ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 20, 2005 10:44 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Improved Connectivity
The final message of Avivo, once again delivered through the R5xx GPUs, is one of improved connectivity.
Avivo also improves the quality of the TV output on graphics cards by using ATI's Xilleon TV encoder that is found in many of today's televisions. Once again, we'll have to wait and see exactly how the quality measures up to the competitors, but it should be a step in the right direction for improving TV output quality.
The other major improvement that Avivo graphics cards will offer is a 10-bit display pipeline, so that each color component during gamma correction, color correction, scaling and dithering has a minimum of 10-bits of precision.
Matrox was the first consumer vendor to introduce a 10-bit display pipeline, which they called 10-bit GigaColor in their Parhelia line of graphics cards. ATI is obviously later to the game, but it is better late than never. We've already discussed the benefits of a 10-bit display engine in our Parhelia review.
Final Words
Although ATI's announcement today kicks off Avivo, we really won't get a good feel for what the platform can really do until ATI finally launches their R5xx GPUs. ATI is saying that the first Avivo enabled GPUs should be shipping by the end of this month, meaning that the first R5xx GPUs should be available by then. Once we have hardware in-house, we can really put Avivo to the test.
At this point, we're mostly excited about the GPU assisted transcode and decode features of the R5xx series of GPUs, and even more excited that both features are supposed to be available by the end of this year. As we get more information on release dates and product offerings, we will of course keep you updated.
The final message of Avivo, once again delivered through the R5xx GPUs, is one of improved connectivity.
Avivo also improves the quality of the TV output on graphics cards by using ATI's Xilleon TV encoder that is found in many of today's televisions. Once again, we'll have to wait and see exactly how the quality measures up to the competitors, but it should be a step in the right direction for improving TV output quality.
The other major improvement that Avivo graphics cards will offer is a 10-bit display pipeline, so that each color component during gamma correction, color correction, scaling and dithering has a minimum of 10-bits of precision.
Matrox was the first consumer vendor to introduce a 10-bit display pipeline, which they called 10-bit GigaColor in their Parhelia line of graphics cards. ATI is obviously later to the game, but it is better late than never. We've already discussed the benefits of a 10-bit display engine in our Parhelia review.
Final Words
Although ATI's announcement today kicks off Avivo, we really won't get a good feel for what the platform can really do until ATI finally launches their R5xx GPUs. ATI is saying that the first Avivo enabled GPUs should be shipping by the end of this month, meaning that the first R5xx GPUs should be available by then. Once we have hardware in-house, we can really put Avivo to the test.
At this point, we're mostly excited about the GPU assisted transcode and decode features of the R5xx series of GPUs, and even more excited that both features are supposed to be available by the end of this year. As we get more information on release dates and product offerings, we will of course keep you updated.
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ViRGE - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
Hexus has confirmed Avivo platforms will be HDCP/HDMI compliant.ViRGE - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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.MrJim - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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.ViRGE - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
That's not decode acceleration, that's simply a form of deblocking where the Divx codec doesn't deblock the video then passes it to the 9800 to deblock(and I use the term loosely because the Divx codec itself does a better job, IMHO).mongoosesRawesome - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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.
Rock Hydra - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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 fingersJep4444 - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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
Myph - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
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.photai - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
maybe you should consider how it performs as well. I think it is important too.Griswold - Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - link
Humbug. Their drives have no more problems with brand new games than nvidias.