GeForce 6 series video processor OFFICIAL THREAD

[Squally Leonharty]

Just wondering, though, but if you enable sound in the Step Into Liquid trailer, do you also get smooth sound playback or is it stuttering, despite the smooth video playback? That's what I'm getting: 100% CPU usage with smooth video playback, but with sound stuttering (X800XT PE).

 

[fbrdphreak]

If this is your "Phoenix" rig, its probly due to your crap-@$$ integrated sound. From my experience, that junk will stutter if you play two pr0n movies at once

 

[Squally Leonharty]

Yes, it's indeed the Phoenix rig. xD

Anyway, I could have guessed as much, but in fact, I thought the influence of an integrated sound solution was rather minimal when it comes to CPU usage (never had a problem in games or regular movies, etc.). Well, it's very unlikely that such big movies come out soon for PC, so I don't need to worry about that, fortunately. Thanks for the reply.

Might buy some good audio card in the near future, though.

 

[redDragon128]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior

Originally posted by: redDragon128
well, all I can say is I'll believe it when I see it .

Work with me, RD! I'm trying to be POSITIVE! TBH, I'll be amazed if NV pulls it off after all this time.

Yea, I mean nvidia may be trying to avoid us, but I bet you the poor engineers are getting quite some pressure from the guys at the top, so I doubt that it's that they haven't been working on it. Programming (afaik) is not like building a skyscraper where you get a few feet higher every day. It's more like u build it and it works or doesn't work. :-/. Sure debugging takes a freakin long time and all, but I also bet that nvidia has a huge team of some of the best programmers around. They should be able to figure it out in a reasonable amount of time (ie. not 8 months). Can't do it in 8mths? Probably can't be done. December 20th? I wouldn't be surprised if instead of drivers they release their next gen cards. Then who will care? I'm not sure many will.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: redDragon128

Originally posted by: HardWarrior

Originally posted by: redDragon128
well, all I can say is I'll believe it when I see it .

Work with me, RD! I'm trying to be POSITIVE! TBH, I'll be amazed if NV pulls it off after all this time.

Yea, I mean nvidia may be trying to avoid us, but I bet you the poor engineers are getting quite some pressure from the guys at the top, so I doubt that it's that they haven't been working on it. Programming (afaik) is not like building a skyscraper where you get a few feet higher every day. It's more like u build it and it works or doesn't work. :-/. Sure debugging takes a freakin long time and all, but I also bet that nvidia has a huge team of some of the best programmers around. They should be able to figure it out in a reasonable amount of time (ie. not 8 months). Can't do it in 8mths? Probably can't be done. December 20th? I wouldn't be surprised if instead of drivers they release their next gen cards. Then who will care? I'm not sure many will.

Yeah, coders are "special people" indeed. Over 20-years I've watched them struggle with development and maintenance on everything from Big Iron to PC-based networks to hyper-sophisticated Unix clusters, and it never seems to get any easier. The way I understand it, driver coding is even more difficult do to lack of sophisticated tools that are common for higher level systems programming. I think NV is up to the task though, I mean just look at how new drivers appear on such a regular basis. The flip side of this is that since they obviously have the expertise, why haven't they been able to fix the 6800 after 6+ months of trying? It's our job to keep this alive, even if they do release a 6800 refresh instead of a fix for the problem they created.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

The flip side of this is that since they obviously have the expertise, why haven't they been able to fix the 6800 after 6+ months of trying? It's our job to keep this alive, even if they do release a 6800 refresh instead of a fix for the problem they created.

I think with SLI, and now it would appear a new Soundstorm solution in the works that may well be integrated into the graphice card from the hints dropped, that they have all their resources focused elsewhere.

There is very little WMV HD content for now, and other media playback is fine because even an older CPU can handle it no problem, so they probably didn't see it as worrisome or a big priority. It is just us damned niche' people who actually know what the product was claimed to be capable of that seem to expect them to deliver on it

The nV employees probably make comments along the lines of "WTF! There is almost nothing to watch in WMV HD 1080 and these a-holes are throwing a fit about it!?! Get a life you losers!" "So what if there is almost zero acceleration for decoding, let alone encoding which requires 3rd party support, you don't need it yet anyways!" If you really want it buy our 6600series cards and STFU you whiners!" "Oh! Don't forget to grab a nice new nF4 SLI board to go with the two we will make you buy to get some gaming performance back" J/K

 

[CU]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: CU
When I was running my old 8500 I only dropped about 3-5 fps, but now with my 6800nu I drop everything but 3-5 fps. Hurray for progress. My games run alot faster now though.

An older P4@2.4ghz on a single channel board doesn't get the job done eh? Do you have fastwrites enabled?

No fastwrites are off with my 6800nu. DoomIII stutters when it is on. It was on and worked fine with my 8500.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

That is your problem with the playback CU, fastwrites has to be on to get exceptable playback. Just turn it on, run the trailer, watch it play smoothly *I'm fairly certain* then you can turn it off again

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
The nV employees probably make comments along the lines of "WTF! There is almost nothing to watch in WMV HD 1080 and these a-holes are throwing a fit about it!?! Get a life you losers!" "So what if there is almost zero acceleration for decoding, let alone encoding which requires 3rd party support, you don't need it yet anyways!" If you really want it buy our 6600series cards and STFU you whiners!" "Oh! Don't forget to grab a nice new nF4 SLI board to go with the two we will make you buy to get some gaming performance back" J/K

"nVidia, we'll play your ass like it's meant to be played!" :laugh: BFG tried the "Well, there's no HD right now anyway!" approach with me when I first called. "Well, what happens when there is?", I asked. "Hold on, I need to speak with a tech..." :Q

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: HardWarrior

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
The nV employees probably make comments along the lines of "WTF! There is almost nothing to watch in WMV HD 1080 and these a-holes are throwing a fit about it!?! Get a life you losers!" "So what if there is almost zero acceleration for decoding, let alone encoding which requires 3rd party support, you don't need it yet anyways!" If you really want it buy our 6600series cards and STFU you whiners!" "Oh! Don't forget to grab a nice new nF4 SLI board to go with the two we will make you buy to get some gaming performance back" J/K

"nVidia, we'll play your ass like it's meant to be played!" :laugh: BFG tried the "Well, there's no HD right now anyway!" approach with me when I first called. "Well, what happens when there is?", I asked. "Hold on, I need to speak with a tech..." :Q

LMAO! I actually like that slogun All I know is if they try the "let them eat cake" shat, they are getting the same reaction she did :evil:

 

[Slaimus]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: mcveigh

Originally posted by: epking

Originally posted by: Genx87
I never really got an explanation on my Step into Liquid would top my CPU out while other HD movies with similar bit rates would be around 50% CPU.

stepintoliquid and alexander are actually true 1920x1080P (as in progressive) This is extremely hard on just your cpu with no assistance from the Video card. It appears that every other dx9 level card, more or less, except for the 6800s, is able to offload some of the strain onto the hardware. Since the VPP is broken on the 6800s, it sends a disproportionate burden onto the CPU compared with other cards, older inferior cards in fact.

what older cards can do hardware WMV decode?

Obviously thier FX5950 could since I was seeing 50-75% with it, now with 6800GT seeing 95-100% CPU and missed frames first run.

All prev-gen GPUs had inverse discrete cosine transformation acceleration. the NV40 dumped this unit and replaced it with a fully programmable standalone processor that do iDCT operations and more. That's why with the VP disabled is far slower. There is no fallback acceleration.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: Slaimus
All prev-gen GPUs had inverse discrete cosine transformation acceleration. the NV40 dumped this unit and replaced it with a fully programmable standalone processor that do iDCT operations and more. That's why with the VP disabled is far slower. There is no fallback acceleration.

Geez, you're good huh? :thumbsup:

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

Originally posted by: HardWarrior

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
The nV employees probably make comments along the lines of "WTF! There is almost nothing to watch in WMV HD 1080 and these a-holes are throwing a fit about it!?! Get a life you losers!" "So what if there is almost zero acceleration for decoding, let alone encoding which requires 3rd party support, you don't need it yet anyways!" If you really want it buy our 6600series cards and STFU you whiners!" "Oh! Don't forget to grab a nice new nF4 SLI board to go with the two we will make you buy to get some gaming performance back" J/K

"nVidia, we'll play your ass like it's meant to be played!" :laugh: BFG tried the "Well, there's no HD right now anyway!" approach with me when I first called. "Well, what happens when there is?", I asked. "Hold on, I need to speak with a tech..." :Q

LMAO! I actually like that slogun All I know is if they try the "let them eat cake" shat, they are getting the same reaction she did :evil:

Heh. The difference is that was a witty bon mot whereas NVIDIA is actually serious.

 

[redDragon128]

ok, so I turned on fastwrites today. I dropped no frames and it stuttered like once. I guess fastwrites does help...whatever it is.

 

[imported_humey]

If u read guides on fastwrites they mostly tell you its older feature and not needed on new mobos/gpu and windows XP, same as cashing ram to bios settings in bios etc etc, ive tried it all on and all of and noticed no diff, so no deff answer in games but it may help the movies as they nevet touched on this, its said ATI still need fastwrite on as we know nvidia moved forward with FX and had probs with new tech process, while ATI have still stayed on old way that will eventyually like nvidida had, hit a wall and need jump over and prob face same probs nvidia had with 5800 range and 5900 range LOL.

Used to be a write up you could read on google called "the state of graphics bla bla bla " pity i cant for love of god find it for past year or so.

Anyone tried these > Download: NVIDIA Forceware 66.97 WHQL over on www.station-drivers.com

Ive been reading above and it seems some are thinking other are moaning about all this from what i read into it, hmm, well for one im going to get nvidia or chaintech to replace my card with next gen or i take to trading standards as it not do what it claims on my box and yes its prim for gamming so what, i also encode although not as much as i used to.

Example, if you bought a fast ferarri and it had book top speed of 200mph, and although this is ilegal to do on the road, you tried it out after you bought and it topped out at 150mph, would you take back to the garage and complain, and would garage tell you, you shouldnt be doing that speed anyhow? (could have tried it on private airfield for all they know)

 

[DAPUNISHER]

This BIOS feature controls the AGP bus' Fast Write capability. Fast Write is a feature which accelerates memory write transactions from the chipset to the AGP device.

Fast Write allows the AGP device act like a PCI device. This allows it to bypass the main memory and directly access the data which improves AGP read performance. However AGP write performance is not affected.

It is recommended that you enable AGP Fast Write for better AGP read performance but disable it if any of your PCI cards start acting funny.

 

[Mister Dark]

Can we get a definitive answer on FastWrite? Yeah or Neah?

 

[epking]

Originally posted by: Chippy99

Originally posted by: redDragon128
However, we do know that the 6800 video processing engine is turned off in the current drivers, for whatever reason.

I would think the "reason" is because if they try to pass any of the decoding to the GPU, the whole thing falls over with its legs in the air? So they had to disable it.

The way I read it is that the video decoding hardware is partially broken. Possibly completely broken, but I dounbt that, since HD Mpeg2's seem to work OK and nVidia are hinting at a fix, which would be hard to do if the hardware was truly borked!

But assuming part of the video decoding hardware is borked, you can imagine what would happen if the driver attempted to pass some work to the GPU: You'd get video corruption perhaps, crashes perhaps, blue screens etc. I can well imagine that this is what nVidia saw for themselves when they tested the silicon first coming off the production line. So they thought, "Oh dear" (paraphrased ;-). And they then disabled the hardware decoding in the driver, hoping no-one would notice for a while. This is my guess.

They have probably been beavering away in the background trying to figure out how to rescue this enormous screw up. So they are (allegedly) soon going to release a driver that will make things better. Well they are probably trying to write a more specific piece of code that can be selective in what tasks it offloads to the GPU. i.e. only get the GPU to do the bits for which the video hardware is actually working OK, and keep the CPU doing the stuff for which the hardware is borked.

That would explain this "not getting as much acceleration as we would have liked" cheesy language. What that can be translated as meaning is "the hardware is stuffed, and we haven't yet figured out what sort of acceleration we're going to get when we write a driver that uses the bits that *do* work".

Pure speculation on my part all this. But heck, its what I think.

Chip

I think this is really nicely put. I think most would agree with your conclusions...all except the most delusional loyalists who still hold that nothing is broken, its just not working yet.

Also, Slaimus...thanks for your great technical explanation, of what I was feebily trying to explain by way of my own experiences:

All prev-gen GPUs had inverse discrete cosine transformation acceleration. the NV40 dumped this unit and replaced it with a fully programmable standalone processor that do iDCT operations and more. That's why with the VP disabled is far slower. There is no fallback acceleration.

This explains perfectly why for example a 5800, or 5900, or a 9500pro or 9800pro will play such videos without a hitch, and now a card nearly twice as fast, cannot handle basic video. Countless people in this thread have reported something like ....i upgraded from a 5700 or a 9800pro, and before it played flawless video, but with this $400 6800 upgrade, now its fuxxored. WTF is going on?"

 

[Demons]

Originally posted by: humey

Anyone tried these > Download: NVIDIA Forceware 66.97 WHQL over on www.station-drivers.com

Hmmmm.... these drivers are navtive only to the Series 6 GPUs (6200-6800). Has anyone tried these yet? Somehow... I doubt these will be our magic drivers but here's hoping! Someone try these and see!

 

[epking]

I posted a link to this thread over at Futuremark forums and a thread I have going over there. Also, I quoted Chippy and Slaimus's replies and gave them credit. Hope no one minds.

FM6800 VPP thread

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Mister Dark
Can we get a definitive answer on FastWrite? Yeah or Neah?

You have to have it on to have any chance of decent playback with a 6800 series card.

 

[imported_humey]

A deff answer to fastwrites for nvidia no we dont know 100% sure as of all conficts on web and if you got a NF2 or newer NF3 or NF4 mobo they say you not need it on unless you got ati gpu cause nvidia already bypass the same thing fastwrites does, by using hardware.

Im staying neutral, i see no good or bad with any the bios settings mentioned that aint the normal ones, like fastwrite / cache bios to ram or is it cache ram to bios (hard to tell from here ) and the aperture size, i set it from 64 to 512 and all inbetween and got no probs.

If anyone finds out a modern deff guide on a trusted site, plz post url here.

http://www.rojakpot.com/ >>>The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Revision 8.0

The above is old at over 1 years and tells you to turn fast writes on, no mention of ATI or NF2 mobos, as i said every damn site conflicts each other.

 

[Chippy99]

Originally posted by: humey
A deff answer to fastwrites for nvidia no we dont know 100% sure as of all conficts on web and if you got a NF2 or newer NF3 or NF4 mobo they say you not need it on unless you got ati gpu cause nvidia already bypass the same thing fastwrites does, by using hardware.

Im staying neutral, i see no good or bad with any the bios settings mentioned that aint the normal ones, like fastwrite / cache bios to ram or is it cache ram to bios (hard to tell from here ) and the aperture size, i set it from 64 to 512 and all inbetween and got no probs.

If anyone finds out a modern deff guide on a trusted site, plz post url here.

http://www.rojakpot.com/ >>>The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Revision 8.0

The above is old at over 1 years and tells you to turn fast writes on, no mention of ATI or NF2 mobos, as i said every damn site conflicts each other.

Humey, we know *exactly* what fastwrites does. Its not even open to debate. This is what it does:

With Fastwrites ON, your CPU can write data directly into your video card's memory. With Fastwrites OFF, it can't: it has to write data to system memory first, and then it can be copied from there into your video card. Fastwrites OFF is a 2-step process. Fastwrites ON is a 1-step process. Clearly Fastwrites ON is a more efficient, faster process.

Now, does this matter? Well with most modern games (where there's not much AGP transfers going on, and perhaps your CPU has some spare cycles), no it doesn't. That's why you don't see much advantage in game benchmarks.

But what about playing back HD movies? Data is flying across the AGP bus all the time. Disk > memory > CPU decoding/scaling etc > Video card memory > ramdac > monitor.

Having to write all the data thats going across *twice* is a huge overhead and gives a big performance hit.

That's why you need Fastwrites ON for best video performance.

Chip

 

[imported_humey]

OH so you know more than NVIDIA who made NF2 and said it already does what fastwrites does or better than other websites ?.

Your also one that is 1 min pissed at this 6800 joke and next not bothered as its for gamming , true ?

Also i did add this was for games not movies as sites dont touch on hd movies.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: humey
OH so you know more than NVIDIA who made NF2 and said it already does what fastwrites does or better than other websites ?.

Your also one that is 1 min pissed at this 6800 joke and next not bothered as its for gamming , true ?

Also i did add this was for games not movies as sites dont touch on hd movies.

If nF2 doesn't need fastwrites then why is it present in the bios?


Just found this over@eVGA
Text Since all nV cards support fast writes why wouldn't their chipset? I will need to see the proof of "NVIDIA who made NF2 and said it already does what fastwrites does or better" or I'll file this under FUD, thanks