[Dave Baumann]

In the initial part of the Avivo article we took a look at an overview of many of the technologies that ATI's video and display engine technology encompasses. While that brought us some familiarity with what was available with Avivo, much the the capabilities had not yet been seen on the new X100 series of boards after their initial release.

Although ATI, over recent years, have adopted a monthly official driver release schedule, at the end of 2005 ATI released an extra set of drivers, Catalyst 5.13, specifically with updates for Avivo on the X1000 series of graphics boards. These drivers were specifically design to enable some more of the Avivo functionality, demonstrating ATI's video transcoding capabilities, enabling hardware assisted H.264 decoding and, possibly the most important element, the promise of higher quality video playback.

In this "Avivo Winter Update" addition to the Avivo article we investigate the improvements and performance of these updates.

Update 26-Feb-2006: ATI will be making further updates to Avivo's DVD Playback quality in Catalyst 6.4. We've updated the HQV tests with the results from a Beta set of these drivers.

[Rys]

Did you do all the testing on your Dell 3007?

[Dave Baumann]

Yes.

[Hanners]

On this page, shouldn't the charts be labelled as as '% CPU utilisation', rather than seconds?

[Rys]

It's interesting that, as you state, the X1K hardware only seems to do GPU assist over a single fragment quad, despite more ability (possibly) being available, depending on the SKU.

Good to see someone show that H.264 decoding is largely bitrate dependant, not resolution dependant, and even X1300 can decode 720p reasonably.

Some work with AVC would have rocked, to further show what the GPUs are capable of, versus a CPU.

Good stuff!

[Dave Baumann]

Originally Posted by Rys

It's interesting that, as you state, the X1K hardware only seems to do GPU assist over a single fragment quad, despite more ability (possibly) being available, depending on the SKU.

Is a hypothesis at this point in time, however correlation between the results and configurations of the chips made a comment necessary. Of course, if it is actually the case then there should be no reason why even the X1300 shouldn't be able to do the same res and bit-rates that the X1800 can.

[Geo]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

Is a hypothesis at this point in time, however correlation between the results and configurations of the chips made a comment necessary. Of course, if it is actually the case then there should be no reason why even the X1300 shouldn't be able to do the same res and bit-rates that the X1800 can.

I wonder if possibly they even did it that way on purpose for scalability purposes.

The other thought was a paralellization problem, but that'd take 'splaining why "across quads" was problematical when "pipes-within-quad" is not.

[Dave Baumann]

ATI will be making further updates to Avivo's DVD Playback quality in Catalyst 6.4. We've updated the HQV tests with the results from a Beta set of these drivers.

[tEd]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

ATI will be making further updates to Avivo's DVD Playback quality in Catalyst 6.4. We've updated the HQV tests with the results from a Beta set of these drivers.

Are you only allowed to talk about avivo's particular update in cat6.4 or are there other features that would be worth talking about in cat6.4

[thorny]

I'd be interested to see some de-interlacing quality testing for uk DVB-T streams. Although many programs are generally seem to be handled well, end credits often look terrible, and some programs are look funny throughout, for example BBC News 24, IT Crowd and Grand Designs.

[Iron Tiger]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

Is a hypothesis at this point in time, however correlation between the results and configurations of the chips made a comment necessary. Of course, if it is actually the case then there should be no reason why even the X1300 shouldn't be able to do the same res and bit-rates that the X1800 can.

Clockspeed? Bandwidth?

[bruciie]

Hi

Trying to decide which graphics card to buy

Does anybody know of any reviews which compare the Avivo ability of a card like the X1600 XT with the video capability of a comparable Nvidia card like the 7600GT.

All the reviews i've seen are purely concerned with gaming capability.


Thanks for any help

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

Originally Posted by Dave Baumann

In the initial part of the Avivo article we took a look at an overview of many of the technologies that ATI's video and display engine technology encompasses. While that brought us some familiarity with what was available with Avivo, much the the capabilities had not yet been seen on the new X100 series of boards after their initial release.

[...]

X1000

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/avivo/awu/

ATI are currently in discussions with independent video software vendors to incorporate the API calls in their software, such that they will write the interface and and conversion criteria, but hook on to ATI's API in order to gain the speed. By creating and controlling the API, ATI can update it independently of the applications, making improvements, and providing them via standard driver updates. This being the case, ATI can move the transcoding to operate over the graphics hardware at some point in the future, thus making further performance improvements.

My question: What is the current status of the AVIVO transcoder? Is it still running on CPUs?

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Arnold Beckenbauer

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/avivo/awu/


My question: What is the current status of the AVIVO transcoder? Is it still running on CPUs?

Folding@home became a higher priority? Then Vista. Then R600?...

Jawed

[AlStrong]

Holy thread-resurrection...