One HD 2900 Advantage: Video.

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Snowdog

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I do notice that the Nvidia 8800 lacks the new Video engine that is in the 8600 family.

ATI HD 2900 has the equivalent video processing engine. So for a high end card that includes extra video processing muscle for things like Blu Ray, ATI is the only game in town right now.

Though, I am waiting for the respin from both ATI/Nvidia. Something like a 2900 pro with 256bit memory and much lower power usage.
 
yup with Nvidia at the moment you get one or the other HD performance or 3D performance
 
Well, I'm looking at the midrange. The only review that touched on video decoding performance was the one on guru3D. The 2900 looks good for all the hi-def formats, I hope the 2600 performs as well on video.

The mid-range Nvidia cards are supposed to do well on all the main HD codecs except for VC-1, which the 2900 supposedly does accelerate.

If the 2600 has the same performance, it may be a better choice to cover all the hi-def bases: MPEG2, H.264, VC-1, Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

I guess we'll have to wait on the release for some reviews.
 
No.

These features are only good for an HTPC. You would be insane if you used a heat-producing power-hungy wind tunnel like the 2900XT in an HTPC. The whole point of and HTPC is to be cool and silent. Anything more than an 8500GT or 2400XT is crazy overkill, and those two cards are more than capable of full-speed video decoding.
 
TehQuick said:
Which, AFAIK, also includes a dedicated video-decoder in the hardware ;)
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Are you guys just willfully ignorant of what's written in front of you?

The point of this thread was that you have to pick one or the other with Nvidia.

8800 handles HD decode "just fine" lol. no, it get's its ass handed to it.

14532.png


14540.png


same story for every graph in the article



"These features are only good for an HTPC."

Just because you say so, doesnt mean people only watch HD content on HTPCs
 
InorganicMatter said:
Anything more than an 8500GT or 2400XT is crazy overkill, and those two cards are more than capable of full-speed video decoding.
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Personally, I'm waiting for word on the 2600 series. Some early reports have said that the 2400XT acceleration support is limited to 720P. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it was true in the last generation of ATI cards.
 
Deusfaux said:
8800 handles HD decode "just fine" lol. no, it get's its ass handed to it.
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The 8800-series cards are not what you'd find in a HTPC that is very dependent on running quietly and cool. For high-end machines, CPU utilization for HD decoding is somewhat irrelevant, isn't it? Unless you intend to do other demanding tasks in the background whilst watching an HD-DVD or BluRay disc, I don't see what difference it makes. As long as frames aren't being dropped, that's all I give a damn about.

Why do you have to "pick one or the other"? It looks to me as if a system with an 8800 GTS or GTX will have no difficulty in playing back HD video so long as you aren't doing anything else intensive in the background. If frames don't get dropped, CPU utilization is a non-factor for most.
 
phide said:
The 8800-series cards are not what you'd find in a HTPC that is very dependent on running quietly and cool.
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Who ever said anything about HTPC? Why are you guys continually equating HD of any kind with HTPCs? People NEVER experience or want to watch HD content on their desktops right. ESPECIALLY not enthusiasts (the people after the high end cards in the first place).

phide said:
For high-end machines, CPU utilization for HD decoding is somewhat irrelevant, isn't it?
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So both Nvidia and ATi have moved in the direction of decreasing it why then?

phide said:
Unless you intend to do other demanding tasks in the background whilst watching an HD-DVD or BluRay disc, I don't see what difference it makes.
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Demanding task? It can potentially be ANY task - or even no tasks at all depending on your rig and the content you're watching.

phide said:
As long as frames aren't being dropped, that's all I give a damn about.
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They just might - with no other applications or with minor ones running concurrently.

phide said:
Why do you have to "pick one or the other"?
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Because the midrange Nvidia products are the ones that have kickass HD performance, and the high end have the kickass 3D performance, and they dont offer a product with both.

phide said:
It looks to me as if a system with an 8800 GTS or GTX will have no difficulty in playing back HD video so long as you aren't doing anything else intensive in the background.
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"As long as" first of all we're just "feeling" out when and where you might experience difficulty and secondly you dont have to qualify anything with ATI. You have piece of mind that you'll kick the ass of your HD content. With the 8800 you could very well have performance issues or dropped frames or a limiting experience in not being able to do much while HD content is being played.

phide said:
If frames don't get dropped, CPU utilization is a non-factor for most.
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I think you're speaking for a lot of people there or making assumptions. Some people watch videos in windows while doing other things, all sorts of programs could be running the background like IM programs or lord knows what.




Bottom line: 2900XT has a clear advantage over 8800 and you can't take that away from it. Or else you'll have to accept arguments "justifying" things the other way around and take away 8800 advantages and say "most people dont care about power usage unless it trips a breaker" and other such nonsense.
 
This is absurd. Everyone who wants a hotter, slower, louder, uglier gaming experience so they can save 20% cpu usage when playing an HD video...raise your hand.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
Everyone who's willing to trade for a more power hungry, slower gaming experience so they can save 50% or more cpu usage when playing HD content, and have integrated audio and video in a single cable...raise your hand.
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Fixed your BS to be 10x more reasonable and realistic even if I dont think all that many people would raise their hand.
 
I really don't see this as being much of an issue for most people. Sure, it would be nice if the 8800s had this. But most people that buy an 8800, have a pretty good dual core processor in their computer as well.

And chances are by the time I even get around to buying a Bluray or HD-DVD drive for my computer and some HD movies, I'll have moved on to another generation of video card as well.
 
Deusfaux said:
Fixed your BS to be 10x more reasonable and realistic even if I dont think all that many people would raise their hand.
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My BS? You do realize that that graph doesn't have the 2900 on it right? And you also realize that nobody here is running a budget CPU and default clocks right?

The bottom line is, if you buy an 8800GTS, you get a better gaming card, and you can still watch HD video just fine...so it's not a deal breaker.

For crying out loud man, the 2900 XT sucks...everyone thinks so, just let it go already.
 
Nobody said it was a deal breaker. I even said I dont think many people would raise their hand to that much better phrased question. They said it was an advantage the 2900XT has. And that somehow rubs you the wrong way and you can't stand to just admit and move on. The 2900XT has an advantage over 8800. For some people this might be interesting or valuable to know. That's all that was said. End of story.


and BTW I have to fix your wording AGAIN:

everyone thinks its disappointing, not that it sucks

See: Anand.
Despite the delays, despite the quirks, and despite the lack of performance leadership, AMD has built a good part.
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Maybe that's a lot to digest, but the bottom line is that R600 is not perfect nor is it a failure.
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Ravynmagi said:
I really don't see this as being much of an issue for most people. Sure, it would be nice if the 8800s had this. But most people that buy an 8800, have a pretty good dual core processor in their computer as well.

And chances are by the time I even get around to buying a Bluray or HD-DVD drive for my computer and some HD movies, I'll have moved on to another generation of video card as well.
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Actually I hoped that my 8800 gtx would do well with HD playback as well. That way I probably would have less reason to change video cards for a while. But since I does not compaired to the 8600's I will buy a new card for vista 64 when I build that rig -.- . Hopfully both ati's and nvidia's high end cards will have the feature. I mean come on these cards are capable of playing games at 1920x1200 resolution it would makes since for them to have the hd chip as well.

edit: But you are right I do have a cpu that is very well capable of doing it its just that I have ad/hd and have been known to do some seriously crazy multitasking while watching a movie. For instance running a game windowed mode and actually playing it while watching shrek 2 and looking at websites.
 
Deusfaux said:
Everyone thinks its disappointing, not that it sucks

See: Anand.
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So basically what you did was, you took a graph showing the 8600s being much faster than the 8800s in video decode and you use that to claim that the 2900 XT was 50% faster or more than the 8800s...right?

Ok so here's reality, here's the 2900 XT benchmarked directly against the 8800 GTS...and guess what...the biggest difference max/min/avg blu-ray or hd-dvd is less than 20%...so please, seriously, let it go.

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/video.php
 
Deusfaux said:
Demanding task? It can potentially be ANY task - or even no tasks at all depending on your rig and the content you're watching.
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Not from my experiences at all, actually, and, if you look at Anandtech's charts posted previously, it doesn't look to me as if we're talking about dropping frames with a GTX, or an X1900, or any other card for that matter (though that's an assumption, as I'd have to look at the article).

Deusfaux said:
Some people watch videos in windows while doing other things, all sorts of programs could be running the background like IM programs or lord knows what.
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Is watching 1080 content in a window while working on an Excel spreadsheet or talking on IRC typical?

Deusfaux said:
Bottom line: 2900XT has a clear advantage over 8800 and you can't take that away from it.
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I don't intend to "take anything away from it". Obviously the 2900 XT has the upper hand in high definition video playback, and I never attempted to deny it that (so don't act as if I did). The question is whether this is truly relevant to people. If there are a half-a-dozen qualifiers to build that relevance (does the user have a slow CPU; does the user perform other background tasks; is the CPU utilization relevant), is it truly a great and worthwhile advantage?
 
Deusfaux said:
Who ever said anything about HTPC? Why are you guys continually equating HD of any kind with HTPCs? People NEVER experience or want to watch HD content on their desktops right. ESPECIALLY not enthusiasts (the people after the high end cards in the first place).
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Enthusiasts have atleast 3GHz C2Ds in their systems and the real enthusiasts have quad core. A 3GHz C2D will run all kinds of HD video even without any help from the graphics card, so your argument about needing hardware decoding for C2D systems is lame.

Deusfaux said:
So both Nvidia and ATi have moved in the direction of decreasing it why then?
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Nvidia has only decreased it majorly with the 8600 and 8500 series which are more likely to end up in systems that don't have a very powerful cpu.

Deusfaux said:
They just might - with no other applications or with minor ones running concurrently.
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No, they won't

Deusfaux said:
Because the midrange Nvidia products are the ones that have kickass HD performance, and the high end have the kickass 3D performance, and they dont offer a product with both.
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That's because they don't need to.

Deusfaux said:
I think you're speaking for a lot of people there or making assumptions. Some people watch videos in windows while doing other things, all sorts of programs could be running the background like IM programs or lord knows what.
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Sure, don't you? I brush my teeth, walk my dog, download porn, listen to music and read [Hard]forum while watching my HD movies.

Deusfaux said:
Bottom line: 2900XT has a clear advantage over 8800 and you can't take that away from it. Or else you'll have to accept arguments "justifying" things the other way around and take away 8800 advantages and say "most people dont care about power usage unless it trips a breaker" and other such nonsense.
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Yeah thats a really great advantage. To all those that buy a HD 2900XT to go along with their Athlon 64 3400+ and 300w psu. Cmon, theres got to be someone.. anyone??
 
Deusfaux said:
Nobody said it was a deal breaker. I even said I dont think many people would raise their hand to that much better phrased question. They said it was an advantage the 2900XT has. And that somehow rubs you the wrong way and you can't stand to just admit and move on. The 2900XT has an advantage over 8800. For some people this might be interesting or valuable to know. That's all that was said. End of story.

and BTW I have to fix your wording AGAIN:

everyone thinks its disappointing, not that it sucks

See: Anand.
Click to expand...

What rubs me the wrong way is you completely misrepresenting the decode performance of the 2900 XT by posting a chart that didn't even have the 2900 on it, and then claiming the 2900 was more than 50% faster at video decoding than an 8800 GTS.

When in fact there's less than 20% difference between the cards according to benchmarks actually done on the 2900.

That's called dis-information, and yes, it rubs me the wrong way.
 
As long as my computer isn't chugging i am fine. Doesn't really matter how much cpu it uses since i am not going to be surfing the internet while watching an HD movie in full screen ;). Unless you have it in a window and online or something. Only advantage.
 
SuperKeijo said:
That's because they don't need to.
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ahahaha - yeah, ask Nvidia why the 8800 doesnt do full HD decode and I'm so sure they'll tell you that's why.

Yes they just love to assume each and every person who has a high end GPU must have a high end CPU. (just like how you foolishly assume everyone with a high end card has overclocked their CPUs to 3ghz - jesus christ do you live in a bubble) . They'll just base their business decisions on wild speculation and assumption and leave out any possible exceptions


Or maybe because they simply hadnt created a way to implement it at the time the 8800 were released, and if the 8800 was being released NOW it would absolutely be there.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
This is absurd. Everyone who wants a hotter...
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I was comparing wall socket draw to wall socket draw between [H] and the Bjorn3D and something isn't adding up. They have a slightly different setup (the use a E6400@2.13GHz instead and Vista instead of XP on a 6800@2.93GHz) but I'm not sure how that leads to the differences in wall current drawn? Now [H] gives the temperature (which is good, because as the point out that can significantly impact current drawn). But even at 24ºC, barely above room temp so about as low as you are going to see on a running system, [H] has the XT idle draw at 17W higher than the GTS while Bjorn has the XT drawing 7W less! Running a 3DMark load the GTS does still draw less, but it is only a difference of 58W compared to the 92W (and higher) that [H] is reporting. That's a pretty big difference?

Note: Can't compare the reviews numbers on the GTX because Bjorn3D used an OCed GTX for their review, for both performance and power draw tests. So the GTX was way higher idle and right behind the XT on a 3DMark load.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
So basically what you did was, you took a graph showing the 8600s being much faster than the 8800s in video decode and you use that to claim that the 2900 XT was 50% faster or more than the 8800s...right?

Ok so here's reality, here's the 2900 XT benchmarked directly against the 8800 GTS...and guess what...the biggest difference max/min/avg blu-ray or hd-dvd is less than 20%...so please, seriously, let it go.

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/video.php
Click to expand...

Interesing considering AT couldnt even get HW acceleration to work on the new card. Id wait for their look

We will have to take a second look at hardware decode when AMD and CyberLink or Intervideo get their software in order.
Click to expand...
 
Deusfaux said:
ahahaha - yeah, ask Nvidia why the 8800 doesnt do full HD decode and I'm so sure they'll tell you that's why.

Yes they just love to assume each and every person who has a high end GPU must have a high end CPU. (just like how you foolishly assume everyone with a high end card has overclocked their CPUs to 3ghz - jesus christ do you live in a bubble) . They'll just base their business decisions on wild speculation and assumption and leave out any possible exceptions


Or maybe because they simply hadnt created a way to implement it at the time the 8800 were released, and if the 8800 was being released NOW it would absolutely be there.
Click to expand...

What's more important is that it's not on the 2900 XT either. The 2900 XT does not have full HD decode, at least, not in comparison to the 8600s...
 
Dwight said:
I was comparing wall socket draw to wall socket draw between [H] and the Bjorn3D and something isn't adding up. They have a slightly different setup (the use a E6400@2.13GHz instead and Vista instead of XP on a 6800@2.93GHz) but I'm not sure how that leads to the differences in wall current drawn? Now [H] gives the temperature (which is good, because as the point out that can significantly impact current drawn). But even at 24ºC, barely above room temp so about as low as you are going to see on a running system, [H] has the XT idle draw at 17W higher than the GTS while Bjorn has the XT drawing 7W less! Running a 3DMark load the GTS does still draw less, but it is only a difference of 58W compared to the 92W (and higher) that [H] is reporting. That a pretty big difference?

Note: Can't compare the reviews numbers on the GTX because Bjorn3D used an OCed GTX for their review, both performance and power draw.
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Hard talked about in their review about a huge power swing between samples, ATI said something like 175 - 225 W. Don't quote me.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
What's more important is that it's not on the 2900 XT either. The 2900 XT does not have full HD decode, at least, not in comparison to the 8600s...
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What?! Where do you get this stuff?

It handles MORE HD decoding than nvidia's offerings, including the midrange cards because it handles VC1 codec bitstream processing whereas nvidia only does that for H.264 and AVC

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ATI/2900XT/UVD.jpg

Get your facts right?
 
Deusfaux said:
Yes they just love to assume each and every person who has a high end GPU must have a high end CPU.
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No, ofcourse they don't. They assume everyone that buys 400-500$ cards have a 100$ single core cpu. Makes sense to me.
 
Deusfaux said:
What?! Where do you get this stuff?

It handles MORE HD decoding than nvidia's offerings, including the midrange cards because it handles VC1 codec bitstream processing whereas nvidia only does that for H.264 and AVC

UVD.jpg


Get your facts right?
Click to expand...

He's quite right. If you read the reviews, you would know that the top end HD 2900 XT does NOT have the dedicated video decoding engine.

ATI runs it through the stream/pixel processors. Which is nice, but it in fact does not have dedicated specialized hardware for decoding. It makes me, and others wonder if nVidia can't add such features via drivers.

But... it is more than nvidia has at the moment. But again, I don't care, if I'm in the market for an 8800 or HD 2900 for high-end gaming, I have a beefy cpu to cater to that goal. I don't need the graphic card's help.
 
SuperKeijo said:
No, ofcourse they don't. They assume everyone that buys 400-500$ cards have a 100$ single core cpu. Makes sense to me.
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Anything you say will make sense to you.

You're committing another argument fallacy that if I say "no its not this extreme" you take it to mean I'm saying "its this other extreme".

Wrong yet again. They just dont make assumptions period. They use market research to help them make decisions but in the end they ask whether in of itself the technology could benefit people vs the cost it would be to implement.

In this case the technology simply wasnt available at the time. If the 8800 Ultra wasnt just a slight revision of the 8800 core, it would have it too.
 
Menelmarar said:
He's quite right. If you read the reviews, you would know that the top end HD 2900 XT does NOT have the dedicated video decoding engine.

ATI runs it through the stream/pixel processors. Which is nice, but it in fact does not have dedicated specialized hardware for decoding. It makes me, and others wonder if nVidia can't add such features via drivers.
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Can you source this because nothing I've read suggests the 2900XT doesnt do full HD decoding on the hardware

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ATI/2900XT/UVD.jpg

NVIDIA beat AMD to the punch with their full H.264 decode acceleration on G86/G84. Of course, AMD is one upping NVIDIA this time around, as their UVD (Unified Video Decode) architecture is also capable of decoding VLC bitstreams on all three HD media codecs. This means that there are no cases where AMD hardware will not handle 100% of the video decode process (after the CPU has dealt with pulling the encrypted content off the disk and preparing it to send to the GPU that is).
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Also worth nothing is that AMD's high-end hardware does something that NVIDIA's 8800 series cards currently don't, so NVIDIA users that want fast H.264 decoding support are stuck with slower 3D performance.
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The HD 2400 may be the perfect card for HD and or HTPCs. $99 or less, passive cooling, supports all types of HD decode, AVIVO, 65nm for low power. Won't be a gaming card mind you, but if video is your thing, this may be perfect.

The 8800's can do everything the 8600's can do, it just uses more CPU power to do it. If you have matched up the enthusiast class 8800 with an enthusiast class CPU it shouldn't really be a problem. But I do agree that I feel a bit ripped off not having the Video Processor 2 engine in the 8800 series. Which is exactly what we stated in our evaluation of the 8600.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The 8800's can do everything the 8600's can do, it just uses more CPU power to do it. If you have matched up the enthusiast class 8800 with an enthusiast class CPU it shouldn't really be a problem. But I do agree that I feel a bit ripped off not having the Video Processor 2 engine in the 8800 series. Which is exactly what we stated in our evaluation of the 8600.
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Thank you Brent.

I'd just like to highlight some comments for the others in this thread

"shouldnt really be a problem" ---> which means in some circumstances like I said you could see problems - its not as guaranteed that you wont as with the ATI product

which leads me to "if you have matched up ____ enthusiast class CPU" ----> the fact of the matter is Brent doesnt commit the wrong of simply assuming a person will. I frequent a much more casual gaming board and it would NOT be uncommon for someone to want or own a high end GPU and have it paired with an older or lower end CPU - and that's fair considering how many games and to what degree they are GPU bound - you get much more bang for your buck on a GPU purchase with gaming than a better CPU.

"I feel a bit ripped off not having the Video Processor 2 engine in the 8800 series." ---> I never stated it was a huge deal or deal breaker either. This thread just highlighted here is one disappointment ATI HD 2900XT owners will not share with their 8800 owner bros. It's an advantage it has. Yup. That's it.
 
Menelmarar said:
He's quite right. If you read the reviews, you would know that the top end HD 2900 XT does NOT have the dedicated video decoding engine.

ATI runs it through the stream/pixel processors. Which is nice, but it in fact does not have dedicated specialized hardware for decoding. It makes me, and others wonder if nVidia can't add such features via drivers.
Click to expand...

Deusfaux said:
Can you source this because nothing I've read suggests the 2900XT doesnt do full HD decoding on the hardware

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ATI/2900XT/UVD.jpg
Click to expand...

Continuing their video acceleration support ATI has built a Unified Video Decoder engine into the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400. The Radeon HD 2900 series does not have UVD; instead it uses the streaming processors to carry out the same functions.
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---HARDOCP
 
Brent_Justice said:
The HD 2400 may be the perfect card for HD and or HTPCs. $99 or less, passive cooling, supports all types of HD decode, AVIVO, 65nm for low power.
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Can you clarify whether or not the HD 2400 supports full acceleration above 720P? I have seen reports that only the HD 2600 series and above will support full 1080P acceleration.
 
Menelmarar said:
---HARDOCP
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Well then they seem to be in disagreement hey?

Doing my own detective work and going straight to ATI's own website it looks like HardOCP has the corrent information this time. That the 2900XT decoding is somewhere in the middle.

Seems like the OP and others like myself were duped by bad info at AT.

Of course it would be nice to see AT and HardOCP do an article on it ala the 8600/8500 HD decoding articles both sites did
 
Deusfaux said:
Doing my own detective work and going straight to ATI's own website it looks like HardOCP has the corrent information this time. That the 2900XT decoding is somewhere in the middle.

Seems like the OP and others like myself were duped by bad info at AT.
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And that's why I <3 Brent's reviews.
 
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