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onboard vs dedicated for fine quality

A

anferne85

n00b
Joined
Feb 15, 2011
Messages
57
Hey all.

Looking to build a htpc with an Intel i3 4330 and asrock z87 extreme6 board.

Now if I was a real quality enthusiast, would using a 2g gtx 750 give me better picture quality for tv, bluray and general streaming over the onboard Gfx and why, why not ? Would it even provide a 5% better picture? (connecting via hdmi 1.4 and want 4 k ability)

Cheers
 
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It wont provide any difference.

Why not?

Because the HTPC is just doing math (decoding the digital video format). Both a GTX 750 and an onboard GPU or a CPU for that matter (sia software decoding) will get the same "answer" (the decoded video stream with the exact same output bits)

The GTX 750 will get it done faster sure, but as long as the CPU or onboard GPU get it done faster than the duration of the video then there is no problem and it can play smoothly all the same.
 
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In the past the Intel integrated stuff had a problem with displaying 60p correctly so you would get frame skipping every x frames. I do however think that at this point that has been resolved in the latest drivers or at least the hd4000 series. If you were to use the geforce you might be able to add some post processing goodies to your media, but unless you are really into that stuff I would think its a wash between the two. At 4k this stuff might be compounded as I would imagine that the horsepower to drive that resolution might tax the system harder.

That being said, I have a Radeon 290 in my media center and other than the color profiles being different, I cannot really notice a difference in casual playback (1080p) between that and the 4770k onboard.
 
I just built a new htpc with a G3220 and MSI Z87M-G43 w/ 4GB DDR3 and a Crucial M500 240GB SSD.

so far video playback has been excellent just using the intel HD video... low heat, low noise, low power draw ...quite pleased..
 
anferne85 said:
Now if I was a real quality enthusiast, would using a 2g gtx 750 give me better picture quality for tv, bluray and general streaming over the onboard Gfx and why, why not ?
Click to expand...

Yes, because you could run madVR with higher settings and madVR is a must if you care about HTPC picture quality.
 
Meeho said:
Yes, because you could run madVR with higher settings and madVR is a must if you care about HTPC picture quality.
Click to expand...

a little research tells me that the madVR drivers dont make alot of difference to quality, anyone else had experience with this ?
 
Meeho said:
Yes, because you could run madVR with higher settings and madVR is a must if you care about HTPC picture quality.
Click to expand...

Depends on what you're watching.

If you're watching 1080 native content then madVR does you no good.
 
The only "gadget" I install for video is smooth video project to give high quality interpolation and WASAPI audio out.
I use it for all video except 1080p 3D because HDMI doesnt have the bandwidth to support 60fps 1080p 3D.

It comes with a suite of software including the latest versions of MPC HC, MadVR if you want it, ffdshow, Reclock...
http://www.svp-team.com/
The faster your CPU the better.
 
Getting dedicated GPU won't be doing much. I have madVR on max settings and while it uses a lot of power I don't much picture quality improvement. If the source is mediocre a renderer can only do so much.
 
Im sure this has been covered in depth in other posts or areas, but I ran MadVR with SVP on high settings and my 720p content improved in picture quality and smoothness quite a bit, downside is that it requires a i5 2500k @ 50% load and a amd 5770 at 20% load therefore creating a fair amount of heat and possibly noise for a HTPC.

I could definitley see an improvement in pic quality especially for movies 1.5gig in size and above.
 
anferne85 said:
Im sure this has been covered in depth in other posts or areas, but I ran MadVR with SVP on high settings and my 720p content improved in picture quality and smoothness quite a bit, downside is that it requires a i5 2500k @ 50% load and a amd 5770 at 20% load therefore creating a fair amount of heat and possibly noise for a HTPC.

I could definitley see an improvement in pic quality especially for movies 1.5gig in size and above.
Click to expand...

Did you mean 1.5 and below, or above? Would assume that the larger the file size, the better the quality, and the less impact that MadVR has.
 
Ryokurin said:
I wouldn't say it does no good, it's just a bit harder to notice. as ringing and other compression artifacts are harder to see. There's some screenshots here which point it out. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1663611
Click to expand...

Ringing is an artifact of up-scaling. If you are playing 1080p content on a 1080p TV then you are not doing any up-scaling.

The screenshots there are playing 1080p content on even higher resolution displays like 1440p 1600p and 2160p.

Very, very few people are doing this with their HTPC right now. But it will become relevant when people start using 4K displays.

Though it's a lot easier to up-sample 1080p to 4K than stuff like 720p -> 1080p because 4K is a multiple of 2 over 1080p.
 
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Lots of opinions and some misinformation on this thread, so I'll chime in with my experiences.

A lot of what you're reading is completely dependent on your situation OP. To answer your main question, no, you won't notice a difference with a dedicated card utilizing software that uses hardware acceleration to render, such as xbmc or vlc.

That being said, MadVR is fantastic, I use it on my main HTPC and absolutely love it. Does it provide a MASSIVE boost in visual fidelity? No, I wouldn't say massive, though it really does shine in DVD material upscaled to 1080p. It does more than that though, it uses 16-bit processing utilizing the graphics card's shaders for any sort of scaling or conversion of colors (YCbCr -> RGB conversion) along with things such as taking care of banding issues and diffusion. It's very configurable to suit your tastes which makes it a lot of fun to setup and play with if you have the time.

This is more for anyone out there considering madvr; first you should answer a few questions for yourself:

What size is your TV?
How far away do you sit?
Are you willing/able to put forth the time to learn a lot of neat options when it comes to video rendering and set them up? Do you want to?
Are you willing to spend extra on a graphics card for a small increase in video quality? I have an msi 270x (do not recommend, the fans fail quickly) that does a great job with madvr and also mines X11 cryptos when I'm not using it as an HTPC.
madvr requires windows, is this an issue for you?

All things to consider, which brings me to my point. For the OP, I wouldn't bother. You have a 720p tv, you'd probably be better off putting the money towards a newer tv at some point in time. Unless it's an absolutely massive big screen? I think the bigger the screen/the closer you sit to it, the more something like madvr matters. I would never bother for something like a kitchen tv, but if it's the main tv in the house (a 70 incher hanging on the wall in the main room) I would definitely recommend it if you can answer the questions above to your satisfaction.

Stick with the processor graphics OP, haswell has fantastic 23.96 handling. You CAN use madvr with haswell built in graphics, I just don't know what kind of performance you'd get. Also, I absolutely abhor frame interpolation, it makes me nauseous and dizzy. I have visual "disturbances" similar to how frame interpolation looks (like things are moving more fluid than the should realistically be able to) that I get when I'm REALLY stressed out though.
 
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I just tried MadVR for the first time by ticking the option during the installation of SVP (Smooth Video Project) I mentioned earlier.
I immediately noticed a loss of detail on 1080p material and the colours seemed a bit strong/gaudy.
So dived into the settings and under :
* Rendering / trade quality for performance
I turned off all the CPU saving settings and the quality is superb.
Thanks for the headsup guys, colours are vibrant but not overblown and I get more detail than originally.

I tried the smooth motion option but SVP is a lot better, it would have been nice to have an even easier solution.
 
Nenu said:
I just tried MadVR for the first time by ticking the option during the installation of SVP (Smooth Video Project) I mentioned earlier.
I immediately noticed a loss of detail on 1080p material and the colours seemed a bit strong/gaudy.
So dived into the settings and under :
* Rendering / trade quality for performance
I turned off all the CPU saving settings and the quality is superb.
Thanks for the headsup guys, colours are vibrant but not overblown and I get more detail than originally.

I tried the smooth motion option but SVP is a lot better, it would have been nice to have an even easier solution.
Click to expand...

SVP and smooth motion are different. Madvr smooth motion is designed to take care of judder at refresh rates that aren't a multiple of the video FPS (such as 60hz trying to play 24fps material). SVP is motion interpolation.
 
SirMaster said:
Ringing is an artifact of up-scaling. If you are playing 1080p content on a 1080p TV then you are not doing any up-scaling.

The screenshots there are playing 1080p content on even higher resolution displays like 1440p 1600p and 2160p.

Very, very few people are doing this with their HTPC right now. But it will become relevant when people start using 4K displays.

Though it's a lot easier to up-sample 1080p to 4K than stuff like 720p -> 1080p because 4K is a multiple of 2 over 1080p.
Click to expand...

Ringing can also occur on overly compressed streams, like over cable I use MadVR to help alleviate that for recorded shows, and some other web content. it also would be relevant in up-scaling DVD content to 1080p
 
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