AMD A8-3850 : An HTPC Perspective
by Ganesh T S on June 30, 2011 6:20 AM EST
The AMD 6550D in the A8-3850 is much better than the Intel HD 3000 Graphics in video post processing quality. However, this leads to increased expectations like support for full post processing on Blu-ray videos. Unfortunately, the 6550D has a number of issues which prevent it from fulfilling the requirement.
The Enforce Smooth Video Playback feature needs more work if it is going to get enabled by default. Instead of having pre-defined conditions, it would be beneficial to activate this feature on the fly. Currently, the monitor resolution, input video resolution and bitrate are taken into account while deciding to enable or disable ESVP. This very feature causes botched playback of streams which play properly on the Sandy Bridge systems.
Does the AMD 6550D render a discrete HTPC GPU redundant? With the current state of affairs, we have to say that the market for GPUs such as the GT 430 and the AMD 6570 will remain in place for some time to come.
Features like CrossFire support indicate that AMD seems to have targeted the gamers more than the HTPC enthusiasts with the 6550D. It is also unfortunate that AMD doesn't offer a way to take advantage of a discrete GPU (outside of CF) from a HTPC perspective. SteadyVideo is a nice feature to have, but it comes with its own disadvantages.
There is no QuickSync-like efficient transcoding support in the A8-3850. However, we do not believe it is currently a con for AMD from the perspective of HTPC enthusiasts. QuickSync may become beneficial to HTPC users once open source support materializes or x264 is able to utilize some part of that dedicated silicon encoder, both of which seem unlikely to happen in the near future. [Update: Andrew Van Til has QuickSync support in his DVRMSToolBox utility, but we are looking for more FOSS developers to jump onto the QuickSync bandwagon]
Retaining low end GPU performance for Brazos could have been accepted, but having the same restrictions on the APUs for the mainstream market doesn't pass muster. The 6550D may be a good first step for AMD to counter Intel's GPUs in the HTPC market, but our expectations from the desktop Llano were much higher.
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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