ASRock's High-End Vision 3D 252B HTPC Review
by Ganesh T S on May 7, 2012 6:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Sandy Bridge
- HTPC
- GT 540M
- NVIDIA
HQV scores are meant to be a quantitative metric, but some of the aspects deserve further coverage. In earlier reviews, we had provided screenshots of the Cheese Slices test in order to show deinterlacing performance, and in the Llano review, we looked at issues with the chroma upsampling algorithm. In this section, we will see how the GT 540M fares.
Cadence Detection:
The GT 540M obtains the maximum possible score for cadence detection in the HQV benchmarks. But, is it really effective in all cases? We took the Spears & Munsil Wedge Pattern clip for a test drive. The same test clip was used in our Discrete HTPC GPU Shootout piece. In the previous test, only the GT 430 was able to perfectly inverse telecine the clip. The GT 540M managed to retain that ability.
However, some of the other cadences (including those for which the HQV clips were processed correctly) were not properly inverse telecined / deinterlaced. The gallery below provides information on the troublesome patterns.
In addition, videos often have overlaid text which might be of a different cadence. The 'shredded text' resulting from the video processor being unable to do local cadence decisions often ruins the experience. Some GPUs (like Intel's HD Graphics 3000 in the ASRock CoreHT 252B) take more time to lock onto the cadence compared to others (such as those from AMD). Unfortunately, the GT 540M belongs to the former category. It has problems with both horizontal and vertical scrolling text for more than 5 - 10 frames before locking onto the local cadence.
Deinterlacing:
Instead of the Cheese Slices clip, we have a new deinterlacing testclip (a 480i MPEG-2 stream that we first used in the Zotac ZBOX Nano XS review). As expected, the Vision 3D 252B had no trouble deinterlacing this stream. Further down in this review, we also have rendering benchmarks which show how much the IVTC (inverse telecine / cadence detection / film mode detection) and deinterlacing operations load up the GPU.
We also processed the boat clip from the Spears & Munsil disc, and to tell the truth, there is not really much difference in the quality of deinterlacing that we see between AMD, NVIDIA and Intel. All that matters is whether the GPU is powerful enough to deinterlace content at a given frame rate and resolution, and suffice to say that the GT 540M has no problems even with deinterlacing 1080i60 content (as we will see in a later section).
Chroma Upsampling:
The HQV CUE / ICP testclip was used to check up on the chroma upsampling quality of the drivers. In the gallery below, you will find three screenshots taken in the course of playback (one with PowerDVD, one with ArcSoft TMT and the other madVR set to Softcubic (Softness 70) chroma scaling. Though one can say that the madVR output holds the slight edge, it looks like the algorithm used in the NVIDIA drivers is no slouch
Noise Reduction:
The gallery below presents the noise reduction algorithms in action. Noise reduction strength can be set between 0 and 100, and the gallery below has screenshots for 0, 50 and 100 noise reduction settings for each segment of the clip. The noise reduction algorithms work decently, but the difference is not as stark as, say, what one gets with the AMD GPUs when mosquito noise reduction is enabled.
Contrast Enhancement and Skin Tone Correction:
Simply put, the dynamic contrast enhancement and skin tone correction options in the NVIDIA Control Panel do not work. The gallery below presents the necessary proof.
The color tab in the panel has a contrast setting, but that affects the picture as a whole and doesn't work in the manner that the HQV benchmark guide expects it to. Color enhancement is supposed to take care of skin tone correction, but that was quite ineffective too. We remember seeing the dynamic contrast feature working in a previous driver version, and this just goes to prove that NVIDIA is as guilty of breaking HTPC features in their drivers as AMD is. That said, the driver version v301.24 we tested with is not WHQL certified (I had to move up from v296 because there were some graphics driver stability issues in my setup while testing various HTPC aspects). So, we are willing to cut NVIDIA some slack. However, we hope that NVIDIA is aware of this issue and will take steps to correct it based upon user feedback.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
60 Comments
View All Comments
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - link
As nice as it looks, I'll pass.Cool PC, bro --but there are options that will get this job done equally well, for far less. Ones that don't have Asrock's track record for awful customer support if something goes wrong (having owned one of their high-end mainboards briefly, I experienced that personally).
Less expensive options have desktop CPU upgrade options too. The mobile Sandy Bridge systems currently out aren't upgradeable to mobile Ivy Bridge, so I doubt this is, either.
cjmccarthy72 - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
I almost dare not admit to owning one of these- I can imagine the comments especially from the build your own brigade....But I got one just before Christmas and it is a real box of joy. I stuck a SSD from my previous HTPC inside it and this goes like the wind. Large photo, music and movie collection load really quick in WMC. Streams HD media with ease. Extremely quiet- the fans on my plasma are more audible!
Very small- and yet it is truly a one box solution- despite this review I can play most games like Street Fighter IV at full spec on it.
I live in tiny city centre flat and so yes it is expensive, but it beats having a laptop or desktop on the floor, taking up space. Paired with a soundbar and HD tv it means very little space is taken up with my equipment and so my wife is happy. It means that my AV cabinet is now taken up with more family friendly boxes- Scrabble, Monopoly, Battleships!
Last, but not least, it has Blu-Ray- now if only Windows 8 supported it natively....
allensays - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
I can do the same things with my similarly spec'd Asus K73S laptop, then unplug it, go out on the deck or take it to the beach......For much LESS $.
What a waste.
cjmccarthy72 - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
I'm happy for you- no beach or deck where I am I am afraid- & lots of rain at the moment here unfortunately... but also no USA Amazon so no "similarly spec'd Asus K73S laptop". Our Amazon has listed only an Asus K73S- but this only has an i3 cpu, dvd only, 4gb ram only, 320gb hard-drive only - all for $852 equivalent price in dollars. So you clearly have the better deal your end.I have a company laptop which sounds like a jet taking off so I like the silence of this HTPC but I also use it as my PVR so want it hooked up all the time- yet hidden away without my family needing to plug it in and hook it up. + I can do some limited upgrades with it. My last HTPC, a Sony VGX-XL, was also relatively expensive- but I had it for over 5 years before I sold it and so thought that was a reasonable investment.
But clearly for some people this would be a waste- I agree- no argument. However as an owner I thought I would add an opinion about this HTPC, as the majority of comments here only deal with the price.
iq100 - Thursday, May 24, 2012 - link
There are better alternatives to the $50 JRiver MediaCenter game. Did you know that JRiver will charge you again and again for each new release? Worse is their censorship. Criticize them, post about alternatives, and you will be BANNED for life. And they will get their 'commercial friends' to do the same. These folks are NOT like anandtech. They are not about sharing ideas. They add on free GNU softward without embracing the spirit of open source code. They are about commercial money wars. If they were Egypt, or Iran, or Iraq, the would kill your right to speak.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoQwSpHQBA
iq100
the best way to delete an idea is to post one of your own.
ix400 - Sunday, June 3, 2012 - link
Or is there an alternative tool for finding out the exact refresh rate of the display?iq100 - Monday, June 4, 2012 - link
With MPC-HC:http://www.homecinema-hd.com/autofrequency_en.html
iq100
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoQwSpHQBA
ix400 - Thursday, June 7, 2012 - link
... but this tool doesn't show me a precise value of the refresh rate that is actually set.iq100 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
>http://www.exampledepot.com/egs/java.awt/screen_Sc...You can do this in java:
http://www.exampledepot.com/egs/java.awt/screen_Sc...
iq100
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltoQwSpHQBA
shurik_1 - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link
try to create couple of dozen gig archive on another PC. create a parity set. corrupt a few bits. transfer to Vision 3D. try to repair and see for yourself what happens...I have complained to ASRock about this and was forced to send entire PC for repairs (no they do not refund shipping costs you have to swallow it). Only change is that BIOS now is 1.10c instead of 1.10. A friend of mine managed to get from their support the actual BIOS without shipping back and indeed it solved his issues as well.
Now I try to update memory to 16GB and the issue is back. Had to go back to 8GB. It's been over a month since I reported this new issue to them and still no fix.
Note that they never acknowledged the issue and never posted updated BIOS to their site. Customers data gets silently corrupted meanwhile...
Other than that is has everything I wanted in HTPC.