Intel's Haswell - An HTPC Perspective: Media Playback, 4K and QuickSync Evaluated
by Ganesh T S on June 2, 2013 8:15 PM EST4K for the Masses
After our experience with Trinity and Ivy Bridge builds for HTPC purposes, we had reached the conclusion that a discrete GPU was necessary only if advanced rendering algorithms (using madVR's resource intensive scaling algorithms) or 4K support was necessary. In fact, the 4K media player supplied by Sony along with their $25K 84" 4K TV was a Dell XPS desktop PC with a AMD graphics card's HDMI output providing the 4K signal to the TV. Ivy Bridge obtained 4K display support last October, but not over the HDMI port (which is the only way to get 4K content on supported TVs).
The good news is that Haswell's 4K over HDMI works well, in a limited sort of way. In our first experiment, we connected our build to a Sony XBR-84X900 84" 4K LED TV. The full set of supported 4K resolutions (4096x2160 @ 23 Hz and 24 Hz, as well as 3840x2160 @ 23 Hz, 24 Hz, 25 Hz, 29 Hz and 30 Hz) was driven without issues.
4K H.264 decode using DXVA2 Native and QuickSync modes in LAV Video Decoder works without issues (this works well in Ivy Bridge too, just that Ivy Bridge didn't have the ability to output 4K over HDMI or any other single video link). Using madVR with 4K is out of the question (even with DXVA2 scaling), but EVR and EVR-CP both work without dropping any frames.
Now, for the bad news: If you are hoping to drive the ~$1300 Seiki Digital SE50UY04 50" 4K TV (the cheapest 4K TV in the market right now), I would suggest some caution. Our build tried to drive a 3840x2160 @ 30 Hz resolution to the Seiki TV on boot, but the HDMI link never got locked (the display would keep flickering on and off). The frequency of locking was inversely proportional to the HDMI cable length. The NVIDIA GT 640s that we tested in the same setup with the same cables and TV managed to drive the 4K Quad FHD resolutions without problems. We were able to recreate the situation with multiple Seiki units.
At this juncture, we are not sure whether this is an issue with the ASRock Z87E-ITX board in particular or a problem for all Haswell boards. Intel suggested that the HDMI level shifter used by ASRock might not be up to the mark for 4K output, but that doesn't explain why the output to the Sony 84" TV worked without issues. In short, if you have a Seiki 4K TV and want to use a PC to drive that, we would suggest using a NVIDIA GT 640 or greater / AMD 7750 or greater for now. We will update this section as and when we reach closure on the issue with ASRock / Intel.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
95 Comments
View All Comments
heffeque - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Well... the AMD A4-5000 seems to be perfect for HTPC and I don't see in this comparison.Why not try comparing what the AMD A4-5000 can do (4k, 23Hz, etc) versus this Haswell system?
The CPU isn't that good, but there's no need for much CPU on HTPC systems, and also... the price, just look at the price.
meacupla - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
when you playback hi10 or silverlight content, having a fast cpu helps immensely, since those formats don't have dxva support.halbhh2 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Consider prices, at $122 suggested, the new A10 6700 is going to be interesting as the real competition to this Intel chip.majorleague - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Here is a youtube link showing 3dmark11 and windows index rating for the 4770k 3.5ghz Haswell. Not overclocked.This is apparently around 10-20fps slower than the 6800k in most games. And almost twice the price!!
Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Yo2A__1Xw
JDG1980 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
You can't use madVR on ARM. And most ARM platforms are highly locked down so you may be stuck with sub-par playback software from whoever the final vendor is.HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Because we don't live in next year, Doc Brown?BMNify - Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - link
for the same reason that QS isn't being used far more today, that being Intel and arm devs talk the talk but don't listen to or even stay in contact with the number one video quality partners ,that being the x264 and ffmpeg devs and provide their arm patches for review and official inclusion in these two key Cecil app code bases to actually use the arm/intel Low Level video encode/decode API'sMrSpadge - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Use an i5 and the price almost drops in half. Then undervolt it a bit and each regular CPU will only draw 40 - 50 W under sustained load. Which media playback doesn't create anyway.Mayuyu - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
2-Pass encodes do not offer any improvements in compression efficiency in x264. The only time you would want to use a 2-Pass encode is to hit a certain file size.Quicksync is irrelevant because their h264 encodes are inferior in quality to xvid (which has been outdated for a long time now).
raulizahi - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
@Mayuyu, 2-pass x264 encodes using VBR do offer improvements in compression efficiency at the same video quality. I have proven it many times. An example: target 720p50 at 3Mbps VBR, first pass I get a certain quality, second pass I get noticeably better quality.