT|]

thanks that's helpful, does anyone also have a Darblet and can comment on how much add'l benefit there is to the HQ version?
thx

I have a Darbee Darblet and use Red October HQ but not so much the fancy upscaling. I think the Darbee adds more than the upscaling IMO.

thanks some good info, and I read through the threads linked.
Most all of what I watch is HD source watched on a 1080p projector (not yet going to upscale to 4K)
Is there still much of an improvement via MadVR? (as it seems like it'll cost a lot to get a suitable video card to handle the HD processing)

IMO the hardware and energy consumption cost is not worth the fancy upscaling of madVR. Since most of what you watch is HD already I wouldn't worry about it too much. Personally the best thing about madVR is color correction as it's free software that can do the job of video processors costing $700 - $3000 (eeColor 3DLUT box, Lumagen), but that requires a colorimeter.

Here's some screen shots I did of an SD capture of The Big Bang Theory:

Default DXVA upscaling to 1080p with MPC-HC:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img844/1347/lini.png

madVR upscaling Jinc3 w/ AR (anti ringing), chroma upsampling Jinc3 w/ AR, and 3DLUT color correction (this will not be color correct on your monitor as the 3DLUT's where generated for one of my displays) also this was before the NNEDI3 image doubling was added:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img706/3010/m4eq.png

Please Note that this is an extreme example of how good the upscaling CAN BE and not everything will look that good, in fact most will NOT. It's completely material dependent. I've found that in motion and with older material such as The X-Files DVD's the high end of madVR upscaling does next to nothing for that material.

More examples here:
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1477339-so-you-ve-built-your-htpc-now-what-next-how-get-ultimate-picture-sound-quality-your-htpc-madvr-svp-xbmc-mediabrowser-jriver.html#post23430195


I have madVR on 2 of my PC's, one is a HTPC (AMD A8-6500) that uses the lower end of upscaling and color correction and the other is my gaming rig Q9550 with a 4GB GTX 670 video card (that I used for The Big Bang Theory captures from above) that can do the higher end upscaling and color correction and when I watch SD material there's a bit of fan noise from my GPU like I was playing a video game. Some people may find that annoying to have in your living room or theater and personally that would drive me nuts to hear that all the time just for a bit of smoothing of the pixels IMO.

I hope that helps.

[Hendrik]

Your first screenshot looks like broken settings. Not even a "normal" upscaler as used by Red October Standard will look that crappy.

[cgott42]

thanks for the info - this looks really intriguing but seems that begin that I view mostly all 1080p source material, and have a Darblet - that the benefits that I'd actually notice would be small compared to the cost to upgrade to a video card able to handle the processing and hassle + risk of "messing with" my HTPC.

[Castius]

Try forcing MadVR interlaced to film mode.
I found that it can auto select to video and it doesn't look right.

I don't know if "video" is wrong or if auto is not working?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=92170.msg634469#msg634469

[mwillems]

The film vs. video auto-mode setting in MadVR does not work, it just defaults to video everytime AFAIK. Madshi has talked about implementing detection (which is why the setting is there), but AFAIK implementation never happened (I'm open to correction, but I've never seen it select anything other than video). 

I set the default to film, and then tag filenames with "deint=video" for any files that need video-style deinterlacing.

[|Tch0rT|]

Your first screenshot looks like broken settings. Not even a "normal" upscaler as used by Red October Standard will look that crappy.

It's whatever MPC-HC 64 bit does by default. I made those a few months before I tried JRiver. I was testing out to see if it was worth upgrading my old AMD E-350 HTPC to something more powerful for madVR use, which it was. 

[cgott42]

Having second thoughts/buyer's itch.

How well does MSI Radeon R9 270X video card stack
i.e. will that allow me top VR performance (or near top) - PC is 2nd Gen i3 with SSD drive, 4GB ram, and Win 7 home?