Haswell Quick Sync and discrete GPU

[Dujith]

Hello, long time reader. Not so much a poster
This time i do need help tho as i cannot seem to find an answer to my question.
Which is:

On the new Z87 Motherboards when u use a discrete GPU can u use Quick Sync?

I noticed that this issue was dealt with Lucid their solution on the Ivy side.
But looking at the Z87 MB's out there now it seems only MSI is using them.
Both Asus and Gigabyte do not have the license, is there now another way to do encoding with the iGPU while having a discrete GPU in the system?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jkauff]

Hello, long time reader. Not so much a poster
This time i do need help tho as i cannot seem to find an answer to my question.
Which is:

On the new Z87 Motherboards when u use a discrete GPU can u use Quick Sync?

I noticed that this issue was dealt with Lucid their solution on the Ivy side.
But looking at the Z87 MB's out there now it seems only MSI is using them.
Both Asus and Gigabyte do not have the license, is there now another way to do encoding with the iGPU while having a discrete GPU in the system?

Thanks in advance.

My understanding from what I've read over at doom9 is you don't need Lucid if you're running Win 8. That OS supports a headless iGPU, but Win 7 does not. As long as your BIOS has an option for allowing both the iGPU and a dGPU to run at the same time, you're fine. Maybe with Z87 you don't even need the BIOS support, I don't know.

 

[Dujith]

This whole mess made me rethink the upgrade. Think i'll get a i5 3570k instead. Those boards all have Lucid anyway. + Cheaper

 

[A5]

Quick Sync isn't that great if you care about video quality.

If you really care, you can buy Virtu for $35, anyway: http://www.lucidlogix.com/product_media.shtml

 

[SetiroN]

Actually, with handbrake now supporting quicksync, quality got definitely acceptable. Yes, it's not x264, but it's pretty good.

I don't see how Virtu does anything about quality by itself tho, could you explain?

 

[Dujith]

I don't see how Virtu does anything about quality by itself tho, could you explain?

Virtu allows the iGPU to be used for quicksync while running a discrete GPU.
Doing so now on my Asus Z77 MB. Works like a charm

 

[A5]

Actually, with handbrake now supporting quicksync, quality got definitely acceptable. Yes, it's not x264, but it's pretty good.

I don't see how Virtu does anything about quality by itself tho, could you explain?

Handbrake doesn't do anything to help quality. It is just calling the QS APIs that Intel provides. According to the AT review, Haswell QS quality is even worse than IB.

Vitru is what enables you to use QS if you have a discrete GPU in your system, in theory. Some people say it isn't necessary in Win8, but I don't care about it enough to investigate.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

My cpu 2600k at 4.0 is faster than my igpu by a good margin. I don't see the point of qs.

 

[jkauff]

QuickSync has two things going for it. Software-based encoders like Handbrake will max out all your cores and take a long time (hours, sometimes, depending on the source and settings) to do the job. QS encoding reduces the load on the CPU by at least half, and encodes much faster. Quality is not as good, but it's fine if you're doing a quick transcode to put on your phone.

The other thing it does well is decode (and de-interlace). It's much faster than CPU decoding, and tests have shown it to be faster than CUDA decoding. If you're into video, both LAV Filters and ffdshow support QS decoding thanks to an Israeli Intel engineer named Eric Gur who writes custom QS decoding DLLs for fun. Lots of discussion on the doom9 forum if you want more info.

 

[Galatian]

I don't want to resurrect an old thread, but since I just started encoding on my gaming rig (i5-3570K @ 4,5 GHz) and wanted to use Quicksync I figured out, one does not need either Windows 8 or Lucid Virtu to do so!

I followed this link and used the nightly build of handbrake to enable Quicksync. Works like a charm. Right now encoding The Big Bang Theory with Apple TV 3 preset and 3 audio sources (English and German mixdown as well as English passthrough) at an average of 170 fps.

 

[jkauff]

Just to clarify, a headless iGPU is not automatically supported in Win 8. Applications that use Direct3D 11.1 can use the headless iGPU. I'm not aware of any video encoding applications that do at this point.

 

[Galatian]

Just to clarify, a headless iGPU is not automatically supported in Win 8. Applications that use Direct3D 11.1 can use the headless iGPU. I'm not aware of any video encoding applications that do at this point.

That's why I posted my findings. One can at least use Quicksync with Handbrake (or other software that supports it) without the need for Lucid Virtu. Also there was some rumor that Windows 8 allows the iGPU to be used in conjunction with a discrete GPU. By following the instructions in my link I was able to use the nightly built of Handbrake which supports Quicksync on Windows 7 and without Lucid Virtu. Since I only saw this one website with instructions I figured this method is not widely known, hence my post.

 

[jkauff]

That's why I posted my findings. One can at least use Quicksync with Handbrake (or other software that supports it) without the need for Lucid Virtu. Also there was some rumor that Windows 8 allows the iGPU to be used in conjunction with a discrete GPU. By following the instructions in my link I was able to use the nightly built of Handbrake which supports Quicksync on Windows 7 and without Lucid Virtu. Since I only saw this one website with instructions I figured this method is not widely known, hence my post.

It's pretty widely known in the video communities like doom9 and AVS, but not by the general public. I've been using it for nearly a year since reading about it in a QuickSync thread. I have Virtu also, but it doesn't work with every program, but then the "fake display" doesn't work with every program either.

For me, the good news about Handbrake and QS is that the two development teams are working together. The QS team could learn a lot from the x264 experts on the Handbrake team.