[drinklime]

Right now I have an Nvidia 8600GTS. I need a better gaming card, but I do not want to sacrifice any sort of video acceleration. I also now have a Crossfire motherboard (although its a P45 chip), so I'm leaning towards ATI. Will the 4850 be able to accelerate all the same stuff that the 8600GTS does?

 

[Fox McCloud]

Lol it will


The 4850 is about as powerful as a 9800GTX i believe

 

[drinklime]

For 3D yes, but I'm just asking about the video codec acceleration... I remember that the 8600 was better than the 8800 for video even though the 8800 had better 3D performance.

 

[renethx]

- 8600 GT > 8800 GTS 640/320MB (Nov 06) = 8800 GTX (Nov 06) = 8800 Ultra (May 07)

- 8600 GT = 8800 GT (Oct 07) = 8800 GTS 512MB (Dec 07)


in HA.

 

[drinklime]

ok, i think i understand that, but what about ATI?

 

[sotti]

the 4850 has the full suite of ATI accelration.


It plays back AVC BD disks at like 15% cpu usage on my 4800+

 

[mattyice11]

I don't think your 8600GTS accelerates VC-1, but the 4850 does. Both accelerate h.264.

 

[drinklime]

ok thanks

 

[jawgee]



Quote:
Originally Posted by mattyice11 /forum/post/14260155


I don't think your 8600GTS accelerates VC-1, but the 4850 does. Both accelerate h.264.

I feel like a n00b when it comes to hardware acceleration these days...does "h.264" in the above quote also include videos encoded with x264?


Thanks,

jawgee

 

[eminence55]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jawgee /forum/post/14270658


I feel like a n00b when it comes to hardware acceleration these days...does "h.264" in the above quote also include videos encoded with x264?


Thanks,

jawgee

Not officialy but some apps like Media player classic- home Cinema apparently allows for some level of HA for x.264. there may be others.


X264 decoding is usually done in software therefore need good cpu. CoreAVC is a very efficient decoder for any of the new codecs

 

[cychou]



Quote:
Originally Posted by eminence55 /forum/post/14276781


Not officialy but some apps like Media player classic- home Cinema apparently allows for some level of HA for x.264. there may be others.


X264 decoding is usually done in software therefore need good cpu. CoreAVC is a very efficient decoder for any of the new codecs

Sorry, my interpretation is a bit different from yours!

Standard/Specification

H.264 is a standard for video compression, and it is wildly accepted by the industry.


Open Source Implementation

x264 is a free library for encoding H.264/AVC video streams.


Early x264 releases cause some problems with DXVA HA, but x264 project already fixed them.


There are some requirements for H.264 encoded video (no matter what encoder you use) to be accelerated by DXVA. Some of files on the Internet just do not fulfill those requirements, so they will not work on DXVA HA. And you have to use software decoder like CoreAVC. I play most of my x264 files using DXVA HA decoder with no problems. At the moment, the best DXVA HA decoder is probably from Cyberlink. Although MPC-HC is coming alone quite nicely.


To sum it up, H.264 is a standard/specification. X264 is just a open source implementation of that standard. When DXVA HA decoders and Encoding Applications become more available/compatible, you should not need to use software-only decoder. The situation now for H.264 is just like Mpeg2 some years ago.

 

[arfster]



Quote:
Originally Posted by cychou /forum/post/14278245


There are some requirements for H.264 encoded video (no matter what encoder you use) to be accelerated by DXVA. Some of files on the Internet just do not fulfill those requirements, so they will not work on DXVA HA. And you have to use software decoder like CoreAVC.

That's where MPC-HC's dxva decoder is quite convenient - if it fails to set it up hardware acceleration, it automatically drops back to software mode. No more black screens like cyberlink decoder produces.

 

[cychou]



Quote:
Originally Posted by arfster /forum/post/14278367


That's where MPC-HC's dxva decoder is quite convenient - if it fails to set it up hardware acceleration, it automatically drops back to software mode. No more black screens like cyberlink decoder produces.

I totally agree! MPC-HC decoder is quite handy in doing this automatic switch for you. However MPC-HC decoder does produce some artifacts for certain clips I have when using DXVA mode. Hopefully it will be fixed in future release. Then it will be my choice of decoder to use.


When using it in software mode, it does consume a little more CPU cycle than CoreAVC though.



Vince

 

[curiousmurf]

I've compared the 8600gt and Ati 3450 on the same machine and the Ati3450 produce better picture quality than the 8600gt....so i'm pretty sure the 4850 will do a fantastic job.


I think many people prefer Ati to Nvidia when it come to video playback.

 

[karpodiem]

I did some testing on this exact subject a few weeks ago with a user who had a ATi 2600 and a 9600GT;


UVD2 on the ATi cards is superior. We tried playback of a 1080p .mkv using Media Player Classic HomeCinema and CPU usage was at 2% for the 2600 and 30ish% for the 9600GT, using the VMR9 renderless option in the output section.

 

[ajamils]



Quote:
Originally Posted by karpodiem /forum/post/14347448


I did some testing on this exact subject a few weeks ago with a user who had a ATi 2600 and a 9600GT;


UVD2 on the ATi cards is superior. We tried playback of a 1080p .mkv using Media Player Classic HomeCinema and CPU usage was at 2% for the 2600 and 30ish% for the 9600GT, using the VMR9 renderless option in the output section.

How do you enable hardware decoding for mkv files in ATI cards ?

 

[karpodiem]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ajamils /forum/post/14347465


How do you enable hardware decoding for mkv files in ATI cards ?

There is no actual "enabling" on the ATi card. It will work if you have your playback software correctly configured. You need a couple things; Google them, download and install.


1) Haali Media Splitter

2) Media Player Classic HomeCinema

3) FFdshow


Open up Media Player Classic Homecinema. Go to the options menu. Click out the output, select VMR9 renderless. I'm not in front of my computer at home, so I believe this is the correct way to do it.

 

[ajamils]



Quote:
Originally Posted by karpodiem /forum/post/14347611


There is no actual "enabling" on the ATi card. It will work if you have your playback software correctly configured. You need a couple things; Google them, download and install.


1) Haali Media Splitter

2) Media Player Classic HomeCinema

3) FFdshow


Open up Media Player Classic Homecinema. Go to the options menu. Click out the output, select VMR9 renderless. I'm not in front of my computer at home, so I believe this is the correct way to do it.

Is this something exclusive to Media Player Classic HomeCinema or I can do that with ZoomPLayer too ?

 

[jawgee]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ajamils /forum/post/14347653


Is this something exclusive to Media Player Classic HomeCinema or I can do that with ZoomPLayer too ?

That's what I want to know as well, but I haven't been able to sift through all the posts on the topic of MPC-HC. I see lots of mentions of PowerDVD. Is PowerDVD needed to in order enable HA through non-MPC-HC video players?


Thanks,

jawgee

 

[arfster]



Quote:
Originally Posted by karpodiem /forum/post/14347448


I did some testing on this exact subject a few weeks ago with a user who had a ATi 2600 and a 9600GT;


UVD2 on the ATi cards is superior. We tried playback of a 1080p .mkv using Media Player Classic HomeCinema and CPU usage was at 2% for the 2600 and 30ish% for the 9600GT, using the VMR9 renderless option in the output section.

30% means hardware acceleration was disabled (MPCHC auto drops back to software mode if it can't enable). I've played x264 on a 8500gt at 0.5%, same as my 2600xt.



More generally, I'd say there's not much difference these days, other than the unique bugs/oddities of both (or more sprecifically, their drivers). Most comparisons you see are the result of setup issues on that particular machine.


ATI probably have the sillier default bugs now though - eg you have to apply registry tweaks to get any acceleration with dual monitors, and to get SD levels the same as HD. Unbelievable ATI haven't fixed the latter by now, it's over a year. On the other hand, ATI drivers have the nice option of having just about everything tweakable via registry - eg you want denoise only for SD not HD, no problem (vforcehddenoise).