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
Software Interface: XBMC and JRiver Media Center 18
The combination of MPC-HC and LAV Filters enabled us to play back all our media files without issues. However, the user interface is not really amenable to a media center experience. XBMC, undoubtedly, has set the gold standard for the HTPC user interface. It is possible to go through hoops to make XBMC use MPC-HC and LAV filters for media playback, but the XBMC UI is lost during playback.
XBMC's internal playback engine incorporates DXVA capability also. It works very well for most common media files (standard TV broadcast recordings and Blu-ray/DVD re-encodes in MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 / H.264). However, interlaced VC-1 clips pose a challenge even with DXVA disabled.
Interlaced VC-1 Playback in XBMC (non-DXVA Mode)
If you don't particularly care for madVR or don't have any interlaced VC-1 clips in your library (and don't plan to add any), XBMC is a very good choice for the software interface to a Intel-based HTPC like the one we are discussing right now.
If you have already tried XBMC, but still have unmet requirements in terms of technical capabilities, I would definitely recommend taking a look at JRiver MC18. The UI (Theater View) is a couple of notches below XBMC, but it more than makes up for the lack of eye candy and ease of navigation by completely handling the configuration of madVR and various codecs without user intervention. We have covered the Red October initiative before. On our testbed, we were able to get perfect playback of all our clips using the Red October standard profile (which doesn't use madVR).
Interlaced VC-1 Playback in JRiver MC18 (RO Standard)
From our experiments, the combination of LAV Video Decoder (QuickSync) + madVR with default settings should work without issues. A similar profile is used in Red October High Quality (RO HQ) (some of JRiver's own filters are added to the chain), but we had plenty of dropped frames during playback of 720p60 / 1080p60 / 1080i60 streams. I am in touch with JRiver to investigate this issue further and will make it a point to update this section in case the status of RO HQ on the HD 4000 changes.
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HighTech4US - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Agree, I see no other overall complete platform that would be better (or even equal) for a 4-OTA Tuner DVR with unlimited storage (only limited by disk size) with free EPG that Windows 7 Media Center provides.And by tricking out 7MC with MediaBrowser, MediaControl, SHARK007 Codecs I have a complete on demand system that can play any type of media.
I use MediaCenterMaster to get program meta information, backdrops and thumbnails for MediaBrowser.
I also use MakeMKV to rip my DVD's and VideoReDo TVSuite h.264 to edit recorded TV shows and convert them to H.264 MKV's.
Oh and 7MC can show your digital pictures as a slide show on your big screen with background music.
I also love the screen saver where it shows random pictures from your picture library then zooms to one (or more) from a folder. When I first got this enabled the wife spent 45 minutes just watching the screen saver.
powerarmour - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
Agreed, WMC is only EPG based Tuner app that can correctly use Freeview HD DVB-T2 Tuners in the UK, there are no other usable HTPC alternatives.psuedonymous - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Question: why was the obsolete 2-pass method used instead of the faster (and more common) CRF? Was the encoding benchmark intended as an artificial CPU-stressing benchmark rather than a 'real world' encoding benchmark?ganeshts - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Hmm.. that is what Graysky's benchmark does, and it keeps the setting consistent across different systems when you want to see how much better or worse your system is, when compared to someone else's.FWIW, pass 1 stresses the memory subsystem, while pass 2 stresses the CPU.
ganeshts - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Thanks for the info. I was looking at the FAQ hosted by TechARP here: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=442&... ;Also, look at Ian's test with various memory speeds here using the same processor (last section on this page):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6372/memory-performa...
There is definitely an impact on pass 1 performance using different memory speeds and the impact is more than on pass 2.
Iketh - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Why is Prime95 v25.9 used? That is grossly outdated. The latest official 27.7 is needed to tax Ivy Bridge with AVX instructions. All those temps and watts you got will increase significantly. Please revise your Prime95. An oversight like this is unacceptable.Not to mention the latest Intel compilers have been implementing AVX instructions for like 6+ months now even if the programmer didn't specifically write for it. AND Handbrake has been using AVX in about that same timeframe and is only increasing.....
ganeshts - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
I will definitely do some experiments with the new Prime95 and report back.ganeshts - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
I repeated the CPU loading with the latest Prime95 (v27.7):http://i.imgur.com/lK0zqjR.png
The readings didn't go up significantly, but, yes, there is an increase. The power consumption at the wall increased from 58.25 to 62.56 W.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, and we will make sure future reviews use the updated Prime95.
ganeshts - Monday, January 21, 2013 - link
Oh, but, with full GPU and CPU loading (using Furmark 1.10.3 - latest), the power at the wall is only 89.77 W (compared to 88.75 W earlier). The ~40 W / ~15W TDP distribution between the CPU and the GPU still remains the same.http://i.imgur.com/soCGAyk.jpg
I don't expect the steady state temperatures to be that different because the power increase at the wall is only 1 W.
ganeshts - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
Yes, the scaling algorithms affect the performance a lot.That is why I mentioned that we used the default settings: Bicubic with sharpness 75 for chroma (no anti-ringing filter), Lanczos 3-tap for image upscaling / Catmull-Rom for image downscaling (no anti-ringing filter or linear light scaling),
We will look at other scaling algorithms and their performance on the HD 4000 / GT 640 / AMD 7750 in the third part of the HTPC series.
Also, a note that if you are using HD 4000 (or any other Intel HD Graphics), I would strongly suggest looking at DXVA Scaling. Users might be surprised at the quality delivered without taxing the GPU too much.