Pretty good article on ATI's AVIVO and nVidia's Pure Video

[Hulk]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...ted/index.html


Probably worth a look if you have a video card with this hardware feature. I learned a few things.

[Helevitia]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...ted/index.html


Probably worth a look if you have a video card with this hardware feature. I learned a few things.

I learned a lot of things. Check out this article for more info. http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...deo-dissected/ I'd love to know if anyone knows how much of this carries over to H.264 hardware acceleration? Thanks!

[Dr Mordrid]

@Helevitia

A lot of this carries over to H.264.

I recently swapped an older X-600 AIW (non-AVIVO) for an X-1900 (AVIVO) AIW, both PCIe 16x. The H/W acceleration was much faster/better.

Compared to the H/W acceleration on my sons NVIDIA rig it was also faster/better.

That said;

I'm not a big TH fan, but the DVD playback issue he has nailed. What you need to know after 11 pages;

Without hardware acceleration, CPU utilization hovered between about 16 to 30%. But when (ATI) Avivo's hardware acceleration was enabled, it dropped to about 2 to 8%. That's a pretty big difference.

Conversely, when (NVIDIA) Purevideo's hardware acceleration was enabled, CPU utilization INCREASED to between 30 and 45%.

But frankly, when it comes to DVD playback with these cards, Avivo is vastly superior. It's not perfect, but even with its quirks it stands head and shoulders above Purevideo for the following two simple reasons:

Pulldown Detection. Purevideo requires the user to pay extra for the Purevideo decoder in order to enable pulldown detection, while Avivo comes with this ability for no extra charge. 3:2 pulldown detection is a pretty darned important feature when watching DVDs, you're definitely going to notice a quality loss without it.

Noise Reduction. Purevideo offers absolutely no noise reduction. Avivo offers excellent noise reduction. Noise reduction is another quality feature that will make a big impact on the visual quality you experience when watching DVDs on a PC.

NOTE: to get full NVIDIA PureVideo functionality you have to pay $19.95, $29.95 or $49.95, depending on the audio options.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html

Sorry, but this whole concept just blows.

For a second we're going to mention the companies who provide the excellent DVD playing software out there. Guys, you're doing a great job and these players work fine, but we can't help but wonder - why no automatic hardware detection?

When testing on both Cyberlink's PowerDVD 6 and Nero 7 Showtime, we had to seek out the hardware acceleration option and enable it. Is there a reason these players couldn't check the hardware and set this option on startup? I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't want hardware acceleration enabled if it's available.

This is no fault of Avivo or Purevideo, but I'm sure there are a lot of media PCs out there whose owners assume these cards are providing all of the visual quality features they've been reading about - and have no idea that it's turned off. It's time for developers of DVD playing software to step up to the plate in this regard and start detecting the available hardware, or at the very least inform the user about the option in a better way. 'Nuff said.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Actually, he's just plain wrong. Noise reduction, edge enhancement, and pulldown detection (inverse telecine) are all part of the drivers, you don't need the Purevideo decoder to take advantage of them. Also, the Purevideo decoder does indeed reduce processor usage compared to software decoding, just verified that myself.

[Helevitia]

Hi Doc, what I meant was, how much do these features carry over to H.264? I already know that Nvidia uses less CPU than ATI when doing H.264 1080P, but how do things like image quality, 3:2 pulldown, etc.. look with H.264?

[Helevitia]

LOL! I just realized I posted the same article as Hulk I thought he had posted the article from Anandtech. This one to be exact.

[Dr Mordrid]

Hi Doc, what I meant was, how much do these features carry over to H.264? I already know that Nvidia uses less CPU than ATI when doing H.264 1080P, but how do things like image quality, 3:2 pulldown, etc.. look with H.264?

Good so far.

I do find Anands take on encoding a bit naive;

The encoding process takes more work as well, and we've been told that this is part of the reason we haven't seen many H.264 BD movies before now. When getting a movie ready for sale, studios will encode it many times and have people to view every frame of video and make sure nothing needs to be cleaned up. Every time a problem is found, the entire movie must be encoded again. It takes significantly more time to do this with H.264 than with MPEG-2. Fortunately, it seems that studios are making the sacrifices they need to make in order to bring a better experience to the end user.

Guess he doesn't know about high end multi-pass encoders (Apples is a 7-pass) that let troublesome GOP's be re-coded independently then patched into already encoded scenes. I highly doubt that studios don't have H.264 versions of these.

[Fluff]

May I ask why the computer monitor cannot auto sync to the video source, rather than graphics card clock?

29.97 fps. This is for NTSC. For pal, use 25 fps

Why is there no option for a refresh rate of 59.94Hz?

[Hulk]

Doc,

Which player are you using with the AIW X1900? I have the same card and am using Nero Showtime 2. I have "use hardware acceleration" ticked but I'm not sure it's working.

Anand and the boys over there are really, really keen with CPU technology, servers, etc... video is where they are weakest IMO. But I have to say I've been an "Anandtecher" since the beginning. Love Anand's writing style. Some great people on those boards too.

- Mark

[Jerry Jones]

APPLE's computers are interesting, in this regard.

They give you quite a few choices, including the ATI Radeon X1900 XT (512MB).

http://www.apple.com/macpro/graphics.html

Thanks to the new double-wide PCI Express graphics slot, no matter which card you have installed as your primary graphics card, your Mac Pro still provides room for three additional PCI Express expansion cards. In all, Mac Pro lets you install up to four PCI Express graphics cards. Providing support for up to eight displays simultaneously, Mac Pro offers an ideal solution for advanced visualization projects and large display walls. You don’t need a clear day to see forever. You just need a new Mac Pro.

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/graphics.html

Then there’s the not-so-subtle ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with up to 256MB of dedicated graphics memory. Designed for high-performance portables, this graphics powerhouse packs more punch into a much smaller space. The X1600 can push data through 12 pixel shader pipelines and five vertex processors on the 16-lane PCI Express bus interface.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

@Hulk

My AIW's come with the MMC player, but I also use Nero 7's. Make sure you turn ON h/w acceleration in the player prefs as hardly any turn it on by default.

[Technoid]

ATI Avivo and Nvidia's Purevideo Dissected

Don Woligroski

December 18, 2006 07:52

Story removed.

heh

Nvidia seems to have disliked it