4K60 FPS VP9 decoding performance

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The Stilt

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2015
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Neither has AMD, by the way..

There are no AMD GPUs which support VP9 hardware decoding. The most recent APUs (Bristol, Stoney and potentially Carrizo) and Polaris will have OpenCL assisted software decoding at some point, however it doesn't go through DXVA2 or D3D11.
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
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There are no AMD GPUs which support VP9 hardware decoding. The most recent APUs (Bristol, Stoney and potentially Carrizo) and Polaris will have OpenCL assisted software decoding at some point, however it doesn't go through DXVA2 or D3D11.

Nope, Polaris does. Although I suspect AV1 will begin to pick up traction over both VP9 and HEVC.
 

The Stilt

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2015
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Nope, Polaris does.

Ellesmere and Baffin implement UVD 6.3, which has no VP9 support what so ever. Decoding through shaders (OpenCL) only and that's not enabled in the driver yet.
GFX 9 IP should be the first ones with fixed function HW for VP9.

dxvac.png
 

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
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Nope, Polaris does. Although I suspect AV1 will begin to pick up traction over both VP9 and HEVC.
Polaris does not, just open up DXVA checker yourself if you have a Polaris card.

cnGZTwH.jpg



Compared to Pascal

GKs4kcU.jpg



Note the VP9_VLD_Profile0 which supports SD through 8K on the GTX 1060. No such decoder devices are detected on Polaris.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
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My 2500K@4.5ghz is unable to play it at 4K@60 smoothly in Chrome. In Firefox, the video gives an error. Haven't tried in Edge.

Lots. And I mean lots of dropped frames. Something like 1500/4000 dropped frames.

Wow, I am utterly shocked. Looks like I need a new platform upgrade. Btw my GTX1070 was sitting around 13% gpu usage. Doesn't Pascal have hardware VP9 decoding?

Yes Pascal has VP9 decoding, but you currently need the Windows 10 Anniversary updated Edge browser to use it..
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
3,477
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There are no AMD GPUs which support VP9 hardware decoding. The most recent APUs (Bristol, Stoney and potentially Carrizo) and Polaris will have OpenCL assisted software decoding at some point, however it doesn't go through DXVA2 or D3D11.
Sure as hell this slide was misleading then. Perhaps you're right, I don't have Polaris on hand.

90530341826928927486.png

Source.
 

bigboxes

Lifer
Apr 6, 2002
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My 4790K setup plays it buttery smooth. Usually in the 30's with stretches in the 40's and 50's. Ram usage just shy of 8GB. I'm not much of a gamer, but that was sweet OP! I love seeing what hardware can do. Note: I'm on Win7. That only supports DX11. Does that make a difference in the playback of this 4k video?
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
6,841
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Sure as hell this slide was misleading then. Perhaps you're right, I don't have Polaris on hand.
Source.

That link you posted says that VP9 hardware decoding will be coming in a future driver release. So perhaps Polaris does support VP9, but it's not enabled yet in the drivers.

My 4790K setup plays it buttery smooth. Usually in the 30's with stretches in the 40's and 50's. Ram usage just shy of 8GB. I'm not much of a gamer, but that was sweet OP! I love seeing what hardware can do. Note: I'm on Win7. That only supports DX11. Does that make a difference in the playback of this 4k video?

It shouldn't make a difference. The greatest factors are going to be what kind of browser you're using, and whether you're using hardware decoding or not.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
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The latest update for Chrome includes hardware accelerated VP9 decoding. Just tested it out on the video in my OP, and it definitely works. Not as good as Edge's hardware acceleration though. Chrome uses more of my GPU's clock speed when decoding, whilst still dropping frames. Edge on the other hand uses less GPU, and doesn't drop any frames at all. This should give Edge a noticeable boost in energy efficiency, and Edge is already the most energy efficient browser..
 
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NostaSeronx

Diamond Member
Sep 18, 2011
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GFX 9 IP should be the first ones with fixed function HW for VP9.
Bristol Ridge, Stoney Ridge, Polaris 10, Polaris 11 all have VP9 4K60 fps decode support.

va2cPyG.png


w/ WHQL drivers since 16.7.3.. if non-WHQL then no VP9 for anyone.
16.7.3 -> WHQL
16.9.2 -> WHQL
So only two drivers actually sport Fixed Function HW VP9 decode. The actually hardware used for fixed function allows for Profile 3 - 10-bit/444; http://www.webmproject.org/vp9/profiles/
 

The Stilt

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2015
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I would rather be seaching "Ittiam" from the new drivers than enablement for the "fixed function VP9 hardware" ;)
 

nathanddrews

Graphics Cards, CPU Moderator
Aug 9, 2016
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www.youtube.com
Just tested the BF1 4K60 video on my new work computer in Chrome 64-bit:

i5-6600
16GB RAM
R5 340X

0 dropped frames, 30% CPU usage.

Unfortunately I lack the ability to tweak or change much due to IT security hysteria.
 

anvi

Junior Member
Sep 17, 2007
1
0
61
Hello,

Just wanted to contribute by informing that i3-6100 can decode 4k60fps VP9 perfectly with Edge browser. You have to enable vp9 in flags settings tho.
CPU usage is around 40-60%.

Proof:


Firefox and Chrome "sort of work". Both have 100% GPU usage, but still drop a lot of frames. Firefox requires enabling intel decoder in about:flags to do any VP9 decoding.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,583
996
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5930K with MCE enabled, around 35% with a GT 730. This is why I don't recommend dual cores anymore. Look at the Internet in 2008 with a Core 2 E8400 and the internet in 2016 with a similar chip - it will not last as the Internet gets fatter and fatter. This is also hilarious for those who bought one of those pansy Core M macbooks from Apple, in a year or two they will start to bog down.

Again, for a desktop an i5 6500 minimum, and for a laptop the most recent CPU gen i5 as an absolute minimum (yes I know they are dual core but most laptops suck balls anyway) if not an HQ i7.
If proper hardware decode is included, then dual core should be fine.

Skylake vs Kaby Lake video playback on U.

http://gizmodo.com/intels-new-kaby-lake-processors-what-you-need-to-know-1785889498/amp

xxvj0mfnsnzk4m1nbbxa.png


fy2u1iconx5k8feovnot.png


BTW, I'm running a Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz as my primary laptop. Not uber speedy and won't do 4K video but otherwise works fine. I'll upgrade soon but I won't upgrade to Skylake though. Minimum Kaby Lake for the above reason.
 
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The Stilt

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2015
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Just checked on Carrizo... Pretty stupid move from AMD not to allow VP9 acceleration on other APUs besides Bristol and Stoney Ridge. For example Kaveri could surely use the same decoder, since it is GCN based and OpenCL 2.0 compliant... amf-mft-decvp9-decoder** .dll spills all of the necessary "beans". Not a big issue since the more recent SW decoder versions are pretty fast.
 

SpaceBeer

Senior member
Apr 2, 2016
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If AMD can use openCL in their drivers to speed up VP9 decoding to be almost as fast/efficient as hardware ones in Skylake and Pascal, could software developers also implement openCL in their applications? So we don't have to look for footnotes when buying new GPU or wait for driver updates. Instead, just to be sure we are using latest version of Firefox or VLC or whatever
 

The Stilt

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2015
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Sure, since it is available through DXVA. OpenCL solutions never match true hardware implementation in terms of performance or power efficiency, so a true decoding capability is highly preferred. VP9 is inferior format and it needs to die, sooner the better. Unfortunately it was chosen by Google and their muscle guarantees that it's departure won't be as swift as one could hope. If your CPU cannot decode VP9 at 1080P regardless of the bitrate, it is pretty much useless for anything else too.
 

mnewsham

Lifer
Oct 2, 2010
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