Discrete HTPC GPU Shootout
by Ganesh T S on June 12, 2011 10:30 PM ESTWe will see in the 'DXVA Benchmarking' section that denoising is one of the more GPU intensive video post-processing tasks. To put that in perspective, let us take a look at how the denoising performance of each card is, and the factors which affect it.
In each of the galleries above, you can see a screenshot of a noisy video being played back with PowerDVD. The first shot shows the appearance of the video without denoising turned on. The second shot shows the performance with denoising enabled. For both cards, it can be seen that the denoising kicks in, as expected. This is also reflected in the relevant HQV benchmark section. With denoising turned on, note that the GPU load increases from 75% to 81% for the GT 520, while the corresponding increase in the GT 430 is much smaller.
Is it similarly straightforward to test the denoising performance on the AMD GPUs? Unfortunately, that is not the case. AMD has this nifty feature 'Enforce Smooth Video Playback' (ESVP) in the Catalyst Control Center.
Simply put, it just means that the drivers automatically turn off post processing features if it finds that the card is not powerful enough to do it in real time. How well does this feature work? While we are on the topic of denoising, let us check up on that first.
The first shot shows the noisy video being played back with ESVP on and the denoising options turned off.
The second and third shots sows the denoising options (Denoise and Mosquito Noise Reduction) taking effect. Note the GPU load increasing from 40 to 49%. The fourth shot in the above gallery show that ESVP has no effect on denoising. Note that turning off ESVP increases the GPU load from 49% to 88%. This implies that some other post processing option was enabled in CCC, but didn't actually kick in because the card was too weak.
Moving on to the MSI 6450, the gallery below presents two shots.
The first one forces the denoising algorithms to take effect by disabling ESVP. Note that the GPU load rocketed up to 100%. The video became a slideshow soon enough. The second shot shows that ESVP is turned on, and the denoising algorithms are also turned on. It was quite evident that the denoising algorithms didn't take effect and the drivers silently turned off the denoising algorithms. This can also be inferred from the fact that enabling the denoising algorithms increased the GPU load to 100%.
AMD acknowledge the issue and indicated that they are working on a fix. I have little doubt that this is going to be resolved soon because the same files on a Blu-ray disc play back with all the post processing options. However, with the current drivers, the DDR3 based 6450 suffers heavily.
The Sapphire 6570 is, thankfully, not an ESVP mess like the 6450. The gallery below presents two shots.
The first one has ESVP on, but the denoising algorithms are off. The video is clearly noisy, and GPU utilization is pegged at 52%. In the second shot, ESVP is off (which means that almost all the video post processing algorithms except brightness level adjustments are forced to take effect). GPU utilization shoots up to 76%, but the end results are very good. It is a matter of personal taste, but the addition of mosquito noise reduction seems to make the AMD denoising results much better than NVIDIA's.
Let us come back to the ESVP mess on the 6450s. The intent of ESVP is to make sure that the decoder puts out the decoded frame within the required time. It should be OK to forsake any post processing steps in case the GPU is not able to keep up. We saw in the 'Custom Refresh Rates' section that both the 6450s were unable to keep up with 1080p60 H264 decoding. Those tests were run with ESVP turned on. The gallery below shows how the same video can be played back with all the post processing options turned off (including ESVP).
It is clear that the UVD engine in the 6450 can handle 1080p60 H264 decoding. It is a combination of ESVP and other post processing features which makes AVCHD clips unplayable on the 6450s. The last two shots in the gallery are from the MSI 6450. They show that 1080p60 H264 decode with all the CCC options turned off has a GPU load of 36%. Turning on ESVP makes it shoot up to 100% and results in jerky playback. This, however, has not yet been acknowledged by AMD as a problem yet.
In addition, the gallery below shows screenshots of a 1080p24 video being played back on the MSI 6450 (DDR3 based, lower core clock) in PowerDVD 11 and MPC-HC.
In both cases, GPU load regularly spikes up to 100% resulting in very noticeable stutters in the video playback. We were able to reproduce the problem with MPC-HC also. We suspect it is a combination of AMD's drivers as well as the lower core clock in the MSI 6450 which is causing this issue.
The takeaway from this section is that the AMD drivers need a lot of work with respect to ESVP on the 6450s. The denoising performance of both the NVIDIA cards is passable. I personally find AMD's denoising implementation (in the 6570) to be better. However, I strongly recommend readers to avoid the 6450s for some time to come.
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casteve - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
I hope to see a review of the HD 6670, now that (at least) Sapphire has released a passive version.Drae - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
... it'd be nice to see more use of Linux please. I realise there are a lack of "testing" and "evaluation" tools under Linux but that shouldn't prevent the testing of basic media needs. What's this about no bit streaming support under Linux? Boxee would disagree - as would:http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?27348-Tr...
along with XBMC's audioengine (involving work by the guy in the above link). Maybe Windows 8 will sort out the mess that is WMC and all the messing (or bypassing with MPC-HC) that is required to get it working solidly. But right now if you want something that approaches a plug and play media experience XBMC (and its off-spring Openelec) under Linux is a lot closer than Windows. Equally the more coverage such solutions get the more likely greater time will be spent fixing the remaining issues under the Linux OS - hello there Intel and AMD.
Finally there is a great move now - go look at AVS' fora for examples - away from large media center pc's to small, quiet (silent) systems. These don't require 300W or 500W power supplies and huge cases with twelve fans and fifty million led's. They are ITX based systems sitting in small ITX sized boxes running 65/80/90/120W PicoPSU's with much greater efficiency and thus lower power use/running costs/silence. Placing these discrete cards in such systems would be a nice test of these picopsu units - given the apparently low power draw shown in the articles (something I'm very interested in seeing right now given the poor support of Linux by Intel on Sandybridge - the GT430 would be a good interim solution for me).
TLDR: Please don't limit yourselves to Windows testing and ATX/mATX sized systems when writing HTPC articles
ganeshts - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
Drae, Thanks for the info and the link.The issue with Linux HTPCs is the fact that there is a semblance of support from only NVIDIA.
Don't get me wrong! I am a huge Linux fan, and always prefer free / open-source software. But, from a video perspective, is there a multi-GPU platform similar to DXVA ? Every vendor has their own flavour (NVIDIA - VDPAU / Intel - VA-API / AMD - XvBA). From the audio side, it looks like the link you mention is the only avenue available for bitstreaming, and that too for NVIDIA GPUs only. I will keep close tabs on what is happening in this area, and when the time is right, I will definitely post a piece on Linux HTPCs, considering one card from each of the vendors.
cjs150 - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
As always it depends on what you want from an HTPC. For me I want to play Blu rays, stream HD movies from file server, watch and record TV and do some web browsing but in total silence (or as close to as possible).For me ITX systems are the way to go using a 150W PICO-pSU but critical is that they have to work with appropriate IR remote (Logitech DiNovo looks interesting)
I am happy to use Linux or Windows but it just has to work
alfredska - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
This kind of quality review is what made AnandTech a name to remember early on. I'm glad to see such thoroughness and well thought out presentation of information. Looking forward to more reviews by Ganesh.UrQuan3 - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - link
Agreed, this is an excelent article. I tried cross referencing to the "Zotec Zbox" article from the 9th (I own an E-350) and the earlier benchmarking was useless. I already know the E-350 won't do full processing, but I wanted to know where it sits compared to these platforms that pull 3-10 times the power.Think a 'software mode' might have been useful? An i5 could have done a fair amount of this processing without a hardware assist, saving the 70watts the cards were pulling and avoiding some of the integrated's compatability issues.
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
I dont get the video card focus in the realm of HTPC. It seems that software is a far more important piece of the picture than a video card. Windows media center and XBMC both work like crap, and/or are unacceptably slow and clunky when it comes to browsing media. I do NOT tolerate that kind of lag, especially on a 3 ghz quadcore with an ssd/hdd drive setup. I dont expect miracles when trying to browse through a gigabyte of media, but still it should be faster. And then there's audio sync problems that like to appear out of nowhere. But you'd never know any of these problems exist from reading these articles. Shrug.I have found that VLC media player and windows explorer are the most reliable combination. But using windows explorer on an htpc is ugly and painful.
JasonInofuentes - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - link
I think part of the problem is the degree to which there's news. A thorough review of Media Center might be warranted, the next time it changes, but was pretty thoroughly covered here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2864/) and here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2760). XBMC has a more frequent update cycle than Windows, and there's obviously interest so this might be an idea to explore further.As far as the difficulties with each of these platforms, a Z68 platform and SRT might be the solution here. So the size of the files is not really the problem, it's that when you browse to a folder the user wants to be able to scroll around the list or grid and have all of the information pertinent to those files readily available. You don't want to scroll over to a file in your West Wing Season 5 folder and wait for the Title to load so you know whether it's the episode you were looking for, you want that information to be up the instant you scroll to it, or even better for it to be glanceable before you even start scrolling. In order to achieve this the OS's load all of the information for all of the files in the folder. So if you have a few dozen files in a folder that's the metadata for each files, the thumbnail preview and then the usual file system queries the OS would do anytime it accesses the drive. That can add up to a lot of small reads, and that leads to that big stall as you scoot around your media.
Now, the throw money at it solution is move to ALL SSD storage. But I've got 4TB of media and don't have that kind of money to throw at the problem. SRT should help though. If I recall, the metadata and thumbnail files are stored locally in the folder with the files, but since SRT caches the frequently accessed files, then for a system used exclusively for media the only thing that should populate the SSD cache is going to be these small reads that otherwise slow down your system.
I am suddenly overwhelmed with an urge to get my hands on a Z68 to try this out! And you are quite right that VLC and Windows Explorer are the most reliable programs for browsing and playing back media, but the price you pay for pretty is often performance.
vailr - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
As an exercise in "possibility thinking", I'd be interested in a sub-category of a complete "solar powered" desktop-format PC review. Designed (theoretically) for someone living in a remote area, off the electrical grid, yet still having internet via satellite, cell phone signal, or otherwise connected. Designed for ultra low power consumption, mostly dependent on solar and/or wind power produced on site. Yet maximal possible performance (under such power restrictions) for either: generic gaming desktop PC, and also for a HTPC. Using SSD's and/or laptop HD's for storage, and with an energy sipping CPU (dual-core Atom vs. Intel i330, for example), combined with either: on-CPU chip video or a "PCIe bus only" powered video card, and yet somewhat viable as a gaming PC or as a HTPC.Maybe even qualify for an article in Home Power magazine? http://homepower.com
Penti - Monday, June 13, 2011 - link
Why? Running a 100 W PC of batteries is pretty pointless.Just install FTTH and a powerline if you like to game or do other intensive tasks needing GPU-power, fast cpus or ridiculous amounts of memory (workstation type stuff). It would be the most efficient solution any way. You don't even need any power for any modems. You certainly can run a PC of battery power off grid, but why destroy your work with that. It would be hard to store much electrical power.
Otherwise you would pretty much had to get by with a low-powered laptop. No monitor.
Do the unabomber type guys need any gaming? If so they need to install a good damn power line or at least a diesel-generator. They don't have the money and skills to build energy storage and buy panels thats enough to power a modern home any way.