CES 2006 - Day 2: Blu-ray/HD-DVD, PureVideo H.264, Viiv, Centrino Duo and a lot more
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 7, 2006 3:07 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
PureVideo to offer H.264 Decode Acceleration
Ever since ATI first demonstrated that their R520 GPU (Radeon X1000 series) could accelerate H.264 decoding NVIDIA had always claimed that they could do it as well. We had been asking for proof and today NVIDIA delivered on just that.
NVIDIA announced that all GeForce 6 and GeForce 7 GPUs will eventually (when drivers and software are available) support H.264 decode acceleration for all the way up to 1080p videos. Obviously the faster the GPU (mainly the more ALUs and the higher the clock speed), the more that can be offloaded from the CPU onto the GPU.
In order to prove the support was functional, NVIDIA setup a Pentium D 830 with a GeForce 6600GT and tried to play back a 1080p H.264 encoded movie. CPU utilization across both cores was basically pegged at 100% while the CPU handled the entire decode.
Enabling hardware acceleration offloaded a good hunk of the decoding task onto the Geforce 6600GT, reducing CPU utilization to around 50% or less:
In order to take advantage of the H.264 decode acceleration you will need two things: 1) Compliant InterVideo WinDVD, CyberLink PowerDVD or Nero software, and 2) a NVIDIA driver enabling the support.
NVIDIA promised that both of these items would be available to end users in the next 2 - 3 months. While they are definitely lagging behind ATI in H.264 decode acceleration, at least NVIDIA has finally provided us with a working demo of the technology and they have also committed to us that it will work on all GeForce 6 and 7 GPUs (AGP and PCIe).
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gibhunter - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Is that Serenity that I'm seeing on the Toshiba laptop playing back in high definition? If so, WHERE CAN I BUY IT?!!! and How much?Troll4Hire - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Is it just me, or am I the only one who saw the Motorola Bluetooth headset and laughed because it looks like a penis and testicles?http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tradeshows/200...">Photo #1 http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tradeshows/200...">Photo #2
http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=266...">http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=266...
Jynx980 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
The Vaio on "The Four Viiv PCs Worth Mentioning" looks a lot like a cash register with the keyboard on top.Doh! - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
It's in Korean but you can see the specs.http://www.trigem.co.kr/tgproduct/lluon/ProductDet...">http://www.trigem.co.kr/tgproduct/lluon...ctDetail...
longfred - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
For more info on the rollable display shown by Philips look at http://www.polymervision.com">www.polymervision.com. You can find some nice pictures and a video at the website (Technology -> download).HamburgerBoy - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
That rollable display is pretty neat, but how does it work? For something that thin, would you have to use some really small batteries or what?AndrewChang - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
For those of us unable to attend a show like CES, I appreciate the quality and focus of your coverage. It's a nice reminder that you guys are still as dedicated as ever to Anandtech, as the quality of some recent articles had left me wondering. Thanks.DanaGoyette - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
My god, you could heat a house with that quad SLI system! What I want to know is how they plan to cool the inner heatsinks on those cards. This would be a really good use for a modded version of the Zalman TNN case.Of course, they should ditch the dual Prescott (if that's what it is) and go with a custom Yonah board.
They'd be better off with a much longer heatsink with the fan perhaps sticking out the end, or something like that.
Quantum3D Mercury, anyone?
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_bri...">http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_bri...
Cygni - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
Mercury? Puh shaw!The Independence 2500! http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Independence/Ind...">http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Independence/Ind...
A nice little graph, haha: http://www.quantum3d.com/products/images/independe...">http://www.quantum3d.com/products/images/independe...
ohnnyj - Sunday, January 8, 2006 - link
It is interesting that the Quad SLI actually is stated to have over 40Gpixels/s output which is about 4 times the power shown in the graph there:http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6020675.html">http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6020675.html