Sandy Bridge Pentium / Celeron do or don't have hardware video decoding?

I'm considering doing a budget build using a Sandy Bridge Pentium or Celeron, or an AM3+ motherboard and AM3 CPU.

One thing I'm trying to factor in is the integrated GPU in Sandy Bridge. I've been trying to figure out if the Pentiums and upcoming Celerons support hardware video decoding. I can't seem to find solid info and I'm sick of searching.

I've seen some information that makes me confused about whether Quick Sync or Clear Video performs the hardware video decoding, but it seems to me, based on this Quick Reference Guide to 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Processor Graphics (HD Graphics), that it's Clear Video.

The Intel specs just say "No" for that feature for the Pentium G620. (They also say "No" for Quick Sync, so it might be kind of a moot point which feature is responsible for the decoding.) However, I've seen some 3rd party sources that seem to say that the Pentiums DO include hardware video decoding, although not other features of Clear Video:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_8.html

Although Quick Sync technology is disabled in Pentium CPUs, the hardware HD video decoder is still there. Therefore, Pentium G850, G840 and G620 based systems consume very little power during video playback.

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(That's one of the things that confuses me about which whether Quick Sync or Clear Video does the video decoding. To me, that seems to imply that it's Quick Sync.)


http://www.anandtech.com/show/4524/the-sandy-bridge-pentium-review-pentium-g850-g840-g620-g620t-tested

Where the vanilla HD Graphics loses is in video features: Quick Sync, InTru 3D (Blu-ray 3D), Intel Insider (DRM support for web streaming of high bitrate HD video) and Clear Video HD (GPU accelerated post processing) are all gone. Thankfully you do still get hardware H.264 video acceleration and fully audio bitstreaming support (including TrueHD/DTS-HD MA).

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Does anyone know for sure what the deal is with hardware video decoding in the Pentiums (e.g. G620) and Celerons (e.g. G530)?

as far as I know quick sync is meant to be used for video encoding using the processors built in graphics to help which the g620 and the like doesn't have. Also as far as I know they do have the video decoder.

The Anandtech review is the one that is correct. You still get H.264 video decode acceleration, you just don't have the extra hardware for post-processing (like noise removal, smoothing, sharpening, whatever). Post-processing effects are only useful if you have crappy video soueces - good high-quality video will hardly benefit at all.

QuickSync is only for video ENCODING acceleration.

And as for Flash video acceleration, I believe it's included:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adobe-flash-10.1-performance-hardware-acceleration,2805-4.html

EDIT: proof from a forum thread that 1080p playback works correctly:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=62636

After this, I tried a1080p playback test to get an idea if the box would be suited for Blu-Ray playback. I use the "Elephant's Dream" WMV clip which is available for download from Microsoft - it's 830MB in size and can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24559

This is a 1080p file encoded using VC-1, and has a pretty hefty bitrate @25000kbps for the video stream (25429kbps total). This should be a decent challenge to evaluate HD playback capability.

It played back beautifully, without any hiccups at all.

Power consumption: 36-40 watts (varies throughout the clip)
Core temperature: 38C
CPU load: <20% during playback

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Aww c'mon, those processors can handle several 1080p. H.264 streams playing at the same time, in Flash, let alone any decent player which is a lot more efficient that wussy Flash. Hardware decoding only matters for things like Atom and Brazos.

iconiK said:

Aww c'mon, those processors can handle several 1080p. H.264 streams playing at the same time, in Flash, let alone any decent player which is a lot more efficient that wussy Flash. Hardware decoding only matters for things like Atom and Brazos.

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Yes, I agree. But he wanted to know, so I provided a test

And yes, the test IS conclusive because the G620T is only 2.2 GHz, so a high-bitrate 1080p clip would use more than %20 CPU.

defaultluser said:

And yes, the test IS conclusive because the G620T is only 2.2 GHz, so a high-bitrate 1080p clip would use more than %20 CPU.

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VC-1 sucks though.

Ok, thanks for the ifno guys.

> And as for Flash video acceleration, I believe it's included

That's good. Among other applications, I tend to have a lot of browser windows open. With all of the video on the web now, even in ads, I don't want that stuff dragging the CPU down and clogging up the whole system. I tried that "Elephant's Dream" video on the P4 3.0 GHz / ATI X700 system I need to replace and it doesn't do well. Keeps freezing for seconds at a time and getting pixelated. I also tried it on a Pentium T4500 laptop with Intel integrated graphics on the motherboard and that did considerably better, but still had some hiccups.