NV and H.264 acceleration ?

nVidia H264

I have two tickets open with nVidia, one with H264 decode and another with WMV HD decode. Dunno what will come of it. It simply says "researching".
 
JBark said:
Thanks for the info about the problem the AGP 6600GT has with WMVHD and H.264. I've got an AGP 6800 GT (ugh!) right now, and was going to buy a 6600GT for my current box and use it as an HTPC. Looks like I won't be doing that anytime soon, either.

Are there any AGP cards in the sub-$200 range where all the hardware decoding actually works? I don't really care what brand it is, I'd just like something that works. Looks like I'd need an x1600 to get 720p?

I bought an AGP Radeon X1600 Pro ( Sapphire ) and the WMV HD decoding works perfectly without any audio sync issues on my lowly Athlon 64 2800. H264 decoding at 720p works really well as well though the CPU utilisation reduction isn't as great as nVidia's. I read here http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/g71-part5.html
that ATi are reworking their H264 support to improve things.
 
I have been comparing PureVideo agaist AVIVO (Cyberlink ) on a 7300GS and a X1300Pro. CPU utilisation reduction is superior on the X1300Pro; WMV9, H.26, DivX.
 
Zark said:
I have been comparing PureVideo agaist AVIVO (Cyberlink ) on a 7300GS and a X1300Pro. CPU utilisation reduction is superior on the X1300Pro; WMV9, H.26, DivX.

But not for H264 I think? H264 CPU reduction is better on the nVidia cards ( if only it actually worked). Either that or my X1600 Pro's decode acceleration doesn't work quite so well on my Athlon 64 2800.
 
nVidia H264

chavvdarrr said:
http://trailers.nerodigital.com/Disney/TheGreatestGame_HD_AVC.mp4
can you both test with the above trailer?
720p is ok even without acceleration, but 1080p is no go... so if you can post CPU utilisation (and what cpu) ....


I can do some testing tonight. The X1600 doesn't do 1080p. If I look at an intensive 720p trailer like "Basic Instinct 2" 720p QuickTime HD, The X1600 reduces CPU utilisation by around 10%, so the CPU utilisation on my Athlon 64 2800+ ( 1.8 GHz ) was around 50-90% in software mode and 50-70% in hardware mode. In comparison, the nVidia card reduced it all the way down to around 40-60% though the image was garbled.

Also, the ATi card's H264 decode jerks when there's an intense scene and this is with the same 720p clip. In comparison, the nVidia H264 produces a much smoother image. It looks fluid despite being garbled as some things can be made out, but I can't tell for sure.

[EDIT] I've tried "The Greatest Game" Nero trailer before. It hits 100% even with nVidia aceleration at times.
 
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sharangad said:
But not for H264 I think? H264 CPU reduction is better on the nVidia cards ( if only it actually worked). Either that or my X1600 Pro's decode acceleration doesn't work quite so well on my Athlon 64 2800.

Here are my H264 results:

QT: http://www.64bits.se/upload/QT_7300GS.gif
PureVideo: http://www.64bits.se/upload/QT_7300GS_PV.gif

QT: http://www.64bits.se/upload/QT_X1300Pro.gif
Cyberlink: http://www.64bits.se/upload/QT_X1300Pro_cyberlink.gif



  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
  • ABIT AN8-32X, nForce4 SLI X16
  • Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2 (2048 MB DDR Pc3200, CL 2-3-3-6)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7300GS 256 MB, ATI Radeon 1300Pro 256 MB
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 300GB SATA2
  • Seasonic S12 600W
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chavvdarrr said:
can you post results from " the great movie" (link is above)?
Underworld plays smooth (although 30% CPu load ) even on P4-3.0, 1080p is the problem...

Sorry, I don't have the cards here anymore. That's why I didn't post any "great movie"-results.
 
Oh dear.

nVidia have now updated their PureVideo support page to claim that no AGP geforce 6 or 7 series card supports WMV HD:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

In case they mess about with again:
PureVideosupport.png


They've also closed the support ticket for WMV HD acceleration not working.
 
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nVidia H264 finally works on the AGP 6600 GT

H264 decoding works properly with Forceware 91.28. They've fixed it at last.

Also, these drivers come with ATi style smearing/ghosting technology, which by default is turned off. These options are "Noise reduction" and "Edge enhancement"
 
Zaphod said:
Yes, and? nVidia has removed all claims of WMV-decode support for all AGP-parts, including the 7800GS.

I don't think so.
All 7 series GPU's have Purevideo with WMV-HD decode built-in.
Even 7800 GS (it's just a PCI-Express G70 GPU, cut-down and bridged back to AGP8x with the BR02 chip).
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_30459.html (PDF)

You are probably confusing them with NV40/NV45 (AGP and PCIe versions of 6800 Ultra and 6800 GT, respectively), that featured Purevideo for MPEG-2 only, not WMV-HD.
 
Nope. Not confusing anything with anything, sorry.

Look at the page. It used to be there (i.e. listed as supported), now it's not (those particular table rows are actually commented out in the source of the page). Also, there used to be open bugs about it not working properly that are now closed and unresolved. WMV decode was only ever semi-functional in some driver releases for the 'supported' AGP cards, and the references to it ever being supported are removed from the Purevideo overview page (also including the 6600 and 7800GS, which should not have been impacted by the reportedly broken purevideo in NV40).

Compare the US chart posted/linked above to the (yet to be history-revised) UK site.
 
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Zaphod said:
Nope. Not confusing anything with anything, sorry.

Look at the page. It used to be there (i.e. listed as supported), now it's not (it's actually commented out in the source of the page). Also, there used to be open bugs about it not working properly that are now closed and unresolved. WMV decode was only ever semi-functional in some driver releases for the 'supported' AGP cards, and the references to it ever being supported are removed from the Purevideo overview page (also including the 6600 and 7800GS which should not have been impacted by the reportedly broken purevideo in NV40).

Compare the US chart posted/linked above to the (yet to be history-revised) UK site.

Something must be wrong, because i happen to own a 6600 AGP8x, and purevideo works perfectly (WMV and H.264).

BTW, i see that 7800 GS AGP8x is supporting H.264 and WMV9 in high definition on that link you just gave us.

Only QuadroFX AGP doesn't support Purevideo, and that is normal...
 
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INKster said:
Something must be wrong, because i happen to own a 6600 AGP8x, and purevideo works perfectly (WMV and H.264).
Works perfectly as in 'plays just fine', or works perfectly as in 'has markedly lower CPU usage with the WMV hw-decode patch and a supported H.264 codec respectively'?

If the latter, could you provide your config and some benchmarks?

Edit:
INKster said:
BTW, i see that 7800 GS AGP8x is supporting H.264 and WMV9 in high definition on that link you just gave us.
Err... That's my point. They have explicitly *removed* that information from the main US page within the last couple of days. They used to say it was supported, but now they don't. Or do you think they commented out those sections of the page by accident?
 
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Zaphod said:
Works perfectly as in 'plays just fine', or works perfectly as in 'has markedly lower CPU usage with the WMV hw-decode patch and a supported H.264 codec respectively'?

If the latter, could you provide your config and some benchmarks?

Well, it's not one of my primary rigs, and it's used basically as a home-made Media Center.
It's has a relatively old "Barton" 2600+ at stock speed (1.92 GHz), a Gigabyte 6600 AGP8x (256MB, passive cooled) and 768 MB of DDR333 single-channel.
FW 84.43, WinXP SP2 Pro, etc.
I like it because it's virtually silent without using expensive watercooling, and it stays cool with just minor mods.

I detected CPU utilization as low as 50~60% when playing the Terminator 2 trailer encoded in WMV-HD (available at microsoft's website), when before activating purevideo i had spikes of 80 to 90%.


edit
My card has a NV43, rev A4.

Is it possible that it was featured on a older driver, then removed/toned down because of too many problems with most cards (like ActiveArmour on NF4) ?
 
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INKster said:
I detected CPU utilization as low as 50~60% when playing the Terminator 2 trailer encoded in WMV-HD (available at microsoft's website), when before activating purevideo i had spikes of 80 to 90%.
720P? Sounds about right. My Barton 3200+ uses 40ish CPU on that trailer with a 6800, definitely without PureVideo (no spikes).
 
sharangad said:
H264 decoding works properly with Forceware 91.28. They've fixed it at last.

Also, these drivers come with ATi style smearing/ghosting technology, which by default is turned off. These options are "Noise reduction" and "Edge enhancement"


I may have spoken too soon. There's no image corruption with hardware accelerated H264. However, the CPU goes through the roof. Before for the 1080p "The Greatest Game" trailer, the CPU utilisation fluctuated between 60-90%. Now it consistently hits 100%.
 
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