Any advantage in having dedicated gfx card over onboard gfx?! (2 Viewers)

[jcee]

I really do not see what the advantage in a dedicated gfx board is. Should one not be as good off with onborad gfx?

Reasons why:

I got me a Nvidia 7600GS where I intended to use pure video and hardware acceleration, but first I cannot use PV, so there is no hardware acceleration, second FFdshow give you a good picture quality boost when used.
But this is done in CPU rather that GPU.

DX9c is used by MP to render the screen, but it is not rendering 100s of objects, nor is it using reflections, particles and other fancy DX stuff... Furthermore framerates above 50hz (Europe) do not make sense.

So actually what is really the sense and incentive having a dedicated card instead of using a good onboard - lets say 6150.
(You might say DVI/HDMI connector, but there already mainboard around)


I would like to get rid of a gfx card that does not give me much more than additional heat and power consumption..
Especially as it seems to be run in almost idle mode...

Seems somehow to breaking a fly on the wheel?! Isnt it?

(I came to these thoughts, when concidering building me a thin client for MP, and looking at Apple TV and Macmini/Elgator/EyeTV. They seem to run fine with integrated gfx and the GUI is slight and has fluid animations..)

 

[petzlux]

I have a onboard graphics chip (gforce 6150), and can run anything from SD TV to 1080p HD without a problem. I guess with some of the newest graphics cards, they can take over the whole decoding process for H264 and make sense.

I guess anyone with a fairly recent onboard graphics card and enough fast ram (as that is used by the graphics as well) shouldnt need to bother with a separate gfx card.

 

[jcee]

But if you use post-processing (ffdshow) all your hardware acceleration is gone anyway, so actually I dont see the really BIG advantage in buying me a 150€+ gfx board..

 

[deebo]

my onboard 6150 didnt manage to output 1080p h264 when the resolution was 1920x1080, worked fine at 1280x720, so i bought a 8500gt

(not enough throughput that is, cpu was only at ~50% with 1080p h264)

 

[gxtracker]

But if you use post-processing (ffdshow) all your hardware acceleration is gone anyway, so actually I dont see the really BIG advantage in buying me a 150€+ gfx board..

If you use FFDshow then this is true, but if you use FFDshow tryouts, then you can enable things like hardware deinterlacing which will dramatically increase the visual quality without adding to the CPU load, and without using the purevideo codec.

petzlux's point about H.264 and VC1 decoding is also correct. many onboard solutions do not offload this processing from the video stream.

Also, if you use your HTPC for light gaming or emulators, sometimes a dedicated videocard can provide a greater benefit then an onboard solution.

Remember onboard solutions share your system RAM for their use, which means less dedicated ram for your main applications

If MP is the only thing you use on your system, then an onboard solution is just fine. Remember that a HTPC is built differently then a regular PC. in the HTPC arena less is always better.

 

[jcee]

If you use FFDshow then this is true, but if you use FFDshow tryouts, then you can enable things like hardware deinterlacing which will dramatically increase the visual quality without adding to the CPU load, and without using the purevideo codec.

Could you please give some more details on this?!

I used to use NV purevideo, but often my streams (live + recorded) freezed, guess due to errors in the streams. After lots of tweaking of cables and antenna-sockets, wiring... I checked out the MPA/MPV decoders. As they worked more reliable I picked them.

Anyway the picture quality was worse and used ffdhow to add this extra "shine" by sharpening etc.. From all the papers I read it says that you loose hardware accelerations when using post-processing.
Especially NV Purevideo is not HW accelerated anymore. (So lot of HW inside my case that is not utilized 100%)

From what you are saying it sounds that you still have some hardware acceleration or maybe even other tweaks available?!

Do you have tipp for image enhancement with low CPU usage!? (Beeing an engineer it sound more reasonable to use the chip that is dedicate to this (gfx) instead of not using it and using the CPU)

 

[SMa]

I'd take an onboard gfx in combination with a good cpu, if the system is dedicated for MP.
Mostly, onboard gfx's use passive cooling, which is imo a major advantage for a HTPC.

I'm using a Gigabyte S2, which uses an Integrated Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 950 (= 8MB of RAM shared). And that works just fine for me

 

[gxtracker]

Could you please give some more details on this?!

Well, its probably best if you see it yourself.

Uninstall FFDshow, as its very old. I believe the last version was put out nearly 4 years ago. FFDShow tryouts is a rebirth of FFDShow under active development.

once installed, you can select FFDShow as an actual video and audio codec in MP since it has full VFW compatibility. I even have it perform my MPEG1/2 decompression - no more MPA/MPV codec for me.

under the output section of the video codec there is an option: Enable HW deinterlacing. from there you can choose bob or weave, with a straight bob giving the best quality. usually a straight bob is very taxing on the CPU. if you use the MPV codec with bob deinterlacing, you can easily expect your CPU usage to double, but since the GFX card is now performing the processing, you get all the benefit and none of the overhead.

Plus you can use the other post processing effects on the videostream. I dont use anything else truthfully because im still using a standard definition television, but when I can watch sporting events or live TV broadcasts in smooth motion and without stutters, then im satisfied.

Im sure an onboard solution can perform the hardware deinterlacing too as long as its fully DX9 compliant.

 

[doublej]

It is a very interesting question.

For simple movie playback - the graphics processing demand is actually very low indeed, you won't encounter any problems at all with on board GFX - providing you have a reasonble CPU, mem and disk. As pointed out elsewhere - it's you're core CPU that takes the load in the abscence of daughter board graphics processing,


Dedicated GPU's only come into their own when intense real time rendering of graphics is required.....which can be in games, or drawing software. Such occaisions are likely when the CPU is busy with other stuff, networking, media management, or some such, and is more happy to offload to the GPU the keep the 'core' system running smoothly.

Typically a pure bred HTPC doesn't cause any such load. And so there is a strong argument for leaving them out.

Have I got one ?

Yes....cos I found a silent Gigabyte 7600 GS for about 100 bucks.

 

[SMa]

The GPU does more then rendering graphics.
GPU's like the nVidia 8xxx serie and the ATI HD2xxx serie are optimised for HD-rendering, which takes a huge load of the CPU when playing HD-movies.