Any IGP truly capable of 1080p?

[lopri]

I've been looking to build a (very) small form factor rig, so been waiting for actual reviews (including many first-hand experiences from forum folks) of G33/G35, GF7050/GF7150, and X1250 based mobos.

Strangely, all I read from many review sites are kinda like IHV's powerpoint presentations. (such as "chipset xxx is capable of up to 1080p..", etc.) Yeah sure it may be capable but we know there are many different 1080p's. I haven't been able to find any definite answer with regard to this question. It's like all IHVs (AMD/Intel/NV) and reviewers are dodging the bullets for some unknown reason.. I built a rig with Biostar 7050PV some months ago, but even with a massive overclocking (X2 3800+ @3.20GHz, IGP @550MHz) I couldn't get the same quality playback of 8600GT. Heck, even 2900 Pro was better than the GF7050.

So, here I ask. Is there any CPU+IGP combination that can handle 1080p (with all 3 major codecs) FLAWLESSLY, thus allowing a user to do away with a discrete GPU for a 1080p experience? "Flawless" meaning "of the same quality that discrete GPUs can provide".


P.S. If anyone has recently purchased a mATX board with above said chipsets, can you see if you can play the following clip (1080p) without any jerkiness/artifacts/frame drops? And if so, please tell me your rig's configuration.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-nhk.html

 

[Tahir2]

What software are you using for playback?

Try VLC or FFDSHOW to see if it helps with playback but it may just be the case that currently there is no integrated GPU out there capable of doing what you want it to do.

Until NVIDIA and ATI integrate their Purevideo2 and UVD into their IGP's too . . .

 

[kyleb]

Any modern IGP supports output resolutions well over 1080p, but decoding video is a whole separate issue. I don't really keep up on the IGP scene, but I haven't seen any claim to have hardware acceleration to handle really high bitrate content. Regardless, with software decoding your CPU should be plenty for any 1080p video.

Exactly what problems are you having and what does your CPU look like when you are seeing those problems?

 

[lopri]

Basically the problem is that the on-board GPUs aren't up to the task of 1080p decoding. Granted my experience so far has been limited to GF7050PV. It handled 720p contents pretty well. But once I attempt to play 1080p, depending on codecs, bit rates, titles, and what not - the playback becomes pretty messy. Tearing, jerkiness, off-sink, no video (audio only), and system hang, etc. CPU usage hovers around 70~90% most of the time, and often 98~99%. It's as if there is no hardware assistance at all. It's doubly weird because the desktop rendering (aero) becomes extremely laggy, too. So the impression that I get is that the GPU is running (trying to do something) but in reality it does nothing..

This time I'm determined to find a IGP that can do 1080p comfortably (especially H.264), but when I look around the web searching for any measuring efforts, all I see is stupid 3D gaming benchmarks.. I mean, who in the bloody world wants to run 3DMarks or Oblivion on IGP is beyond me, but for whatever reason all these online reviews are obsessed with 3D gaming with mATX boards.. And when it comes to what actually matters (video playback), their evaluation is severely lacking - specifically for 1080p. They assign small portion of reviews to very un-thorough HD playback performance. Some test 720p, some test Windows Media HD, or some just quotes IHV's PR. (chipset xxx can handle 1080p with CPU speed > x.xxGHz, etc.)

But I think at this point in time, people who buy mATX boards are either 1) for office/web uses or 2) for HTPC builds. It's silly to even test games on IGP, IMO. (except maybe something like Sims or Bejewled)

 

[Arun]

Once again, what software are you using?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Its enirely possible that there isn't any hardware assist in these case as when the bitrate exceeds the bandwidth of the video processing capabilities it will push everything to the CPU, and 1080p content (irrespective of Codec) can easily do this. Even if the video engine was capable of offloading some of the processing, entropy decode on this class of IGP is still a CPU process, and given that this is the most demanding of the stages you are probably hitting the limits of the CPU (as you indicate by the processor usage) - when you hit full processor utilisation, yes, at the very least you are almost certianly going to be dropping frames at the very least.

 

[Mariner]

If you've got a half-decent CPU (i.e. even a low-end dual core chip), CoreAVC should enable you to play 1080p h.264 content without too many problems. Pretty cheap (15 USD) and well worth the money, IMO.

WMV HD (VC-1) is less CPU intensive in any case so even relatively low-end CPUs should be able to play this without problems.

 

[Simon F]

If you've got a half-decent CPU (i.e. even a low-end dual core chip), CoreAVC should enable you to play 1080p h.264 content without too many problems. Pretty cheap (15 USD) and well worth the money, IMO.

But what h.264 profiles? How well will it handle, say, high profile?

WMV HD (VC-1) is less CPU intensive in any case so even relatively low-end CPUs should be able to play this without problems.

Surely that, then, just trades off compression rate against ease of decompression?

 

[lopri]

Once again, what software are you using?

I used PowerDVD Ultra and Quicktime player. ROM was Pioneer BDC-2202. Again, I should mention that 720p playback was excellent under any circumstance. It's only when I attempted 1080p I ran into troubles, which made me even think that the drivers might be holding something back. (In the end, AMD and NV needs to sell those HD 2600 and 8600 GT cards..)

 

[Tahir2]

At this time you do need a discrete graphics card and you have concluded correctly (IMHO) that ATI and NVIDIA do need to sell those 2600 and 8600 cards.

Perhaps the next generation IGP's will not however and they are going to be released soon it seems but I would not be overly surprised if they still cannot meet the demands of a 1080P H.264 high bit rate movie for instance.

 

[kyleb]

Considering the g80s and other older GPUs don't support hardware acceleration for various HD codecs, but people using such cards along with a fast CPU and software decoding don't have playback issues; surely it is just a matter of figuring out how to dissable hardware decoding in whatever playback software you are using?

 

[lopri]

I'm pretty sure that I've toggled hardware assistance in PowerDVD and there was no difference at that time. I built that rig for someone else and at the end I ended up putting a 8600 GT. The person wasn't overly happy because I had to go with a bigger enclosure so I had to explain about the situation for hours.. (He wasn't a techie.. talk about speaking to a cow..)

It was a bitter experience for me personally because 2900 Pro on P965 had no problem whatsoever with 1080p. Heck, the visual quality provided by 2900 Pro was even better than 8600 GT although CPU usage was higher. And 2900 Pro isn't even meant for HD playback..

So I was anxiously waiting for G35, hoping that would be the solution (by itself or by pushing AMD/NV to enhance their IGPs), but once again all I hear about G35 is DX10 hoopla and 3DMark scores.. (sigh)

I would at least want to know which of the three (GF70x0/71x0, G35, 690G/X1250) is the most suitable for 1080p playback.. Is there any reference that I can look into?

 

[Davros]

the required spec for 1080p is a 3 ghz cpu isnt it ?

edit: according to microsoft
Optimum Configuration
(to play 1080p video with 5.1 surround sound)
Windows XP
Windows Media Player 10
DirectX 9.0
3.0 GHz processor or equivalent
512 MB of RAM
128 MB video card
1920 x 1440 screen resolution
24-bit 96 kHz multichannel sound card
5.1 surround sound speaker system

 

[Blazkowicz]

maybe the (higher end?) G98 based IGP will do it.
in that case a MCP78U mobo with an athlon BE 2400 would be pretty good

 

[kyleb]

I'm pretty sure that I've toggled hardware assistance in PowerDVD and there was no difference at that time.

I have too, to try to get The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy running smooth on my C2D/8800gt setup, but as soon as I press play it comes back enabled with the option checkmarked and greyed out. I never figured out how to dissable hardware acceleration in PDVDU, but thankfully, updating to Nvidia's latest drivers finnally got the disk running smooth.

It was a bitter experience for me personally because 2900 Pro on P965 had no problem whatsoever with 1080p. Heck, the visual quality provided by 2900 Pro was even better than 8600 GT although CPU usage was higher. And 2900 Pro isn't even meant for HD playback..

Right, the 2900 doesn't support hardware acceleration of various HD codecs, so surely you would get similar results from yoyr IGP if you can dissable the hardware acceleration on it.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Right, the 2900 doesn't support hardware acceleration of various HD codecs, so surely you would get similar results from yoyr IGP if you can dissable the hardware acceleration on it.

No.

HD 2900 supports hardware assisted accleration. In otherwords all the steps bar entropy decode (please take a look at "Figure 1" on page 8 here) are completed by the GPU - some parts of these processes may be completed by specific video hardware and some by the rendering pipeline. HD 2900 has sufficient processing power to offload all those last 3 stages (in VC-1 or H.264's case) for all levels of content currently available (note that, in fact, 1080i content is the most processor intensive).

I'd guess that normally the IGP in question here would accelerate the same stages, but 1080i/p content is exceeding its processing capability and it is subsequently pushing all the decode stages to the CPU in these instances (thus increasing the CPU workload further, subsequently giving rise to poor playback performance) - 720p content may not exceeding the processing capabilities of the IGP, thus, the workload in these instances is better apportioned between the CPU and IGP (i.e Entropy on the CPU, the rest on the IGP).

 

[bearmoo]

RS780 will do? Or I heard AMD will put in UVD2.0 into the upcoming Puma notebooks with 100% CPU offload.

 

[kyleb]

No.

Thanks, makes sense. I take it the G80s and such have similar functionality?

 

[Mariner]

But what h.264 profiles? How well will it handle, say, high profile?

According to CoreAVC, the "Professional Edition" (the 15 USD one, I think) supports:

H.264 Baseline, Main, High profile support
Interlaced support (PAFF and MBAFF)
SMP (multi-core CPU) support (limit 4)

Modern GPUs have their UVD engine or equivalent which is obviously useful - assuming your media playing software actually supports the correct API. Not always the case, I believe.

I know that last summer, quite a few people watched the World Cup matches in HD through the BBC HD test broadcasts (which were 1080i with MBAFF I believe) using CoreAVC.

As far as things currently go, CoreAVC is much more efficient than the FFMPEG open source stuff or, indeed, any other software AVC decoder around.

 

[Morte66]

I have an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and I use CoreAVC Pro within ZoomPlayer or Media Player Classic. It decodes h264 1080p from HDDVD/BD fine, rarely exceeding 65% total CPU for full frame high bitrate titles.

But I can't software decode VC-1 from about 50% of HD discs because the Microsoft WMV DMO decoder (a) isn't as efficient despite the simpler format and (b) starts to skip at 75% CPU instead of 97%. I would hazard that about 50% more CPU would cover it, using the same codec and players (i.e. not WMP11 which is inefficient and almost always skips).

This is why I'm trying (in another thread) to find whether the 8800GT(S512) decoder acceleration works with XP or just Vista.