HD-DVD Playback - On the Xbox 360 & on NVIDIA GPUs
by Derek Wilson & Manveer Wasson on December 15, 2006 9:21 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
A Look at PC Performance: The Test
As with last time, we will be focusing on the impact of GPU hardware acceleration on decoding HD-DVD movies. Right now, the only players we have access to that support Blu-ray or HD-DVD playback don’t offer any type of frame rate or dropped frame counters, both of which make it much easier to compare CPU performance. We will be taking a look at the performance of different CPUs in our next major CPU review whether we have the tools we want or not.
CPU utilization does work well enough as an indicator of the capabilities of the GPU, provided we choose a fast enough CPU to eliminate any bottlenecks. For our purposes, once again, we will go with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800. We could have used a less powerful CPU, as our HD-DVD movies proved to be less stressful on our hardware than the Blu-ray movies we've tested, but we stuck with the X6800 for consistency with our previous article.
As we mentioned previously, we will be looking at benchmarks using Serenity and The Interpreter. Serenity is a VC-1 title, while The Interpreter is encoded with H.264. Remember that most HD-DVD titles currently available are VC-1, but the move in the future will likely be towards H.264.
With Serenity, we benchmarked a scene in Chapter 15 during which an epic battle ensues and our heroes are trying to escape from both sides. The Interpreter benchmark takes place in Chapter 13 during the aftermath of an explosion on a bus. These scenes were selected because they tended to yield higher bitrates than many of the other scenes, though none of the scenes had the same type of huge increase in bitrate that we saw in X-Men III.
The software we are using is unfortunately not as mature as our Blu-ray player. Cyberlink's current HD-DVD beta player is based on PowerDVD 6.5 while the Blu-ray player is based on 6.6. There are a few things missing like bookmarks, and (unfortunately) ATI GPU support. Try as we might, hardware acceleration would not remain enabled when testing with ATI hardware. We have contacted both AMD and Cyberlink to confirm the issue, but until we get a fix we will have to do without ATI numbers.
For reference, here's our test system once again:
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| CPU: | Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 |
| Motherboard(s): | ASUS P5B Deluxe |
| Chipset(s): | Intel P965 |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 7.2.2.1007 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Cards: | Various |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.11 NVIDIA ForceWare 93.71 NVIDIA ForceWare 97.02 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920x1080 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
And now on to performance.
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Stereodude - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
[url=http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=328&type=...">http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=328&type=...]PC Perspective[/url]showed a much more dramatic reduction in CPU usage with an E6300, 7600GT, and the Interpreter. Seems things aren't quite lining up between the two reviews. Average CPU went from 82.8% down to 41.7% Only by using an x6800 and a 8800 GT* were similar results obtained in this review.JarredWalton - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
Could be the USB interface is demanding more of the CPU. Unless two sites use identical hardware, you can't really compare the results and call one more accurate. Given that the HD-DVD for 360 is currently available at $200 (the internal drive used on that other review is apparently pre-release hardware), the results we show are at least indicative of what people looking to take that route will experience. I'm sure once Derek can get a PATA drive he can look at performance differences.DerekWilson - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
I havent' read their review, but we did see ~41% with the x6800 8800gtx/gts.We didn't test the E6300 + 7600 GT with the interpreter, but i would think we'd see higher than 82.8% ...
As always, it's not really useful to compare numbers from multiple sites, as we likely used different motherboard, ram, sections of the movie, etc...
DNW - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
Questions:(1) You need just the HD DVD player, not the Xbox, correct?
(2) The back of the HD DVD player appears to have 3 connectors. Are these all USB connectors? If so, you hook up your the HD DVD player to your computer, and your computer to your television, correct? Does it matter how the computer is output to the TV? Is video-out sufficient, or do I need DVI, or HDMI etc.
(3) What are the computer system requirements? I am asking because on one of my HDTV's, I have an old computer built 2-3 years ago from whatever spare parts I had laying around. Is this critical? My TV supports 1080p. Is getting that resolution dependent upon the computer?
(4) The HD DVD player appears to come with a remote control. Will I use that remote to play/stop/start/pause/etc the DVD's, or will all that be done through the computer? In other words, is this a computer component or a home theatre component?
For under $200 plus the cost of a Netflix subscription, I would like to 'get my feet wet' with high definition dvd's. Even if I use this configuration for just a few months, it will be worth the rather insignificnat investment required. I just want to make certain I understand it before I make the purchase. Thanks!
DerekWilson - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
1) just need the HD-DVD player.2) It is also a USB hub AFAIK... the mini connector hooks into the computer.
3) you'll need a CPU at least as fast as the E6300 and a graphics card that can do some hardware decode acceleration if you want to avoid choppy playback and dropped frames. you'll also need usb 2.0 support (480Mbit), a graphics card that can output 1920x1080 @60Hz either over DVI or component (analog). A top of the line computer from 2 or 3 years ago will probably not cut it.
4) the remote controls the XBox 360, not the HD-DVD player.
totalcommand - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
The fact is with the right H264 encoding HD films can easily be fit on DVD-9 discs with minimal loss of quality.The companies are just trying to create a new market by increasing format size, but it's really unnecessary unless we want 6hr+ of film on our discs. Not to mention, with a new market, they get new copy protections like HDCP, which lets them infringe on our fair-use rights.
It really doesn't matter that Bluray has a 20Gb advantage over HDDVD - we don't need that extra space right now.
DerekWilson - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
some sort of "newness" is required -- standard DVD players can't play HD formats, as the players don't have the ability to decode H.264 ... Either we were going to get new players that use current DVD media or new players with new media. Since its a very good idea to future proof the design, more size is better -- and it just makes sense that if we require an update to player hardware we might as well also update our media to hold more data.the horrid drm and copy protection schemes are not a problem with the media as much as the MPAA -- had we stuck with standard DVD media, the industry could just have easily forced those wanting to play HD video on DVDs to adopt AACS -- because this is required in the data on the disks and the players -- not the physical media itself.
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
"Right now" is the key. All things being equal (and I'm not saying they are!), having more capacity is better. We'll see which one wins our long term, but there's a good chance the consumer has already lost.trueimage - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
How are you "enabling" and "disabling" HW Accel... All I see is a checked hardware acceleration box that is greyed out. I have no idea if it is turned on or not, and I certainly can't uncheck it...Renoir - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
You can't enable/disable while playing a video. Stop playback and then the checkbox will no longer be greyed out. Hope that helps. Took me a while to figure that out myself :-)