Intel's Haswell - An HTPC Perspective: Media Playback, 4K and QuickSync Evaluated
by Ganesh T S on June 2, 2013 8:15 PM ESTPower Consumption
Before proceeding to the business end of the review, let us take a look at some power consumption numbers. The G.Skill RAM was set to DDR3 1600 during the measurements. We measured the average power drawn at the wall under different conditions. In the table below, the Blu-ray movie from the optical disk was played using CyberLink PowerDVD 13. The ISOs were mounted using Windows 8's in-built mounting tool. Prime95 v27.9 and Furmark v1.10.6 were used for stress testing. Blu-ray ISO ripping was done using AnyDVD HD v7.2. The Prime95 + Furmark benchmark was run for 1 hour before any measurements were taken. Power consumption numbers for local file playback using various renderer / decode combinations has already been covered in a previous section. The testbed was connected to a Wi-Fi network (and the GbE port was left unconnected) throughout the evaluation. In all cases, a wireless keyboard and mouse were connected to the testbed.
| Haswell HTPC Testbed Power Consumption | |
| Idle | 25.94 W |
| Sleep | 1.38 W |
| Prime95 v27.9 + Furmark 1.10.6 (Full loading of both CPU and GPU) | 85.68 W |
| Prime95 v27.9 (Full loading of CPU only) | 73.79 W |
| 1080p24 H.264 Blu-ray Playback from ODD | 34.5 W |
| 1080p24 VC-1 Blu-ray Playback from ODD | 33.21 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 Blu-ray Playback from ODD | 34.37 W |
| 1080p24 VC-1 Blu-ray ISO Streaming from NAS | 30.91 W |
| 1080p24 H.264 MVC Blu-ray ISO Streaming from NAS | 32.67 W |
| Blu-ray Rip to ISO from ODD | 36.41 W |
The following screenshots gives an idea of how the integrated GPU and the CPU share the thermal headroom. In the first case, we have full CPU loading and no load on the GPU.
The CPU package power is around 47 W, with the IA cores alone consuming around 37 W. The second screenshot shows the transition from purely full CPU loading to full CPU and GPU loading. The CPU package power rises from 47 W to around 54 W. The GPU is consuming around 18 W, while the IA cores go down to around 27 W.
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meacupla - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
there's like... exactly one mITX FM2 mobo even worth considering out of a grand total of two. One of them catches on fire and neither of them have bluetooth or wifi.LGA1155 and LGA1150 have at least four each.
TomWomack - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
The mITX FM2 motherboard that I bought last week has bluetooth and wifi; they're slightly kludged in (they are USB modules apparently glued into extra USB ports that they've added), but I don't care.The Haswell mITX boards aren't available from my preferred supplier yet, so I've gone for micro-ATX for that machine.
BMNify - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
I know you're trolling but the fact is more people are content with converting their 5 year old C2D cookie cutter desktop into an HTPC ($50 video card + case + IR receiver = job done) than buying all new kit.We reached the age of "good enough" years ago. Money is tight and with all the available gadgets on the market (and more to come) people are looking to make it go as far as possible. Intel is going to find it harder and harder to get their high margin silicon into the homes of the average family. Good enough ARM mobile + good enough x86 allows people to own more devices and still pay the bills. It looks like AMD has accepted this, they've taking their lumps and are moving forward in this "new world". I'm not sure what Intels long term strategy is but I'm a bit concerned.
Veroxious - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
Agreed 100%. I am using an old Dell SFF with an E2140 LGA775 CPU running XBMCbuntu. It works like a charm. I can watch movies while simultaneously adding content. That PC is near silent. What incentive do I have for upgrading to a Haswell based system? None whatsoever.kallogan - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
2.0 ghz seriously ??? The core 45W Sandy i5-2500T was at 2,3 ghz and 3,3 ghz turbo. LOL at this useless cpu gen.kallogan - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Forget my comment didn't see it was a i7 with 8 threads. 35W tdp is not bad either. But the 45W core i7-3770T would still smoke this.Montago - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
I must be blind... i don't see the regression you are talking about.HD4000 QSV usually get smudgy and blocky.. and that i don't see in HD4600 ... so i think you are wrong in your statements.
comparing the frames, there is little difference, and none i would ever notice while watching the movie on a handheld device like an tablet or Smartphone.
The biggest problem with QSV is not the quality, but the filesize :-(
QSV is usually 2x larger than x264
ganeshts - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Montago,Just one example of the many that can be unearthed from the galleries:
Look at Frame 4 in the 720p encodes in full size here:
HD4600: http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2836/QSV-720...
HD4000: http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2839/QSV-HD4...
Look at the horns of the cattle in the background to the right of the horse. The HD4000 version is sharper and more faithful to the original compared to the HD4600 version, even though the target bitrate is the same.
In general, when looking at the video being played back, these differences added up to a very evident quality loss.
Objectively, even the FPS took a beating with the HD4600 compared to the HD4000. There is some driver issue managing the new QuickSync Haswell modes definitely.
nevcairiel - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
The main Haswell performance test from Anand at least showed improved QuickSync performance over Ivy, as well as something called the "Better Quality" mode (which was slower than Ivy, but never specified what it really meant)ganeshts - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Anand used MediaEspresso (CyberLink's commercial app), while I used HandBrake. As far as I remember, MediaEspresso doesn't allow specification of target bitrate (at least from the time that I used it a year or so back), just better quality or better performance. Handbrake allows setting of target bitrate, so the modes that are being used by the Handbrake app might be completely different from those used by MediaEspresso.As we theorize, some new Haswell modes which are probably not being used by MediaEspresso are making the transcodes longer and worse quality.