AMD A8-3850 : An HTPC Perspective
by Ganesh T S on June 30, 2011 6:20 AM EST
3D Blu-ray Playback CPU Load
We saw in one of the previous sections that the 6550D doesn't have the same MVC decode feature of the 6xxx GPUs. We took the 3D Blu-ray version of Alice in Wonderland for a spin and played it on the 6550D as well as the 6570 (not in CrossFire mode). As expected, the 6570 had marginally lesser CPU utilization. The GPU load (not recorded here) was also lesser compared to the 6550D (that is to be expected because of the difference in the DRAM and GPU core clocks). We also recorded the CPU load while playing a 2D Blu-ray (HQV Benchmark) on the 6550D. It gives an indication of the CPU assistance required by the 3D Blu-rays.
| Blu-ray Playback CPU Usage | ||
| Alice in Wonderland [3D] (6550D) | 21% | |
| Alice in Wonderland [3D] (Sapphire 6570) | 16% | |
| HQV 2.0 Benchmark Blu-ray [2D] (6550D) | 12% | |
Steady Video
AMD is also advertising 'Steady Video', a feature to make your shaky hand held videos such as those from the PlaySports and the Flips look more stabilized. This requires the CPU and the GPU to work in close conjunction. The good aspect is that 'Steady Video' is available even when playing back videos in MPC-HC. For reasonably steady videos, it works wonders, but fails in places where it really matters (like videos taken while walking, where there is a lot of scene change as well as shakiness). The bad aspects come in when one tries to be aggressive with the steady video algorithms. Sometimes, the image quality suffered, while there were lip sync errors in other cases. Even in videos where it is effective, there are slight periodic jerks.
All in all, our opinion is that this is a good feature for the marketing department to advertise. Note that Cyberlink has been having a True Theater Image Stabiliser for camcorder videos since PowerDVD 10. That feature works across all CPU / GPU combinations.
YouTube and Netflix
The good news is that hardware acceleration is present and works for both YouTube and Netflix, as the screenshots below show.
Power Numbers
We put our testbed through some typical activity and recorded the average power consumption numbers. Note that these numbers are relevant only when compared with the idle playback power consumption. Different testbeds may end up with different power consumption numbers.
| Llano HTPC Testbed Average Power Consumption (W) | ||
| Idle | 36.1 | |
| 1080p MKV from SSD | 49.1 | |
| 2D Physical Blu-ray Playback | 57.1 | |
| Call of Pripyat Benchmark (Max. settings) | 91.8 | |
| Prime 95 + Furmark | 141.2 | |
Miscellaneous Notes
We are yet to evaluate some important aspects like RGB - YUV colour conversion accuracy and audio channel mapping in 7.1 channel configurations. AMD is looking into the local file playback having high GPU load issue also. By the time we evaluate the next HTPC / HTPC GPU, some Catalyst releases should have passed by. Expect further analysis of the AMD 6550D in those pieces, particularly with respect to the aspects we have missed covering in this review.
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Galcobar - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
Well, if Anandtech is so deeply in Intel's pocket, Intel might want their money back if the corporation were to read all the accusations of bias against Intel SSDs when Anandtech reviews an OCZ drive and concludes it's faster if less reliable.Well, as my journalism profs said, if everyone's angry at you, you're doing your job.
Musafir_86 - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
Hi Ganesh,-Thanks for the article. As per your reply to me in the preceding article (by Anand), besides video quality, where are the comparison for gaming? Or am I wrong to expect image quality (IQ) comparison for 3D games here?
Thanks again.
ganeshts - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
I misunderstood your original request for IQ testing. I thought it was for video playback.As for 3D games, I am not the right person since I don't play any games at all (except for running benchmarks). Let me ping a few people in our team and see if we can get that done and posted in a follow-up.
Musafir_86 - Friday, July 1, 2011 - link
-Okay, I will be waiting for it then. :DRegards.
jabber - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
A tip re. integrated graphics. All the PCs and laptops I get in with such setups all have The Sims installed.Can we have a Sims benchmark. Just saying as it would actually be a benchmark relevant to folks that actually use such machines.
I dont need to know it will only do 6fps with Crysis. I kinda know that.
mindbomb - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
i think the bug you are experiencing is related to the evr cp renderer. If you use an updated build, this should go away.ganeshts - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
Yes, I did find that on the MPC-HC IRC channel. But, the difference between BD-ISO and M2TS using TMT itself remains unexplained. The driver does lots of 'invisible' post processing when using EVR, so there is no reason why AMD didn't do that in this case.puretech - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
I truly hope that software developers takes the Fusion platform at this CPU performance level seriously. For many years now higher performance CPUs has not been needed by 99.5% of the consumers. It's not even possible anymore to to get the kids of today to understand what actually was possible to do already with a 486 based system 20 years ago, and the major problems even back then were slow disk I/O and poor graphics performance, not the CPU itself. Since then software development has only been for the highest CPU performance leading to sloppy programming and non-existent optimization, forcing people to upgrade the hardware to stay on "contemporary" operating systems. This review says more about the operating system and the application developers than the Fusion platform.ganeshts - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
I think the problem is more with the drivers rather than the Fusion GPU itself. But, that said, the drivers are themselves a part of the Fusion platform.Dobs - Saturday, July 9, 2011 - link
Since every other site is finding these hum with more memory & bandwidth, please retest with 8GB of 1866 Ram.And can the default GFX memory of 512 MB be increased to 1024 or 2048? What happens to the benchmarks then?
Thanks
Dobs