[MrZoid]

Now that tax time has come and gone I'm looking to upgrade my second HTPC.


I currently have an old Athlon X2 (AM2) with 8 GBs of RAM and a Radeon 6570.


I'm wanting to go Intel, and I'm wanting to do it in the next week or so. The reason being is we're shifting our broadcast network recordings to the HTPC from our D* boxes.


I have 8 GBs of DDR3-1600 I can transplant into the upgrade, so I'm covered there.


Everything else will remain the same.


Other than Windows Media Center OTA recordings the system will also be used for internet streaming (Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and Netflix), as well as DVD/Blu-Ray titles stored in .MKV containers on my server.


I'm looking at three scenarios:


1) Continue using the 6570 and get an inexpensive motherboard and CPU.

2) Get an inexpensive motherboard and CPU and GT 640.

3) Get a decent motherboard and i3-3225 with HD 4000 graphics.


My bedroom TV is a 42" 1080P LCD and we currently use the TV's speakers, so HD audio isn't a high priority.


Mr Zoid

 

[Foxbat121]

None of the tasks you mentioned will need any significant portion of the power of those GPUs. Comparison is not really needed.

 

[MrZoid]

I feel I should add that I use MPC-HC with MadVR for the MKV playback.


Mr Zoid

 

[ncarty97]

I recently upgraded using the i3-3225 and a 'decent' motherboard (Can't remember the actual model, but one of the H77 boards).


I'm not using a discrete graphics card. It's handled everything I've thrown at it with ease, but I have not played with MPC-HC or MadVR.

 

[emcdade]

6570 will handle madvr fine until you start getting into 60fps Jinc upscaling. If you really want that, you need some more gpu power like a 7770 or 7850. 6570 can handle Lanczos upscaling fine at 60fps however.


So don't just get a tiny upgrade, go big or go home. Also, HD 4000 is weaker than your 6570.




ReneTHX has looked into this thoroughly so search his posts around here. The guy is a true guru!

 

[lagittaja]

Yeah, use the 6570 if you plan to use madVR.

Didn't see you mention your budget but I think I would look at some of the lower end Ivy Bridge chips (G1610, G2020, G2120) and a B75 or H77 motherboard.

All of the three chips are dual core models with no Hyper Threading, first one has 2MB L3 cache and 2.6Ghz, the rest are 3MB L3 cache and 2.9Ghz and 3.1Ghz.

Not really any huge difference between those three regarding the performance and what not.


Yesterday I actually played around with my 3770K and downclocked it from 4.3Ghz.

I set it to 2.6Ghz first and then 3.1Ghz, played some different material on MPC-HC+madVR. Didn't notice a thing even with staring at the ctrl+J info.. Actually when I looked at CPU-Z while playing I noticed that when 2.6Ghz it stayed mainly 2.5-2.6Ghz (speedstep) and when 3.1Ghz it jumped hell of a lot between 2.4-3.1Ghz. So.. CPU usage isn't anything worth mentioning. Probably 10ish % in each 4 threads the player was using. So perhaps if I were to disable HT and two of the cores I would see ~40ish percent load.

Although I didn't bother turning off the other two cores nor disabling the Hyper Threading so take this with a grain of salt. Probably won't notice a thing between the G1610 and G2120 so might as well go with the G1610

I'm getting the G2120 along with B75M-ITX and a stick of 4GB DDR3/1600 for my own HTPC upgrade

Coming from GA-MA78GM-S2H, Athlon II x2 240 and 4GB DDR2/800

 

[gtgray]



Quote:
Originally Posted by emcdade  /t/1469807/intel-hd-4000-vs-radeon-6570-vs-geforce-gt-640#post_23244026


6570 will handle madvr fine until you start getting into 60fps Jinc upscaling. If you really want that, you need some more gpu power like a 7770 or 7850. 6570 can handle Lanczos upscaling fine at 60fps however.


So don't just get a tiny upgrade, go big or go home. Also, HD 4000 is weaker than your 6570.




ReneTHX has looked into this thoroughly so search his posts around here. The guy is a true guru!

Be aware that the HD 7790 is out there mow. I tried the 7770 and found it not really up to the task for Jinc 3 AR and broadcast stuff, looked a bit jerky. I got a 7790 HIS and overclocked it about 10 percent. Price was $149, I considered the 7850 but wanted to avoid the 130 watt TDP class cards. The 7790 is rated at 85 Watts TDP and seems to run about 49C in my case with the overclock in the slot next to the Ceton.


In some ways the 7790 has higher specs but the 7850 is a 256bit memory bus and that puts it in another class for madVR.

 

[renethx]



Quote:
Originally Posted by gtgray  /t/1469807/intel-hd-4000-vs-radeon-6570-vs-geforce-gt-640#post_23247285


Be aware that the HD 7790 is out there mow. I tried the 7770 and found it not really up to the task for Jinc 3 AR and broadcast stuff, looked a bit jerky. I got a 7790 HIS and overclocked it about 10 percent. Price was $149, I considered the 7850 but wanted to avoid the 130 watt TDP class cards. The 7790 is rated at 85 Watts TDP and seems to run about 49C in my case with the overclock in the slot next to the Ceton.


In some ways the 7790 has higher specs but the 7850 is a 256bit memory bus and that puts it in another class for madVR.

Yup, HD 7790 is a better choice. But HD 7770 should be able to handle all SD/HD/full HD formats in a full HD display with Jinc3+AR / Jinc3+AR. (Will you post a short clip of the file?) The hardest format is 1440x1080i59 (mainly found in broadcast in Japan), with rendering time here (V1-V6).




HD = 1280x720, FHD = 1920x1080, (3/4)FHD = 1440x1080, i = interlaced, p = progressive, Level 5 = Jinc3+AR / Jinc3+AR / C-R+AR+LL, Power = power consumption of the total system including PSU. HD 7770/7790 is not fast enough to play 4K UHD 60p with C-R+AR+LL downscaling.


HD 7850/7870 is a bit difficult to handle because of heat (30-50W more than HD 7770 at the heaviest video playback like 1440x1080i59), hence louder fan noise, unless you choose a card with a good cooler very carefully.

 

[cris75]

Hello, the intel HD 4000 can play 1080p video with high bitrates in a smooth way using mpc with shaders( like sharpen complex 2...), the intel HD4500 in my old notebook can't, it always freeze with squares.Or i need a discrete videocard like 7770?

 

[lagittaja]

Did you guys notice the GT640 rev. 2 from nvidia?

Popped up a few days ago in all silence.

GG nvidia for finally getting the GT640 GK107 out with GDDR5 but damn you for crippling it with a 64bit instead of 128bit bus.

Well at least it does have a bit bigger memory bandwidth (40 instead of 28 (iirc))


Hopefully no one buys this card. Especially since at least here the GT640r2 price is actually higher than what you'd pay for a vanilla GTX650, or a HD7750 for that matter.


Sent from my GNote

 

[Mfusick]

Mr Zoid,


I think it comes down to what you want to do. If you use Madvr and not SVP you should be ok with a modest Intel CPU and it won't matter much if you use the Radeon you have or even the HD4000. Considering you already own the video card I'd say any modest dual core Intel CPU should work well with your current card for basic playback.


If you think you have to do serious MADVR + Reclock + SVP (real CPU pig!) you should look at an i5 quad core like the 3570k or the new Haswel version of it with a better 7000 series Radeon card.


But we are talking about a major difference in price between a basic dual core and your current GPU and a new i5 with a higher end GPU card.


I think you really need to think about how serious you want to go now, and in the future. Any basic Intel chip with integrated graphics is ok for basic playback. Modest MadVR with your current GPU and a new CPU is not going to be a problem. If you think you want to get serious it going to cost you more $$$ in GPU and CPU.


If I clearly understood your needs I could recommend you a specific option. I know you know enough from your other posts so I'd advise you to really think about what you want to be able to do with your new HTPC and that should give you a good idea of the right choice in hardware.

 

[gtgray]



Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx  /t/1469807/intel-hd-4000-vs-radeon-6570-vs-geforce-gt-640#post_23247359


Yup, HD 7790 is a better choice. But HD 7770 should be able to handle all SD/HD/full HD formats in a full HD display with Jinc3+AR / Jinc3+AR. (Will you post a short clip of the file?) The hardest format is 1440x1080i59 (mainly found in broadcast in Japan), with rendering time here (V1-V6).




HD = 1280x720, FHD = 1920x1080, (3/4)FHD = 1440x1080, i = interlaced, p = progressive, Level 5 = Jinc3+AR / Jinc3+AR / C-R+AR+LL, Power = power consumption of the total system including PSU. HD 7770/7790 is not fast enough to play 4K UHD 60p with C-R+AR+LL downscaling.


HD 7850/7870 is a bit difficult to handle because of heat (30-50W more than HD 7770 at the heaviest video playback like 1440x1080i59), hence louder fan noise, unless you choose a card with a good cooler very carefully.

I know we kind of dropped this conversation for awhile. I found that OTA broadcast was fine with the 7790 and Jinc 3 AR on the other hand Ceton is problematic. I am sure there is some extra overhead in the DLNA approach JRiver is using to capture the stream of the Ceton. Even RO Standard has much more breakup and tearing than WMC. Using the 7790 you see a lot of tearing and pixilation. I actually get better performance out of a GTS 450 in with MadVR rendering Ceton cable stuff in JRvier. The 7790 should do a lot better than the old GTS 450... the Nvidia card works okay but not Jinc 3 AR for Ceton. It just can't do that but something lesser and it plays much smoother and drops/repeats far fewer frames than the 7790.


I am not in spending mode right now so, not sure what do about that. Perhaps, JR will improve their Ceton performance... for one thing I can't run Hardware Acceleration with either card with MadVR/ROHQ. The 7790 did the first few weeks I had it, but the most recent builds hardware acceleration is broken just like the GTS 450 has been for more than a year.