choose HD video card for 1080 mkv (1 Viewer)

[bluenote]

Hi guys

This seems like such a newb question, but I swear I've searched and its very hard to find definitive info that I can be sure is completely current.

I want to upgrade my video card in my Vista PCI-e P4 3.2 ghz media portal box so it will decode HD content (in whatever formats are common, my impression is this is mostly 1080 h264 mkv's). This box currently can't play back/decode HD very well at 100% CPU with an old geforce FX 5200 or 5500 thats in it.

The last time I visited this issue, it was all about AVIVO and CUDA and it seemed like you could go easily wrong, not to mention not just any decoder or player was going to work. But now I see a lot of people talking about DXVA, but I don't see explicit references that DXVA supports offloading decoding to GPU.

What are the requirements to get decoding offloaded onto the GPU? Does it matter what formats will be used?

I have tonnes of computers here and generally what happens is CPU's and GPU's get hand-me-downed to the PVR, and then they get given away. Having just "upgraded" my PVR and given away the last one, I prefer to buy the cheapest video card possible to assist decoding and drive my HD TV through DVI which its currently using. I havent looked lately but I dont think it has HDMI inputs, just component and DVI.

And what about CoreAVC? I bought this hoping it would solve my problems and it hasn't.

So can someone help me remedy my ignorance? I can't seem to find a good primer on HD offloading to GPU thats current.
Exact recommendations are great as long as they come with some reasons why.

thanks

 

[jameson_uk]

It is not as easy as that.....

Given the right circumstances your graphics card will handle decoding the video. This needs the right combination of video type, codecs, renderers and hardware. You don't really need to understand the differences but DXVA is a generic term for acceleration via DirectX in windows where as AVIVO is general name for some ATI technology (some of which makes use of DXVA) and CUDA is NVidia technology but actually has the ability to offload itself (different to DXVA).

Hardware is fairly simple with any card released in the last year or so. Something like an ATI 5450 is good for this (and cheap). Any Nvidia GT card will do it (and many early ones) as well as ATI 4xxx cards but the 5xxx cards are much better and cost the same.
Renderer is easy as in MP you will generally be using VMR9 for XP and EVR for Vista / Win7.

Codecs and files are a little more complicated; you are correct in thinking that most HD content is H264. This is however slightly clouded in that H264 comes at different level. Bluray is level 4.1 and many codecs around only supported hardware acceleration up to this level. Some bright souls however have encoded their videos at higher levels than this as higher must be better right This means no matter what you do with these files using standard codecs you will not get hardware acceleration. In these circumstances all the decoding will be done on the CPU and it makes no difference what graphics card is installed.

So a lot depends on what H264 decoder you use. I use the codec from PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra (In recent updates Cyberlink have stopped you using their codecs outside of PowerDVD though) and this uses DXVA and works well on standard compliant material. CoreAVC is a little different in that until recently it was all CPU based and would not offload anything. Recently they have added CUDA support which means on recent(ish) NVidia cards the video can be offloaded (if paired with current drivers). (The CoreAVC website should list which cards / drivers are supported).

FFDShow has recently released as beta version of a DXVA H264 decoder but I have no experience on whether this will offload all video or whether this is still limited to standard compliant video. Also I have found this a little flaky (it is after all a very early beta)

Other than that I am not sure what H264 codecs are currently working.

So if you are in control of what video you have (so are not downloading stuff from the internet) then you are fine with an ATI 5450 as long as you encode the video to level 4.1 or less (or leave the video as is from an original source).

 

[bluenote]

That was super helpful, thank you very much.

So it seems to me that DXVA is the way to go. I'm having trouble deciphering what cards do have DXVA support by their desriptions, here: NCIX.com - Buy Video Cards In Canada.

It doesn't seem like even the GT cards actually say 'dxva support' though, in the card specs listed in the details.
So taking any random nvidia card on that list, how can I confirm DXVA support?

I'm tickled because it looks like this will be a cheap solution I won't mind giving away with this box when its time comes in the medium term.

thanks so much for the education!

EDIT: Is purevideo-HD synonymous with 'dxva support' ? If so then I found a great table on nvidia's site. If not, I can't find any references anywhere that give a definitive list of DXVA support. Nvidia doesn't even list DXVA under technologies although they list CUDA and openCL.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

video card in my Vista PCI-e P4 3.2 ghz media portal box

Is the graphics card you have at the moment PCI then, did not know they made a pci-e version of a 5200 or 5500, or is it AGP, which kind of limits which card you can install, also costs more.

PCI = bad
AGP = good
PCI-e = best

 

[bluenote]

Hey PD

You had me worried for a moment there, so I had to open up the box to remember that when this PC was downloaded to PVR somewhere along the way the video card was swapped. So you're correct, in that the FX card in it IS only PCI, but the box does have a PCI-E slot and I've just ordered a gigabyte Geforce GT210 512MB card that I hope (and thanks to jameson, above) will give me smooth HD playback!

thanks,

EDIT:

So I picked up the video card, and that alone reduced my CPU usage dramatically. In combination with the ffdshow DXVA setup that took a little tweaking to get properly enabled and applied, its ridiculous how much better and smoother (and, playable) and more beautiful my output is!
Thanks guys!
(And all for 24.99 after rebate...)