Getting the Best out of an Ivy Bridge HTPC: Windows 8, madVR and More..
by Ganesh T S on January 20, 2013 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Intel
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
- Windows 8
- Passive Cooling
HTPC Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks: EVR / EVR-CP
In our Ivy Bridge HTPC review, we had covered the CPU / GPU utilization during playback of various types of clips. In the Vision3D 252B review, we had graphs of CPU and GPU loading with various renderers and codecs. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't provide similar data / sensors for use with their APUs. Hence, we had to resort to power consumed at the wall along with GPU loading in the Trinity HTPC review. In order to keep benchmarking consistent across all HTPC reviews, we started adopting the Trinity HTPC review methodology starting with the review of the ASRock Vision HT.
The tables below present the results of running our HTPC rendering benchmark samples through various decoders when using the Enhanced Video Renderer / Enhanced Video Renderer (Custom Presenter) (EVR / EVR-CP). Entries in bold indicate that there were dropped frames which indicate that the unit wasn't up to the task for those types of streams. Fortunately, none of the streams presented any problem to the system and there were no dropped frames. The recorded values include the GPU loading and power consumed by the system at the wall when playing back the streams using MPC-HC v1.6.5.6366 and LAV Filters 0.54.
Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR)
The Enhanced Video Renderer is the default renderer made available by Windows 8. It is a lean renderer in terms of usage of system resources since most of the aspects are offloaded to the GPU drivers directly. EVR is mostly used in conjunction with native DXVA2 decoding.
| LAV Video Decoder (DXVA2 Native) + EVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 24.05 | 35.04 |
| 576i50 H.264 | 21.38 | 36.06 |
| 720p60 H.264 | 26.13 | 36.6 |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 28.9 | 39.95 |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 28.19 | 37.06 |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 31.23 | 45.57 |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 30.11 | 37.09 |
The GPU is not taxed much by the EVR despite hardware decoding also taking place. Deinterlacing and other post processing aspects were left at the default settings in the Intel HD Graphics Control Panel (and these are applicable when EVR is chosen as the renderer)
Enhanced Video Renderer - Custom Presenter (EVR-CP)
EVR-CP is the default renderer used by MPC-HC. It is usually used in conjunction with MPC-HC's video decoders, some of which are DXVA-enabled. However, for our tests, we used the DXVA2 mode provided by the LAV Video Decoder.
| LAV Video Decoder (DXVA2 Native) + EVR-CP | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 26.69 | 38.78 |
| 576i50 H.264 | 24.43 | 37.88 |
| 720p60 H.264 | 32.76 | 40.4 |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 40.16 | 42.02 |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 39.75 | 41.62 |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 40.99 | 48.45 |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 41.33 | 42 |
In addition to DXVA2 Native, we also used the QuickSync decoder developed by Eric Gur (an Intel applications engineer) and made available to the open source community. It makes use of the specialized decoder blocks available as part of the QuickSync engine in the GPU.
| LAV Video Decoder (QuickSync / DXVA2 Copy-Back) + EVR-CP | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 27.16 | 38.42 |
| 576i50 H.264 | 25.26 | 38.05 |
| 720p60 H.264 | 36.84 | 41.6 |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 44.2 | 43.41 |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 44.32 | 43.02 |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 43.56 | 43.26 |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 48.28 | 45.13 |
In general, using the QuickSync decoder results in a higher power consumption because the decoded frames are copied back to the DRAM before being sent to the renderer. Using native DXVA decoding, the frames are directly passed to the renderer without the copy-back step. The odd-man out in the power numbers is the interlaced VC-1 clip, where QuickSync decoding is around 5W more efficient compared to 'native DXVA2'. This is because there is currently no support in the open source native DXVA2 decoders for interlaced VC-1, and hence, it is done in software [Clarification: This restriction is only on Intel GPUs. On both AMD and NVIDIA cards, DXVA2 native decode acceleration is supported for all VC-1 streams]. On the other hand, the QuickSync decoder is able to handle it with the VC-1 bitstream decoder in the GPU.
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damianrobertjones - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
It's hardly difficult to use Windows 8! Heck a few of the ladies in work purchased laptops for their kids over xmas with Windows 8 and they're having no issues.... WHy are you??? Makes no sense at alllotharamious - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
No real useful advantages. But, it's $40. Oh yeah, and new task manager, new file copy dialog, storage spaces, data deduplication, WAY less naggy updates, fast boot (way faster than 7), extra dimension in your start menu for more stuff.Nothing at all.
ol1bit - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
My Win 7 HTPC works just fine with my network streaming Silcon Dust dual tuner.I rebuilt by gaming PC with Windows 8 and after a week I couldn't take it anymore, re-installed Win7-64bit.
-Stupid UI
-Dumbed down for Grandpa and Grandma
- Stupid colors in office (aka none per se)
- COD4 and older games don't work.
Win7 has none of these issues, so if the only benefit I get is a netflix app that uses a tad less power, and a crappy UI forget it.
JlHADJOE - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - link
"Fast boot" is fast because it changes normal shutdown to "hibernate".If you force the OS to do a proper reboot, there's no improvement over 7.
justniz - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Actually you can do a lot more with Linux than just surf YT. Check out MythTV. It is a VERY capable PVR/HTPC suite.In my opinion, much better than any product available for windows, and free too.
SantaAna12 - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Aii yii yii!No I dont have Windows Pro 8.....pay up!
a2f - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Is there any way we could get a look at how you have configured the various settings for the LAV filters and madVR for our own personal testing?Mangix - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
in regards to the refresh rate issue, which i am not too familiar with, have you tried modifying the EDID in the registry to help fix it?link: http://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Re...
dubya911 - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
How do the final capabilities of this compare to the plethora of android mini PCs floating around? Things like the MK802, G-Box etc seem to have a beta version of XBMC with network storage support now. Or if you want to move upscale a bit googleTV, Roku etc?Other than the fun of putting it together is there an upside? My napkin math puts this build north of $600. That is a lot of delta to make up.
edlee - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
You are absolutely right.I have a set up One Raid -5 Xeon E2-1235 file server with a bunch of different DLNA servers programs to work with different client devices.
for example:
PS3 media server for my PS3
Servio for my Sony blu-ray players and smart tv devices
Plex for my roku
Qloud Media server for my android clients
This way I dont have to setup an expensive HTPC in every watching location, and the Xeon e2-1235 is comparable to i7-2600 so it has all the processing power to handle video transcoding in software, until these apps update their encode engine to take advantage of quick sync.