Official Sandy Bridge / LGA1155 for HTPCs Thread - Page 2

It's on my TODO list, the only system I can test it on is my main HTPC - haven't yet because I try not to take too many risks with it

Understandable. Thanks!

Due to my display's issues in handling RGB I've since installed a $20 ATI 5450 so I can use yCbCr and everything looks great. If they got that feature working in clarkdale I could move back to the built-in video.

Thanks for the review and concentration on HTPC Andy! Does PDVD8/9/10 work with SB or will it require new SW? Interesting that you disabled UAC to enable 23.973Hz output, but this supposedly is a hw design issue? I'm tempted to go to SB, but do not want to invest in new OS, SW, etc. just to support it. Can you try different software (besides MPC-HC) like TMT, PDVD, etc. to confirm?

There was a section on BD playback with TMT 3/5 and PDVD 10 (didn't test 9). WDVD was the only player I had significant issues with, everything else worked - although PDVD 10 will require an update which should drop very soon.

Also spent a good amount of time with 7MC and SageTV (I use SageTV as my primary DVR SW) client with very good results.

I can't comment on it being a HW problem, Anand's coverage was the first time I've heard that.

My mother told me, "When you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything."

This is me not saying anything.

Am I understanding Intel correctly?

Intel is only releasing the better graphics chip (HD3000) with the K-series chips with unlocked multipliers. But, to be able to overclock you are forced to use the P67 chipset which will disable the the graphics chip. Or, you could use the H67 motherboard and loose support for overclocking.

Basically, the HD3000 and overclock-ability are mutually exclusive at launch. Not to mention the loss of Quick Sync if you are going to overclock since it only works with the integrated graphics enabled.

This has got to be the dumbest thing ever! Why even bother with the HD3000 since no one is going to give up overclocking for it. Or at least put it on the i7-2600 and i5-2500 chips. No Workstation/Transcoding Monster/HTPC for me this January.

The Z68 chipset that will allow for overclocking, integrated graphics and Quick Sync is slated for Q2 2011... just in time go to market with the new AMD Bulldozer chips. Hmmm... Now I'm definitely waiting for the new AMD release.

Quick note...we could not get it to work with DXVA, either.

This is exactly what I got from reviews too. Anandtech explained that Intel had to be very conservative on chipset side in order to meet launch schedule.

try running mpc-hc in "run as administrator" mode under win 7; may not need to turn off UAC then. I'd also mention it at doom9

The largest target market for this product, by far, will be people who would never even consider overclocking, if they even know what it is. You need to remember that overclockers are a niche market.

it's not enough to disable UAC, you need to reboot afterwards

Actually, for the K processors, I'd say the largest tarket market are overclockers who would be pairing discrete cards (perhaps even doing SLI/CrossFire) with their set-ups. HTPCs are a smaller niche and most people will just go with the locked versions w/HD2000 graphics. The people who would actually benefit from better integrated graphics are those buying the locked processors since they're less likely to use a discrete GPU. Imho, Intel should have gone HD3000 across the board (or at least i5-i7 models). If they want to differentiate K from non-K, run the graphics on the non-K at 1100MHz and the K on 1350MHz.

For HTPC uses (non gaming) the use of hd2000 on the non k processors should not effect the performance of quicksync (transcoding) and the decode / bitstreaming of hd audio / video. In essence for HTPC use there should be absolutely no need for hd3000 over hd2000. The reasoning is that the 6 additional EUs don't do anything for the transcoding (which has it's own specific portion of silicon that does that not general purpose EUs). Now the effect of 1100mhz VS 1350 - I haven't seen any benchmarks comparing the effect of the faster clock cycles on quicksync

QS transcoding does not seem to be CPU bound, so I wouldn't expect much (if any) difference.

From AnandTech article:

"Once frames of the source video are decoded, they are actually fed to the programmable EU array to be split apart and prepared for transcoding"

"Motion search, the most compute intensive part of the transcode process, is done in the EU array. It's the combination of the fast decoder, the EU array, and fixed function hardware that make up Intel's Quick Sync engine"

That sucks. That means you have to buy the K processor to get the faster transcoding: how much faster compared to hd2000 - need reviews from some of the folks who have both these chips. I may put the 2500K on my next gaming rig, but will undoubtedly couple with a gfx card like gtx 580 and there goes quicksync - unless intel comes out with a patch where they'll play well together in the sandbox. Seriously what are intel's market segmentation people thinking??

The product development team must have been drunk when they came up with Sandy Bridge. You can't use the GPU if you want to overclock since the chipset won't allow it. On the other hand only the K cpu's have a GPU worth using. On the other hand all the mobile versions get HD3000. So for a normal pc, you have to get a K cpu (its only $10-$20 more) so you can trivially overclock to 4.4Ghz, but then you can't use QuickSync and all the other goodies. And of course Intel has no support for switchable graphics in the desktop.

In other words its the usual Intel nonsense.

Hmm, apparently, the difference isn't as bad as I expected. I thought performance would be halved but from this review, performance penalty is only around 15% at worst. I'm more surprised by the i5-655K/HD graphics result. It was faster than i5-2500K software encoding purely because of decode assist.

Edit: Forgot to add the QuickSync review link.

Actually, that might be coming eventually if Anand's article is to be believed.

Basically I would wait until the Q2 2011 mobo's hit the market which should be more feature rich.

I'll be honest in saying for HTPC only use I don't think it really matters since even "just" HD2000 is way better then what we have today with the Clarkdale chips and those are more then plenty to do all your HTPC needs at full 1080p.

There is the Z68 chipset coming out later this year (Q2 rumored) which is basically a P67 + integrated graphics, or a H67 + overclocking, however you like to see it.

The interesting question then would be if you can still use QuickSync even if you have connected your display to a discrete card instead of the onboard video (when on board video is still enabled, just not connected). Of course one could test this with a H67 already..

That's a YES according to PCWatch's review. I'll mention they were using Intel Desktop boards, just to make referencing words used in the BIOS easier.
As long as you have integrated graphics set to "Always" enable, it should allow QuickSync to work even with discrete graphics. They also mention multi-monitor support with the integrated graphics working with discrete
graphics.


Probably because EUs are only part of the pipeline. 2x performance from 2x EUs would indicate serious design flaw, no one part of the design should be the single source of the bottleneck.

You could compare the transcode pipeline to a CPU pipeline. The front-end on a CPU is similar to the fixed function units doing transcoding in Sandy Bridge, and the EUs are equal to ALUs and FPUs on a CPU.

HD 2000 isn't exactly way better. It performs just a wee bit above the 900 MHz GMA HD in the i5-661. What I don't understand is why Intel is only including the HD 3000 in the K processors when people who buy those SKU's would probably be buying discrete graphics and would have no use for the integrated one. It's the people buying the locked processors (probably inside a Dell, HP, etc) that would benefit most from better integrated graphics.

Well again no PROPER 24p support. I was going to build a SB PC in a few weeks, but I'm waiting for Bulldozer now. FU Intel.

EPIC FAIL
+ {infinity}

I agree. It is weird how they did that.

Cant intel make you in charge of the media division archibael and clean this mess up? proper 23,976Hz in 2012, ffs....

Ads starting to get posted today...
http://www.microcenter.com/storefron...ource=ACT_BYO&

Looks like the Intel HD 3000 is about (just a little better than) equivalent to an AMD HD 5450 (closer to the HD 5450 than a HD 5550). I'm leaning towards maybe a i7 2600K when the Z68 chipset comes out Q2.

Interesting board. Lists OC although, I thought that wasn't going to be available until Z68?

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro...ID=103&LanID=9

Not sure about the chart showing some H67 with onboard graphics and some without even though they all seem to have video ports on the back panels.

Looks like they are going around the PCI-e limitations too as these have a old PCI slot.