I'm quite interested in the latest DX11 5 series ATi cards, however I'm a little bit concerned about the differences in HDMI audio. How do they compare? Do they have audio throughput like the nvidia series has? How do their onboard decoders compare to nvidia's throughput? I have been unable to find any good information anywhere with google, most applies to the 3 and 4 series ATi cards.
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Now that we have the 5 series ATI cards, how do they compare to nvidia HDMI Audio?
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Snowknight26
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They can do bitstreaming for AC3, all DTS variants, TrueHD, and AAC, unlike NVidia cards. They can still do 7.1 channel, 16-bit, 48KHz LPCM over HDMI, unlike Nvidia's(?). They may be able to do higher bit-depths/frequencies, but I forget. And as usual, the cards (both manufacturers') don't have any audio decoders.
jeremyshaw
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ATi has onboard realtek chips to do this.
nVidia has a S/PDIF header to pass through audio from the motherboard/soundcard, except on the g210/gt220, which don't seem to have them.
yeah that's what I thought. For an HTPC, how does the 5 series on board processors compare to the S/PDIF header passing through an audigy card, for instance? I guess what I'm asking is should I look into a 5 series for an HTPC, or am I going to see better quality out of using my Audigy through an nvidia card?
jeremyshaw
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iirc, Audigy cards are software processing. Maybe I'm confusing this with the Creative Soundblaster series, but I have an "Audigy SE" on my laptop, and it's definately software.
Anyhow, I don't have a 5xxx card to compare, but my HD4350 does audio just fine.
Easykill1978
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i use the ati hdmi and the sound pass throu is excellent, even 7.1 works a treat.. i make sure my receiver is top notch and the speakers too.. and the digital signals are processed correctly and cleanly.. 
hdmi is digital, and as long as your receiver is good to great quality. .or better yet a unit that reproduces sound that you are happy with. then it wont matter to anyone else.. i have used both the spdif, fibre and hdmi and all sound the same, its pass thru tech and my receiver does all the decoding... soooo great sound all round..
hdmi is digital, and as long as your receiver is good to great quality. .or better yet a unit that reproduces sound that you are happy with. then it wont matter to anyone else.. i have used both the spdif, fibre and hdmi and all sound the same, its pass thru tech and my receiver does all the decoding... soooo great sound all round..
CrimandEvil
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Uh, it should be "how does NV's cards compare to AMD's much better HDMI audio capable video cards?"
NV's newer cards are just now catching up to where ATI/AMD was with their 2000 series video cards. The Audigy sound card (while being completely neutered since Vista and only works in software mode now) only works in the most basic way. It would be like getting an X-FI just to process windows OS sounds.
You're comparing one card that is completely capable of decoding TrueHD, DTS-MA and other HD audio sources found on Blu Ray discs and sends it out over HDMI to your receiver.
NV's card, on the other hand, just found the ability to do DVD era 5.1 audio over the PCIe bus without needing to use a SPDIF cable and 7.1 LPCM audio. It still needs an audio codec so it defaults to the onboard audio. The point is, is that it's nothing special now and hardly worth anyone's time.
NV's newer cards are just now catching up to where ATI/AMD was with their 2000 series video cards. The Audigy sound card (while being completely neutered since Vista and only works in software mode now) only works in the most basic way. It would be like getting an X-FI just to process windows OS sounds.
You're comparing one card that is completely capable of decoding TrueHD, DTS-MA and other HD audio sources found on Blu Ray discs and sends it out over HDMI to your receiver.
NV's card, on the other hand, just found the ability to do DVD era 5.1 audio over the PCIe bus without needing to use a SPDIF cable and 7.1 LPCM audio. It still needs an audio codec so it defaults to the onboard audio. The point is, is that it's nothing special now and hardly worth anyone's time.
jeremyshaw
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So the g210 and the gt220 still use the onboard audio somehow? How does that work?
Menelmarar
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It depends on the Audigy model. Just like some X-Fi's have hardware processing and the fancy not-so-new-anymore X-Fi DSP, and some are rebadged Audigy SE's. Where do you think nVidia learned their renaming game from ;-)
If you are talking about digital and bitstreaming you are just passing it through. Your audigy card isn't doing anything. You won't want your computer decoding the audio. Whatever card can just pass it out to your receiver will work. You want your receiver to do the work.
On my BD rips I rip the TrueHD and DTS-HD to lossless FLAC and pass out LPCM. Again, sound card isn't doing anything, just sending it out.
And has been said already, the question isn't how do ATI cards compare to Nvidia. It's how does Nvidia compare to ATI. ATI has been doing this a long time and only just now has Nvidia released their first discrete cards that can pass audio over HDMI.
ATI is already on to bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-HD MA.
On my BD rips I rip the TrueHD and DTS-HD to lossless FLAC and pass out LPCM. Again, sound card isn't doing anything, just sending it out.
And has been said already, the question isn't how do ATI cards compare to Nvidia. It's how does Nvidia compare to ATI. ATI has been doing this a long time and only just now has Nvidia released their first discrete cards that can pass audio over HDMI.
ATI is already on to bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-HD MA.
as soon as they come out with a low power 5 series card, or an onboard solution, i am all over it. bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-HD MA is going to be awesome, i cant wait to try it. i am using the nvidia 8300 onboard solution, and it works great, 8 channel lpcm, but the main difference is it will not do the hd audio formats. not a huge deal for some, but if you are an audio geek wanting to try out the new soundtracks on blu ray, it is awesome. hell all this talk makes me want to go out and buy a 5850
as soon as they come out with a low power 5 series card, or an onboard solution, i am all over it. bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-HD MA is going to be awesome, i cant wait to try it. i am using the nvidia 8300 onboard solution, and it works great, 8 channel lpcm, but the main difference is it will not do the hd audio formats. not a huge deal for some, but if you are an audio geek wanting to try out the new soundtracks on blu ray, it is awesome. hell all this talk makes me want to go out and buy a 5850
If you have the storage space now you can make your own BD rips with lossless flac of trueHD and DTS-MA HD and get 100% of the audio over LPCM right now.
The only reason bitstreaming becomes important is if you want to play the actual disc itself or don't have the storage space for rips.
heh, i was just about to edit my post and ask you about ripping the hd audio tracks. what are you using to rip? i guess i will have to do some research on this tonight, i would like to try it. can you tell a difference in audio quality with the new hd soundtracks, vs the non hd?
I can tell, yes. But I do have a large room, full 7.1 and large speakers. Nothing too fancy in terms of speakers or receiver but it works well enough for me to notice a difference.
I use eac3to to rip. It's command line but there are GUI's for it. I just select the video track and rip to MKV, audio track to FLAC, subtitles to sup.
Then I use bdsup2sub and load the subtitles. I'm looking for forced subtitles. If there aren't any then I delete them. If there are those get added in the next step.
Then I use mkvmerge. I drop the mkv and flac files in it. The sub file if there were any forced subtitles and then hit merge. Done.
Guide is here with links to files: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1033822
You will need arcsoft tmt so you can get lossless dts-hd ma. It's the only way to get 100% of the audio. The trial version in that guide is fine. You just have it installed for the codecs. Not to actually use the players. This will be used in decoding the dts-hd ma so you get 100% of it.
You also need anydvdhd to break the copy protection.
I can confirm this. I'm using a Galaxy Geforce Series 210 512mb PCI-E card and there's no extra power or sound cables. Plug in your HDMI cable and Win7 automagically found a 7.1 sound chip on the GFX card and you're good to go.
thats IF you can figure out how to make the SPDIF work, I tried with my GTX 280 and failed. So now i has to use my PC speakers from the adjacent room for my htpc.
In tems of audio ATI is better. Without a doubt. And by saying that what I mean is ATI now supports bitstreaming of HD audio formats. If you don't care about then it doesn't matter. I get that audio via LPCM. 100% lossless so that doesn't mean much to me. Though it certainly does to others.
Nvidia seems to be performing better in video. Cuda seems to do better than DXVA and is more forgiving. CPU utilization is lower.
ATI does poorly with the new flash 10.1 beta. Some scenes it has problems with. One of the waterfall and another huge flock of bird scene in planet earth.
Who is going to be running a system with a 5000 series card that will need to depending on the GPU to accelerate flash video? That's pretty silly... Any 5000 series card will match or beat any the Nvidia high end cards for HTPC/Video use--and I use both companies' hardware in my PCs. You can pretty much say the same for any Radeon 4670 and up as well.
It's not just flash video it has issues with. Those scenes in planet earth to name a few. There is some explanation here: http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/
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Snowknight26
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And you can just as easily encode a clip from Planet Earth that ATI cards don't have issues with, so your point is invalid.
I have h.264 MKV and VC1 versions, both with multi-channel audio, of Planet Earth ripped to my hard drive that my Radeon 4850 and 4670 cards had absolutely no problems with whatsoever using MPC-HC several months ago.
If there's any valid issue at all that may be happening with the current 5000 series cards, it's most likely a driver issue due that will be resolved in short order. The hardware on these cards is pretty [H]ardcore.
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Not invalid at all. What if it's a copy you download?(not that I would advocate such a thing) I have a lot of content from different sources, different rips, different encodes, etc. that i've amassed over the years.
Why should a person have to jump through hoops to get something to work with just one thing? I'd rather have more freedom in my encodes. I don't want to have to rip and encode a certain way for one card and something for another I may get later on. I'd rather adopt the highest quality most standard approach. I don't want to be locked into a certain player either. That's just me though.
For me it's a deal breaker, for you and others it may not be.
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Snowknight26
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Of course it doesn't have any problems, and it shouldn't. You're comparing the video from a Blu-ray to the video that someone reencoded from said Blu-ray.
Isn't that what you're arguing against? Because if you get it to work with just one thing (assuming ATI cards), then it will obviously work with NVIDIA cards.
More freedom in encoding but less freedom with regards to what will play it with DXVA. Seems a bit illogical. Plus, the quality benefits of using several more reference frames for H.264 so that an NVIDIA card will play it but not an ATI card is extremely low, well under 1%.
But that's exactly what you're doing right now. You're making it so only NVIDIA, and not ATI or Intel, cards can benefit from DXVA by using encoding them 'a certain way.' You're locking yourself into the card, which is what you say you don't want to do? The baseline should be the standard, and the standard for DXVA with H.264 is to abide by the max settings you're allowed under Level 4.1. NVIDIA being able to do over that is just a bonus, which apparently you seem to be using as baseline.
I'm not using an Nvidia card. Well, not in my main HTPC. I have a 8500gt in the kids HTPC. And I do have one in my desktop.
I wouldn't make my rips with L5.1, Personally, I don't re-encode at all.
But there are rips out there than are L5.1
Thus the nvidia cards are for forgiving of issues. And CUDA seems to take a greater load off the CPU than DXVA. If you care about that. My CPU is more than fast enough.
If you made 100% of your own rips then it wouldn't matter. You could make them how they work for your hardware. But like I said, I have content from many different sources. So I would want something that could handle everything, even if it was encoded in a way that I would not choose myself. Thus giving me more freedom of content.
If I was playing bluray discs directly on my HTPC than I would absolutely get the ATI 5000 series. But I only play rips and LPCM. and don't need the bitstreaming on it. So in that case i'd choose an nvidia 220GT. But i've blown my budget on server upgrades, desktop upgrades and a HTPC for the kids so no more goodies for awhile.
I wouldn't make my rips with L5.1, Personally, I don't re-encode at all.
But there are rips out there than are L5.1
Thus the nvidia cards are for forgiving of issues. And CUDA seems to take a greater load off the CPU than DXVA. If you care about that. My CPU is more than fast enough.
If you made 100% of your own rips then it wouldn't matter. You could make them how they work for your hardware. But like I said, I have content from many different sources. So I would want something that could handle everything, even if it was encoded in a way that I would not choose myself. Thus giving me more freedom of content.
If I was playing bluray discs directly on my HTPC than I would absolutely get the ATI 5000 series. But I only play rips and LPCM. and don't need the bitstreaming on it. So in that case i'd choose an nvidia 220GT. But i've blown my budget on server upgrades, desktop upgrades and a HTPC for the kids so no more goodies for awhile.
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Snowknight26
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It actually doesn't, but anyway..
If you aren't in control of the way the content is made (or more specifically, content that doesn't work well on ATI/Intel hardware), then sure, I agree that an NVIDIA card would be your best choice.
Snowknight26-- You MUST learn to read...
"I have h.264 MKV and VC1 versions, both with multi-channel audio, of Planet Earth ripped to my hard drive that my Radeon 4850 and 4670 cards had absolutely no problems with whatsoever using MPC-HC several months ago."
Where in there did you interperate that I didn't have an encoded MKV version? I have BOTH types of versions that I was able to play. That was the entire purpose of my statement.
"I have h.264 MKV and VC1 versions, both with multi-channel audio, of Planet Earth ripped to my hard drive that my Radeon 4850 and 4670 cards had absolutely no problems with whatsoever using MPC-HC several months ago."
Where in there did you interperate that I didn't have an encoded MKV version? I have BOTH types of versions that I was able to play. That was the entire purpose of my statement.
Snowknight26
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And yet what you failed to point out is didn't clearly state that you did have a user-made encode. For all I know, you could have simply remuxed the H.264 US Discovery Channel edition Blu-ray to MKV, just like you could have possibly done with the VC-1 US BBC edition Blu-ray.