Zotac GeForce GT 640 DDR3 Review: Glacial Gaming & Heavenly HTPC

HTPC Aspects : Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks

We introduced our HTPC decoding and rendering benchmarks in the ASRock Vision 3D 252B review, and also used it in the 4K decode and display section of this review. In this section, we will look at how the system responds to the various test streams under various renderers and decoders. You can roll the mouse over the various entries in the first / last rows of the table below to compare the resource graphs.

AVCODEC + EVR-CP	AVCODEC + madVR	LAV CUVID + EVR-CP	LAV CUVID + madVR	DXVA + EVR-CP	DXVA Copy-Back + madVR
AVCODEC + EVR-CP	AVCODEC + madVR	LAV CUVID + EVR-CP	LAV CUVID + madVR	DXVA + EVR-CP	DXVA Copy-Back + madVR

Resource Usage Comparison - Software Decode vs. DXVA2 vs. LAV CUVID / EVR-CP vs. madVR

The GT 640 can be made to effectively work with madVR without issues. Unlike GT 540M, it is not necessary to carefully configure madVR to avoid dropping frames. With the queue sizes at the maximum, we were able to go through our rendering test suite in both full screen exclusive and full screen windowed modes without dropping frames.

Starting with this review, we also want to look at the power consumption profile of the system when subject to the rendering benchmarks.

madVR does carry a bit of a power penalty. As expected, software decode is more power efficient for lower resolution streams (up to 720p60) / MPEG-2 encodes. CUVID based hardware decode turns out to be more efficient with the 1080i and 1080p streams. Note that the benchmark streams were played off the local primary hard drive. The power consumption (measured at the wall outlet) also includes the hard drive activity.

As our coverage of the Zotac GT 640's HTPC aspects comes to a close, we would like to underline the fact that it is one of the best HTPC cards available in the market right now if madVR capability is a must.

For the general consumer, Intel's HD 4000 based system should be more than enough. However, in terms of looking into the future as well as current software infrastructure available, it is hard to go wrong with the GT 640. If it were not for the shortcomings of the NVIDIA drivers, we would have had no hesitation in crowning the GT 640 as the next undisputed HTPC king.

We are aware of the fact that AMD 7750 is a competitor to the GT 640 in more ways than one. We already covered AMD 7750's HTPC performance here. However, we will shortly be carrying out a review of the Sapphire Ultimate 7750 passively cooled edition using the same metrics considered in this review and the latest drivers from AMD.