ASRock Vision HT: Ivy Bridge Carries the SFF HTPC Forward
by Ganesh T S on November 12, 2012 3:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ASRock
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
HTPC Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
In our Ivy Bridge HTPC review, we had covered the CPU / GPU utilization during playback of various types of clips. In the Vision3D 252B review, we had graphs of CPU and GPU loading with various renderers and codecs. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't provide similar data / sensors for use with their APUs. Hence, we had to resort to power consumed at the wall along with GPU loading in the Trinity HTPC review. In order to keep benchmarking consistent across all HTPC reviews, we will be adopting the Trinity HTPC review methodology in our future HTPC articles.
The tables below present the results of running our HTPC rendering benchmark samples through various decoder and renderer combinations. Entries in bold indicate that there were dropped frames which indicate that the unit wasn't up to the task for those types of streams. The recorded values include the GPU loading and power consumed by the system at the wall. An important point to note here is that the system was set to defaults in the BIOS, but Windows power settings were set for maximum performance instead of the default balanced profile.
madVR
madVR was configured with settings similar to what we used for the Ivy Bridge HTPC review. Full screen windowed mode gaved the best performance in terms of avoiding dropped frames. In our first trial, we configured LAV Video Decoder to use avcodec (software decode). As expected, Intel's GPU / memory bandwidth is not enough for madVR processing of some types of content (namely, 720p60 H.264 and 1080p60 H.264).
| LAV Video Decoder Software Fallback + madVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 78 | 35.46 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 64 | 25.92 W |
| 720p60 H.264** | 98 | 44.52 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 86 | 47.40 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 84 | 42.55 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 86 | 47.10 W |
| 1080p60 H.264** | 98 | 48.81 W |
madVR takes up more than 80% of GPU resources while processing 1080i60 material. However, the unit is quite power efficient on the whole, consuming less than 50 W for 1080i60 material using software decode. In the next trial, we configured LAV Video Decoder to use hawrdware decoding in the form of Quick Sync. Unfortunately, the results are quite similar to what we obtained with software decode (just that the power consumption is slightly lesser than software decode for the HD streams).
| LAV Video Decoder QuickSync + madVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 79 | 36.16 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 64 | 27.45 W |
| 720p60 H.264** | 96 | 43.17 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 90 | 45.23 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 87 | 42.86 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 88 | 44.66 W |
| 1080p60 H.264** | 94 | 46.32 W |
EVR-CP and EVR
With the Enhanced Video Renderer (Custom Presenter) and Enhanced Video Renderer, native DXVA2 acceleration can be used. Here, we are able to process all our test streams without dropped frames. EVR is very efficient in terms of power consumption also.
| LAV Video Decoder DXVA2 Native + EVR-CP | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 32 | 22.28 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 29 | 21.74 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 45 | 26.01 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 47 | 26.87 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 47 | 25.48 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 43 | 33.46 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 62 | 29.42 W |
| LAV Video Decoder Software Fallback + EVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 27 | 20.75 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 24 | 20.56 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 49 | 25.23 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 35 | 23.44 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 35 | 22.23 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 33 | 30.45 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 58 | 27.04 W |
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I had a WD TV (the first one I think) and it always annoyed me that it could not decode DTS, which meant that I did not have dual audio for most of my library. It also lacked menu support and Blu Ray support. The menu was terribly slow and browsing a somewhat larger HDD was just awful.I'm sure those boxes have come a long way, but that was the point where I decided I would much rather go all in and have something that I know handles everything I throw at it in one way or another, than to have something that is cheaper and smaller, but worry about whether or not it will play everything I have the way I want it and be burdened by somewhat lacking software/firmware support.
Easy browsing of the web and games are the added bonus and I always have a good back up PC in case one of them breaks and someone needs a quick replacement.
If your set up has never failed you with a film you had, awesome. I have been disappointed by it too much to go back. :)
Jaybus - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I have two WD-Live boxes and they do have their use. A PC brings several things to the table.To begin with, it brings adaptability. My biggest complaint with set top boxes in general is that it puts you at the mercy of the manufacturer for software fixes / features. When any of the online services change something, it may be months before an update is available. A HTPC is far more adaptable in terms of software.
Another area is remotes. The WD remote is sluggish and is an oddball format that hardly any third party remotes can emulate.
I can see why someone wouldn't care if they don't wish to play games. But it is damn handy to have real surfing capability along with a keyboard and mouse. Is there anything else it beats the set top box in besides surfing and games? Of course! It can do almost anything that a laptop can do! It essentially is a laptop.
prdola0 - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Atom+ION might be quite slow, but for SFF HTPC usage, it served me quite well. I've been using it for the past two years and it still does the job. Of course it's not a gaming machine - it can't handle anything more demanding than TESIV: Oblivion with low details, but for casual Steam games like Machinarium, Worms Reloaded etc. it's completely sufficient. You shouldn't bash the Atom+ION combo so much. After all, it was the one thing that made this from factor popular, in my opinion.Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Kinda sad that AsRock does not provide a unit that has an AMD APU inside it. I don't think many HTPC uses are limited by single threaded performance and the better iGPU can make a difference when playing games on the big TV (I use my A6 Llano HTPC as a console sometimes). The only thing I could think of to stop the use of an AMD APU is power consumtion. Pity AMD chooses way too high voltages (I dropped mine from 1.4xxV to 1.15V at max turbo).ericore - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
If you do the math, it costs them about 450$-475$ to build, but you only get a dual core CPU (TRAY: $225.00). Since Intel is charging so much for a mobile dual core, you might as well get the quad core for just under 300$. The whole system retails for 700$. Even at 600$, it would still be a crappy deal. A good deal would include 8 GB of RAM, and quad core CPU for 670$. To top off this shitty deal of theirs, they give you a piece of crap power supply adapter, and cheap plastic enclosure. Apple gives you a solid enclosure and a solid adapter, and ships with the same stuff for 599$.ericore - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
This AMD system is much better value; complete build 250$. I would just wait for Jaguar since current E-350 isn't quite HTPC prime yet.joetekubi - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Form factor is great, performance would fit my needs, but just a little too procey.I may go for this 6-8 months from now when they version the platform and the old ones
are available for (much) less.
valnar - Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - link
How quiet is it? Does the fan speed up on load? Turn off on idle? What?johnny_boy - Sunday, November 18, 2012 - link
The product isn't bad but compared to a premium machine like a mac mini, the price of the ASRock makes no sense.jeffkibuule - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
Mac Mini only has integrated graphics. This system does not.