HD Video decoding, ATI6450 vs NV GT430

[AbRASiON]

Hi All,

A friend at work and I have exactly the same HP Microservers for playing back video.
He got the NV GT430 and I got an ATI 6450.

His machine is using at most 30% CPU when playing back a 40gb MKV file (1080p)
My machine is using 70% CPU playing back a 15gb MKV file (1080p)

Anyone know if the 6450 is a bit of a 2D Lemon or something? I kind of foolishly assumed that the media playback acceleration would be 'much of a muchness' on these lowend cards. If anything I figured the 6450 would be better as it's fairly new.

Anyone know? Maybe I'm doing something wrong here :/

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't get it. What's the problem? NV may have slightly more efficient playback, or ATI may do more in terms of video-processing (after effects, de-interlace, de-noise, chroma, etc).

Either way, as long as your not dropping frames, I don't see the problem.

 

[AbRASiON]

XBMC is completely unusable, intermittant and strange behaviour with XBMC 11 and the new 12.3 ATI drivers.
It's a new setup so I don't know if XBMC 10.1 and older ATI would fix it. Regardless of that, I'm very close to 100% CPU utilisation and I have a copy of the same 40gb MKV file my coworker does in the office, I just need to bring it home. I suspect I'll drop frames.

But no XBMC at this point .. not good.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I am unsure on the 6450 but I know the 5450 lacks some of the media features that the 55xx series has.

One thing that is important to note - you are not making a fair comparison even though both videos are 1080p. Different videos have different bitrates. You need to compare using the same video.

Second thing to note - if you both have the same specific outcome with the same quality and no loss of frames, I would not worry about it.

 

[AbRASiON]

I'm an idiot, it's 2012 and I just kind of figured even the bottom of the barrel video cards nowadays would be able to play 1080p without question. Off I went and got the cheapest slimline card I would find as I wanted this to be a reasonably priced HTPC.

So it's quite possible I might need another card then? - yes I'm not losing frames in a 15gb MKV (about a 2 hour movie) but the other file is 40g for a 3hour movie. Logically the bitrate is going to be higher.

Is there somewhere which benhmarks the specific performance of video acceleration? This CPU leaves me with very little room to move.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wierd. I can play back 1080P MKV rips just perfectly with my AMD BE-2400 (2.3Ghz dual-core) and 780G chipset.

Are you using Windows 7? Or XP? (You should be using Windows 7)

 

[AbRASiON]

I'm using Win7 - I just found an article on Anandtech actually basically recommending the 430 over the 6450 :/ my screwup indeed!

 

[AbRASiON]

Ordered my GT430 today, let you all know how I go, hopefully google catches this discussion for the future for others.

 

[Zorander]

Different video files and likely different system/OS settings will contribute to the difference as well. And perhaps your machine is not even utilising the hardware decoder of the Radeon (thus the higher CPU usage).

IME GPU-assisted video decoding typically results in 5-10% CPU usage, whether with my old A64 4600+, i7-860 or even the 1GHz C50 APU (this one stays around 20% mark).

 

[nenforcer]

I'm guessing you are using VLC Media Player to playback a .MKV.

Here's the part where using the right software can make a world of difference given modest hardware.

I own a dual core Atom 330 nVidia ION (GT218) HTPC system and while the hardware is more than capable trying to do something like watching an Apple .MOV 1080P trailer using Windows Media Player results in a slide show with blatant dropped frames.

However, using Apple Quicktime to watch the exact same trailer results in a nearly flawless picture.

Unfortunately .MKV file format containers are a little more complex than an Apple .MOV file. A .MKV contained video can use a wide variety a codecs for video including MPEG-4, .H264 and VC-1.

This is where the version of VLC Player and whether or not hardware acceleration is enabled and functioning properly for that codec contained in the .MKV file can determine not only your CPU usage but also video quality.

I would have compared the Radeon HD 6450 using the exact same movie file and player. It may take a little more work, possibly because the AMD drivers are a dog pile mess with 17 different A and B Hotfix versions, resulting in it taking quite a bit more time to get it working.

But ATI has always had a good TV / Video hardware and should be more than capable of playback.

 

[AbRASiON]

I'm guessing you are using VLC Media Player to playback a .MKV.

Here's the part where using the right software can make a world of difference given modest hardware.

I own a dual core Atom 330 nVidia ION (GT218) HTPC system and while the hardware is more than capable trying to do something like watching an Apple .MOV 1080P trailer using Windows Media Player results in a slide show with blatant dropped frames.

However, using Apple Quicktime to watch the exact same trailer results in a nearly flawless picture.

Unfortunately .MKV file format containers are a little more complex than an Apple .MOV file. A .MKV contained video can use a wide variety a codecs for video including MPEG-4, .H264 and VC-1.

This is where the version of VLC Player and whether or not hardware acceleration is enabled and functioning properly for that codec contained in the .MKV file can determine not only your CPU usage but also video quality.

I would have compared the Radeon HD 6450 using the exact same movie file and player. It may take a little more work, possibly because the AMD drivers are a dog pile mess with 17 different A and B Hotfix versions, resulting in it taking quite a bit more time to get it working.

But ATI has always had a good TV / Video hardware and should be more than capable of playback.

Based on the Anandtech HTPC guide, it seems the 6450 is weaker than the NV430 now that it's drivers have cleaned up.
My plan is without question to play back with XBMC. Even though I don't have a g/f or wife, I want the 'wifeproof' simple, reliable system.
Having to not play one particular movie because of issues in XBMC and needing to pull out a keyboard to switch to VLC is simply not an option in my eyes.

My coworker with his NL40 CPU @ 1.5ghz and the NV430 seems to claim he's seeing as little as 10% CPU use when playing back a 40gb MKV of Lord of the Rings (admitedly 4 hours long, so it's more like a 2 hour movie at 20gb,...)
Regardless he doesn't need to use VLC or 'fiddle' and that's my end goal too.

FWIW XBMC was far worse than VLC on my machine with the 6450, later tonight I'll know if the NV430 is better, fingers are crossed.

 

[iCyborg]

Based on the Anandtech HTPC guide, it seems the 6450 is weaker than the NV430 now that it's drivers have cleaned up.

Based on the Anandtech gt 430 review, the competition to GT 430 is Radeon 5570/5670, and looking at the newegg prices, gt 430 and 6570 are similarly priced. So it's quite expected that GT 430 would be stronger than 6450, since you should really be comparing 6570 and gt 430.

Though going with the pricier card because of what looks like a particular player being flaky with specific codecs is not something I would recommend, you do get a better GPU.

 

[AbRASiON]

Now it gets REALLY BAD (lol? and sigh!)

Here goes,...

I swapped my board for the 1.5ghz CPU and put in a GT430 also, so my machine is identical to my buddies now, (but 4x the memory) my problem remains! Identical issue despite moving to the Nvidia card.

I can play back a file and it just stops when I FF or Rewind it and some of them just 'lock up' it's like XBMC doesn't have the CPU or can't find the file - but there's no error. The control box still comes up if I push a button asking for it etc - sometimes even the movie starts to play but it stops in a few seconds.

Anyone know what could cause this? I'm under the impression XBMC doesn't use codecs, it has it's own, so I doubt those are corrupted.

Maybe it's my secondary video drivers, I have logmein and dameware on the workstation, I am un-installing these tonight to see if they are causing the issue.

Any theories?

 

[AbRASiON]

Issue fixed
solution here.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=126898&pid=1058737#pid1058737

Problem = dameware.
Machine is purring like a kitten now ♥

 

[KingFatty]

Now that the problem is solved, would you be able to run a comparison using the AMD 6450 card?

I think the new XBMC "eden" version now has hardware decoding support for AMD GPUs, so I wonder if that will reduce your CPU usage even lower than the Nvidia card?

I'm just curious here, to see if you will now have equal CPU usage under either card, because it seems that all decoding should offload to the GPU now, so keeping all things equal, I bet the CPU usage is the same regardless of using Nvidia or AMD?