AMD Radeon HD 6900, 6800, 6600 etc. Series Thread: Supporting HDMI 1.4a and BR 3D! - Page 5

Wondering if there is any sites posting anything on the AMD lower end video cards from CES yet (are they supposed to be announced this week)?

This file gave blue screen in ATI driver, in both ffdshow and TMT3. MPC-HC played it without DXVA. PowerDVD 10 refused to play it, stopped immediately.
Note that I use Catalyst 10.10e, it suits me better than 10.12(a) which may or may not fix this crash, I don't know. Is it supposed to play 3840x1080 video?

I also should note that 1920x1080 L4.2 file skipped a lot of frames in MPC-HC on 6850 when using DXVA. CPU usage was low but more than half of the frames were skipped.
TMT3 and ffdshow played it fine. I guess MPC-HC built-in DXVA is not that good for ATI (GT 240 played it OK).

And GT240 could not do DXVA on anything larger than 1920x1080.

Below is a screenshot when 6850 played 1920x2160/60p L4.2 H264 video 700_vL42_2D3D.mkv. Full size on flickr
CPU usage fluctuated between 12 and 20% in ffdshow but in TMT3 it was less than 5%.


6850 1920x2160/60p L4.2 H264 by micksh, on Flickr

Actually, disregard my results with PowerDVD 10.
I found that DXVA was disabled (didn't notice it before, CPU was good enough). Then I changed some settings and somehow broke it on all your files. It refuses to play them now.
It plays 1080p L4.1 MKVs and blu-rays just fine. I just can't reproduce yesterday's results on your files - it stops playing them.

Results of other programs are consistent. Everything else works as I described.
There is a new PDVD update today, I will update later and maybe will try to look at the settings.

Just replaced my MSI GTX460 HAWK with a HIS 6950 card.

Everything works fine including 3D except that the 6950 fan is noisy on desktop usage (idle/2d). Its not that bad when playing games.

But it makes way more noise than the GTX460 it replaced on desktop usage.

I can see the fan spins at 25%. Anyone tried to used a program like afterburner to spin it down to 10-20%?

Greetings micksh.


It's sad to see 3840x1080 side-by-side not supported in DXVA as this is a popular 3D encoding format. It would take a Q9550 class CPU to play this smoothly.


Thanks for posting the screen cap.

Would appreciate if you could also post MPC's Ctrl+J screen cap as this can reveal problems that may go undetected.


VP4's failure to support 3840x1080 and 1920x2160 is unexpected. Will post in the other thread to see if someone can get this to work.


It does seem that PowerDVD decoder turns off DXVA when decoding 3840x1080 and 1920x2160. Same with the 5670 here.

MPC's decoder has issues dealing 60p stuff. Did you try Arcsoft and MS decoders?



Many thanks and best regards.

Maybe it's because of AVC level higher than 4.1 and/or 60p?
Unfortunately, I won't have time to re-encode the files soon (I've never done it before - learning curve, etc).
But if you have L4.1 24p or 30p files somewhere handy, I can test them.

I posted couple. Not sure what to read from them. I just see that actual frame rate is low. EDIT: I see max paint time is ridiculously long but I don't know why it could be so.

I found some 3840x1920 mp4 clip on vimeo.com (there seems to be only one, from Japan) but it appeared to be AVC L5.0. Behaved even worse than your L5.1 video - BSOD on 6850 in ffdshow and TMT3, even MPC-HC didn't play it. GT240 didn't play it either.
Since frame rate was 30 fps I guess it's a combination of profile level and high resolution that creates problems.

Found some 1920x2160 30 fps VC-1 AP@L4 WMV Dracula 4D trailer
GT240: MPC-HC didn't play. WMP played it with some "WMVideo Decoder DMO" according to GraphEdit, but without DXVA. Don't know what that is. In Shark007 settings I have "use ffdshow DXVA for WVC1, not Microsoft".
HD6850: Exactly the same plus TMT3 played it without DXVA. CPU usage is not that high, though. No more than 60% on Core 2 Duo 3GHz, it's playing smoothly.


Arcsoft decoder? I thought this is what I tested with TMT3?
Microsoft DTV-DVD decoder can't play any of your files on any PC. WMP just stops.

I guess over-the-top 1920x2160 AVC L4.2 is the best bet right now. That is until 3840x1920 AVC L4.1 source is tested, could not find such file.


1920x2160 No DXVA 60fps

1920x1080 DXVA ON, skipped frames

Many thanks for the screen caps, micksh. They look bad.


This looks exactly the same as the 5670. It shows UVD3 is no better than UVD2 in handling 1920x1080/60P Panasonic video. Does the 1920x2160 screen cap look equally bad?


Not sure what to make of this. Did CPU usage max out?

Here is the L4.1 encode of 3840x1080/60p side-by-side video.

Name: 700_hL41_2D3D.mkv
Size: 125.28MB
Description: 3840x1080/60p 2Dto3D Side by Side L4.1
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9ty5jh

Best regards

But I understand that it is better. ffdshow and TMT 3 played it perfectly with DXVA. It is only MPC-HC that has problem with its internal video filters.


No. About 60%. It looked relatively smooth, I didn't notice stutter. But since now I see max paint time = 147 ms there should have been some. I will retest it.

This is how smooth playback should look. I believe VP4 is capable of this.

Is it the chart on the bottom right? What does it mean? I see max paint time = 137 ms, is it relevant?

Both these files that I posted screenshots from played very well with ffdshow DXVA on 6850. 1920x2160 didn't play on GT240. Did they play with DXVA on 5670?

Maybe I should have posted 3840x1920 MPC-HC screenshots that didn't play in ffdshow. How can I get debugging information from ffdshow especially if file gives BSOD? OSD display in ffdshow is not working in DXVA mode.

You should post screen cap with ffdshow. Should look exactly like what I had posted, with the graph showing two straight lines.

On the 5670, 3940x1080 gave BSOD. 1920x2160 did not crash but was like what you posted.

Bad news. BSOD in ffdshow and TMT3 on 6850 with DXVA. Didn't play on GT240 either. I can't play it anywhere, in fact, even in VLC player. Can you play it in other software?

I finally realized that you need "good" screenshots from videos that played well on 6850. That would be two: Panasonic 1920x1080 m2ts and 1920x2160 L4.2 video.
Unfortunately, I can't provide them now, I can't make MPC-HC to work properly with ffdshow (never needed that before).
These two played perfectly smooth in WMP and TMT3, with low CPU usage but not with MPC-HC.

I added ffdshow video decoder to list of MPC-HC external decoders, checked "prefer", disabled internal H264 filters and internal audio switcher. MPC-HC is using ffdshow, I see its orange icon and tooltip says DXVA. But they still play horrible. Can I do anything else? Change renderer (using EVR custom now)?

EDIT: In fact, MPC-HC works well with ffdshow on my other files. I guess this is MPC-HC issue with 60 fps files.

In attempt to figure out that full HD double frame 3D video stuff I re-encoded the files in 24 and 30 FPS. Posted links in the end.

On 6850:
3840x1080 in ffdshow and TMT3 give BSOD regardless of frame rate.
1920x2160 plays smoothly in WMP (ffdshow) and TMT3 but not in MPC-HC with ffdshow so I can't provide good MPC-HC Ctrl-J screenshot. Chart is bad in MPC-HC and video stutters. 60 or 30 fps doesn't matter.
Can't think of more proof other than posting video on youtube (below)

None of these files play on GT240 in ffdshow (stops immediately) or MPC-HC internal codecs (black screen).

VLC Player played 3840x1080 files.
30% CPU usage on GT240 and quad core Q9550 but it horribly stutters, unwatchable.
50% CPU usage on HD6850 and dual core E8400 and it looked OK, no terrible stutter. I think, it's watchable (video below).

I can't explain bad results on GT240 in VLC Player as I don't think version 1.0.5 uses DXVA so theoretically video card should not matter. In any case, overall, AMD UVD3 gives me better results than NVidia VP4.

And PowerDVD 10 still can't play double frame files. It used to, not sure what I broke. PowerDVD plays normal 1080p content just fine. And MPC-HC works perfect with normal 1080p files with DXVA both with ffdshow and internal codecs.

Video files:

Size: 10.91MB | Description: 3840x1080 L4.1 30fps
http://www.sendspace.com/file/i9n7om

Size: 13.71MB | Description: 3840x1080 L4.1 24fps
http://www.sendspace.com/file/x6uu2q

Size: 27.46MB | Description: 1920x2160 L4.1 30fps
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jn5pe0

1920x2160 L4.2 60fps video in Windows Media Player (ffdshow) on HD6850
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2V_n2GKW3s

3840x1080 L4.1 30fps video in VLC Player on HD6850
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj3hC_YuqJ4

EDIT: Relevance of all this testing to 3D

Neither StereoMovie Player nor Stereoscopic Player 1.6.6 could play these files.

I made PowerDVD 10 working on these files by installing latest update, 2429 (just erasing all old settings would do the job, I think).
PowerDVD plays them and it sort of shows 3D in anaglyph mode on my 2D display (can't see depth in red-cyan glasses but I guess videos were not meant to be real 3D).

The thing is with PowerDVD CPU usage is 100% on HD6850 and video stutters really bad (video hardware acceleration is checked and it works fine on normal 1080p files).
PowerDVD 10 plays 3D blu-rays in anaglyph 3D mode smoothly with 2-10% CPU usage. There are issues with double frame video only.
Maybe TMT5 will do better, can't tell.

Yes, it is. This is the chart I see with GT240 on that 60 fps L4.2 1080p file in MPC-HC. And I can play it perfectly smooth in WMP (ffdshow DXVA) and TMT3 on HD6850. Jut not in MPC-HC on HD6850 regardless of filters used, so I can't provide MPC-HC screenshot.

If VP4 plays the video smoothly in MPC and not UVD3, perhaps we should conclude that...

I will conclude that just MPC-HC has a problem with UVD3 on non-standard files. No MPC-HC - no problem with that video.

So, that means no VLD for MPEG-2, right?

There was lots of outcry about it missing from 5000 series though. Plus, it's easier for n00bs like me to get decent deinterlacing with DXVA than without.

Clearly I was confused. I appreciate the explanation and your patience.

So, why the outcry about UVD2 on the HD 5xxx not fully supporting MPEG-2 and why upgrade from an HD 5xxx to an HD 6xxx for an HTPC, other than for 3D? I'd do it for better deinterlacing, but if there's no benefit there, it sounds like I should stick with my HD 5xxx cards.

Should the 11.1 CCC with an Asus 6850 be able to store scaling settings in profiles? I have to turn the 'enable scaling' option off when playing Blu ray disks through WinDVD (especially 3d disks!) and I want it back on (with underscan) when running anything else on the computer to get the entire desktop displayed.

I can do this by calling up CCC and changing the checkbox on scaling - adapter resets, screen goes black while (I guess) the HDMI resyncs. I stored both situations in profiles (presets?) but when I chose those profiles, either through CCC or directly from the menu, nothing changes. I DO get a wait cursor for a little bit, the card remains in whatever mode it was in.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Ned

Hmmm. Is that probably going to make the 6450 the pick of the bunch for HTPC?

Sheesh, next year, will we be talking in Teraflops all the time? Isn't the 5870 rated at 2.7 TFLOPS with the 6870 around 2?

I'm hoping my 1 Petabyte storage device will arrive in 2020.