NVIDIA Enables PureVideo on GeForce 6 GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 20, 2004 1:22 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
HD Decode Performance
The other aspect of PureVideo that matters is its decode acceleration. DVD decoding isn't really an issue these days, as even the slowest CPUs are powerful enough to handle DVD decoding - the new stress test is decoding of HD content. We used Windows Media Player 10 and the publicly available Terminator 2 trailers in 720p and 1080p formats. However because our test bed was limited to 1600 x 1200, the 1080p test was fairly useless as we were resolution bound on the machine, making the 720p test much more stressful.
We measured average, minimum and maximum CPU utilization over the entire 1:59 trailer. Our test bed was an Intel Pentium 4 570J (3.8GHz), however higher CPU utilizations on this test bed will translate into proportionally higher CPU utilizations on slower CPUs. We tested in both Overlay and VMR9 modes, the latter being directly applicable to Windows XP Media Center Edition as it uses VMR9 exclusively.
In Overlay mode in a window, ATI has significantly lower CPU utilization:
| WMV9 CPU Utilization (Lower is Better) - Overlay Window - 720p Terminator Trailer | |||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| ATI | 9.4 | 22 | 35.2 |
| NVIDIA | 14.8 | 28.3 | 40.6 |
| WMV9 CPU Utilization (Lower is Better) - Overlay Full Screen - 720p Terminator Trailer | |||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| ATI | 11.7 | 22.3 | 33.6 |
| NVIDIA | 25 | 37.7 | 46.9 |
ATI sees a very small performance penalty when scaling up to full screen, while NVIDIA faces a huge performance penalty in full screen mode. VMR9 is much more stressful on ATI than it is on NVIDIA, the winner here is NVIDIA.
| WMV9 CPU Utilization (Lower is Better) - VMR9 Window - 720p Terminator Trailer | |||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| ATI | 28.9 | 41.4 | 50.8 |
| NVIDIA | 15.6 | 26.6 | 40.6 |
| WMV9 CPU Utilization (Lower is Better) - VMR9 Full Screen - 720p Terminator Trailer | |||
| Minimum | Average | Maximum | |
| ATI | 31.3 | 42.2 | 50 |
| NVIDIA | 20.3 | 38.5 | 50.8 |
Even in full screen mode, NVIDIA is able to offer slightly lower CPU utilization than ATI.
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phusg - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
Has anyone found a 6600GT card manufacturer that bundles nvDVD including the DVD decoder yet?akozak - Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - link
Hey Anand,Don't mean to poo-poo on your hardwork - but almost all of your images are using different frames.
a) Galaxy Quest - differences in star placements, planet alignment
b) Apollo 13 - head is shifted b/w images
c) Friends - characters shift - legs are different locations etc
In fact the only ones that look like they are the same frame show no differences.
Have you looked at the difference in frames? If you took one frame before or one frame after on one card, would it match up to the other card's image you already have?
b3roldan - Friday, December 31, 2004 - link
hi, I'm using a vanilla 6800 from inno3d w/ Forceware 66.93.I was just wonderin if you guys were also experiencing problems I've had with these games or if t'was just me.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
- Everything's black and white. Wondering if it has anything to do with nvidia's 0x32 Z stencil (shadowing technology).
MAFIA
- Walls are multi-colored, sometimes transparent
I've just upgraded from a 9800PRO 128mb, which worked pretty well with these games.
Just wonderin if there are others with the same prob... thx :)
Gatak - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
What nvidia or ATi ought to do is to prove a simplier interface and especially much better documentation on how to access the hardware directly.The GPU's are incredibly fast for lots of things. For example it would indeed be possible to do video encoding, photo manipulation effects (Apple core.image/video!) or even sound compression.
jago25 - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
Shame I'll never be able to use it..seeing as I don't use Windows.You can use a GPU to do anything. Might be a good idea to make it easier to do so rather than having to develop more codecs as that's a never ending job.
hellokeith - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
The article really needs to be corrected per the 6800 PCI Express vs 6800 AGP. People are talking about this on numerous HTPC/AVS forums and being mislead. Only the PCI Express 6800 has the new silicon.karlreading - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
ive jumped through the other pages from a comment on page one, so if this has already been answered, lynch me now:anand said he knows of no manufacturer that bundles nv DVD.
im pretty sure its on my bfg disc that came with me 6800GT OC ;)
thats me sorted then.
karlos
mikepers - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
This should help:http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_purevideo_requir...
There's a link for the correct driver and the decoder and at the bottom a link which shows which cards support what. Sort of sucks that my AGP 6800 Ultra has less features then a 6600 card but it is what it is...
CrystalBay - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Remember Buy.com ? Where are you Harvey!!!!tfranzese - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
mcveigh, he provided the link to where you could find that for the ATi side of things. I'm curious about the S3 things, though it wouldn't surprise me if true.