Motherboards Memory Storage Cases/Cooling/PSUs IT Computing Displays Mobile Mac CPUs & Chipsets Video Digital Cameras Linux Gadgets Systems Trade Shows Guides Home Increase Font Size Decrease Font Size Change Page Size
ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx
ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx
Date: September 20th, 2005
Topic: Video Card
Manufacturer: ATI
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
 
 

Over two years ago, Intel introduced the world to their first platform brand - Centrino. And just at this past IDF, Intel announced their second platform brand - Viiv. Both Centrino and Viiv had their reasons for being created; they had their overall goals. Centrino was brought forth to improve the mobile platform by extending battery life and make wireless networking ubiquitous. Intel's Viiv was created to address the growing segment of users interested in media PCs, to improve the overall media experience on the PC through better performance, more CE-like operation, and guaranteed connectivity to CE devices. It is also tough to ignore the fact that Centrino and shortly, Viiv, were both created to be tremendously profitable and keep the competition away from the pie.

Like school children, technology companies are very easily influenced by one another. Intel kicked off their Centrino brand in March of 2003 and made it highly successful, exciting envy and a desire to attain the same in competitors and other tech companies around the globe. AMD tried their hand at platform branding with the Turion 64 mobile platform, and today, we're here to talk about ATI's first video platform - Avivo.

Much like Intel's Centrino and Viiv, Avivo is a reference to a platform, and as such, it doesn't refer to just one product, but in this case, two. A complete Avivo platform features an Avivo capture card, and an Avivo graphics card. As of today, the only Avivo capture card available is the ATI Theater 550, and presently, there are no Avivo graphics cards available. The next-generation of GPUs from ATI (R520, RV530 and RV515) will all support Avivo, and thus, they make up the second half of the platform.

What is Avivo's reason for existing? According to ATI, Avivo exists to address the future of displaying digital pictures and video on the PC, and to put it more succinctly, it strives to perfect the "Video Pipeline". So, while Intel's Centrino focused on perfecting mobility, and Viiv will attempt to perfect the media center PC, Avivo aims to do the same for the capture, encoding, decoding, processing and display of video. ATI calls these five areas that Avivo will improve: stages of the "video pipeline".

The first stage of that pipeline happens to be video capture.

Avivo Improves Video Capture   Next Page

 
  Index

Tools Share
Find lowest prices Find the lowest prices
Digg   del.icio.us   E-mail  
Print This Article Print this article  

22 Comments - Last by spinportal, 450 days ago
Username:
Password:
Now they just need better drivers. by Myph, 1522 days ago
Only thing really holding me back from going ATI, I just can't trust that their drivers are going to work for ALL games, all the time.

Reply
RE: Now they just need better drivers. by erinlegault, 1522 days ago
There is absolutely nothing wrong with ATI's driver's, especially, since they started releasing monthly updates. When new games come out, nvidia has just as much trouble with drivers as ATI and updates are issued accordingly.

Reply
RE: Now they just need better drivers. by Griswold, 1522 days ago
Humbug. Their drives have no more problems with brand new games than nvidias.

Reply
RE: Now they just need better drivers. by Pythias, 1522 days ago
I've no more problems with Ati drivers than I do nvidias. Who gives a rat's sack about branding? Neither chipset is ever clearly and decisively the winner in the performance arena. Just pick one that suits you, and call off the holy war. :|

Reply
RE: Now they just need better drivers. by photai, 1522 days ago
maybe you should consider how it performs as well. I think it is important too.

Reply
by Jep4444, 1522 days ago
ATI drivers work fine for games, ive never had one game fail to run on me through two Radeon cards(ill admit the drives for the Rage sucked as i couldnt get quite a few games to run on that thing)

I'm curious what Intels reaction to this since it treads into the same territory as Viiv, i think ATI should try to strategically place themselves together if they want Avivo to suceed to its full potential

Reply
nvidia purevideo by mongoosesRawesome, 1522 days ago
nvidia has really aggrivated me with their purevideo. they tout purevideo as a feature of their graphics cards, but in order to enable it, you have to pay them 20 dollars for their purevideo software. after paying 400 dollars for a graphics card, i expect the features listed for the graphics card to be included in drivers. i think anandtech and other hardware review sites need to be more explicit about how purevideo is only enabled after purchasing extra software from NVIDIA.

while I haven't been as impressed with ATI's video game performance as of late, WMV9 acceleration is included in their drivers all the way back to my 9800 Pro, a feature NVIDIA wasn't able to deliver with their AGP 6800 series cards, and only available after paying them for extra software on newer cards.

Reply
RE: nvidia purevideo by Rock Hydra, 1522 days ago
I agree. That pissed me off when I found out about having to buy additional software. Maybe a 3rd party has come up with a way to enable the abilities of purevideo. Even better, for free. /crosses fingers

Reply
Transcode Acceleration Again? by ViRGE, 1522 days ago
Didn't ATI already promiss this feature last time? When they launched the X800, they advertised accelerated encoding/decoding of MPEG1, 2, and 4; and right now all they've actually done is decode acceleration of 1 and 2, with no sort of encode acceleration to be seen. I'm really getting leery of all these video features that fail to materialize.

Reply
RE: Transcode Acceleration Again? by MrJim, 1522 days ago
With my Radeon 9800 i can accelerate divx when i use the divx player, thats mpeg4 for me. But im looking forward to better support in the hardware.

Reply
Comments Page 1 of 3

Deliver Rich Interactive Experiences
Engage more viewers with Adobe® Flash® Media Interactive Server 3.5
Vinpower DVD Duplicator
Manufacturer of quality disc duplication systems. Drop shipping available. Become a reseller today.
Unlicensed Software at Your Last Company
Anonymously Report Unlicensed Software with Our Form Now. Get Up to $1 Million.
Special Offer from The Economist
Get 12 issues of The Economist for $12. US subscribers only.
Unlicensed Software at Your Last Company
Anonymously Report Unlicensed Software with Our Form Now. Get Up to $1 Million.




Latest news by
DailyTech

 November 20, 2009

Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank

 November 19, 2009

Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank


Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
Blank
more Video Card Discussions



pipeboost
Copyright © 1997-2009 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information