Ongoing HTPC Motherboards with HDMI (2 Viewers)

[ichessblumen]

i'stumbled across the new asus P5E-VM-HDMI with G35 and found some interesting reviews....

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/12/05/review_asus_p5e_vm_hdmi/
http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Asus_P5E-VM_HDMI/5427-1.html
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article785-page5.html
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/asus/p5e-vm-hdmi/g1.htm

 

[globaldonkey]

I am running ffdshow as my video codec with software deinterlacing and 1 core runs at 80% on MPEG2 HD TV (13Mb/s). My CPU is AM2 +4800 with 1GB of Ram and that is good enough for me.

Thanks charli181. I'd be interested to hear how you go running some H.264 through that config, particularly using ffdshow. I think H.264 would drive your CPU up further and 80% is getting pretty high. You might need to consider using CoreAVC instead of ffdshow. I've found this can improve H.264 performance considerably. BTW, I am interested in a config that supports HD and AVC/H.264.

 

[charli181]

I am running ffdshow as my video codec with software deinterlacing and 1 core runs at 80% on MPEG2 HD TV (13Mb/s). My CPU is AM2 +4800 with 1GB of Ram and that is good enough for me.

Thanks charli181. I'd be interested to hear how you go running some H.264 through that config, particularly using ffdshow. I think H.264 would drive your CPU up further and 80% is getting pretty high. You might need to consider using CoreAVC instead of ffdshow. I've found this can improve H.264 performance considerably. BTW, I am interested in a config that supports HD and AVC/H.264.

I don't have any AVC -VC1 - H.264 Content. DO you know where I could get some and I will do some testing for you.

 

[globaldonkey]

I don't have any AVC -VC1 - H.264 Content. DO you know where I could get some and I will do some testing for you.

Here's a couple of samples on this page:

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/highdefdvd_test_page1.html

See how you go with the 1080p.

 

[charli181]

globaldonkey,

downloaded the 1080p sample. here are my results

ffdshow codec. - 1 core at approx 100% and sound was about 1 second slower. Also only showed in black and white - strange more testing tomorrow on that one.

cyberlink Power DVD 7.3 player kept crashing on me so no testing done.
Cyberlink H264 codec - Black screen with or without DXVA. No sound either through graphedit

Using VLC to play it. Perfect and ran at between 40 -50% CPU across both CPU's.

Note, that I am running old Catalyst drivers - 7.2 at the moment. This could be the cause of why Power DVD 7.3 did not work. I will try and upgrade these drivers on the weekend (After I modify skins with the "flipy" modifications). When I tried ffdshow through MP and got black and white, I removed MP from the testing and used graphedit.

 

[globaldonkey]

charli181,

Do you know how VLC rendered the file? Suspect it used something other than ffdshow, which confirms my thought that the config you have might be a little under powered to render H.264 1080p through ffdshow - that's not to say you don't have a specy system, just that ffdshow appears to be a pretty inefficient way to render H.264, from what I'm learning. It looks like ffdshow and H.264 HD won't play well on all but the most powerful systems.

I have an old P4 1.2G machine at the moment (hence why I'm poking around looking for a new machine that supports H.264 HD), and found that changing to CoreAVC enabled me to play H.264 720p ok, but I still can't play 1080p without it binding up on me.

 

[charli181]

I do agree with you there. I do think though if I could the hardware Acceleration to work with the cyberlink codecs all would be fine. I seem to recall somewhere on the asus site for my motherboard they recommend a +6000 processor, but I went for +4800 (AMD). Like I said, I don't watch H264 encoded stuff "yet" so have not perfected this bit. All the 'free to air' HD content on TV is MPEG2 and can't justify $450 for a blu-ray player and $40+ for each movie when my local video shop does latest DVD movies for $1 overnight (not that I rip them...that's illegal).

Like I tell all my friends, each motherboard is different and you need to assess all the functions you want from your machine and then find the board and CPU to match your uses. I am happy with the ASUS M2A VM HDMI as I use it only as my HTPC - no internet, no games, no video editing and although I can see some quality improvements with HD (1080P) video's, it has not swayed me for the extra money outlay it would require. Not bagging anyone else that has done or wants to do that though.

 

[globaldonkey]

Thanks for the input and the testing charli181. Much appreciated. You've helped confirm what I was thinking about HD processor needs. My requirements are similar to yours, in that the system will be a dedicated HTPC, with the addition of making sure it can do 1080p HD. I agree, the faster CPU is probably the way to go to achieve this, and having priced up the Intel ASUS HDMI board and the one you have, there's about $300 AUD difference, so I probably will go the AMD option.

You are right HD MPEG2 will run fine. It's only when you start getting into the AVC stuff that the higher performance becomes necessary. I am thinking the config you have will be fine so long as you stay away from ffdshow whenever you need to do HD H.264, or as you suggest, get hardware acceleration going. Alternatively, you may want to check out CoreAVC. From the link I sent you with the samples:

Test System 1:
AMD XP 2500+
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700
Resolution: 1280x1024
720p Result: 23.976
1080p Result: 11.916

Test System 2:
Pentium-4 3.2 GHz
1 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Resolution: 1280x1024
720p Result: 23.976
1080p Result: 17.136

Test System 3 (Notebook):
Pentium-M 2 GHz
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600
Resolution: 1280x800
720p Result: 23.976
1080p Result: 16.766

The sample results above show that playback was perfect for the 720p clip on all the test systems. The 1080p was a totally different story, with none of the systems able to play back the clip at the full framerate.

Please note that the ffdshow H.264 decoder used (libavcodec) is not the most efficient one around. The most efficient decoder at the time of writing appears to be the CoreAVC codec. The professional version of this codec will also eventually features GPU acceleration support, which is simply a way of using your (most likely very powerful) graphics card to help with the video decoding. CoreAVC is not freeware, but it's well worth checking out.

GPU acceleration is already available in NVIDIA's PureVideo decoder (obviously for NVIDIA GeForce series 6 and 7 cards only), which is NVIDIA's GPU acceleration driver. ATI's version of PureVideo is called Avivo, which is actually free and available for the X1000 series as part of the Catalyst driver set (5.13 or later). You will require a separate Avivo compatible decoder, like the one PowerDVD uses (although it does not seem to be as compatible as ffdshow/CoreAVC).

All of these decoders are still constantly being improved, and performance has risen along with each new version. Using an older Alpha version of the CoreAVC codec (considered by many to be the most efficient out there), I was able to play back the 1080p clip at full frames on "Test System 2", so it shows the importance of decoder efficiency.

If you can already play back the 1080p clip at the full framerate, then you should be fairly confident that your system will be able to handle high definition DVD content. If it is only missing a couple of FPS for the 1080p clip, but playing back the 720p clip well, then there is still a good chance you'll be able to play back HighDef DVDs smoothly (at least at a down-scaled 720p resolution). If you can't even play back the 720p clip at full frames, then I think a system upgrade might be a good idea (although waiting a while to see what's up with Windows Vista might be a good idea, but that's a topic for another article).

 

[seal]

Mobo M2N-VM HDMI from Asus works fine. Currently im using only DVI not tested HDMI yet. PureVideo on 7050PV not works - nvidia didnt relased correct drivers yet - be aware when buing card witch Nvidia 630a chipset! - currently no H.264 acceleration

 

[SiLenTYL]

ok..one thing..

my TV has HDMI input..but only 2 channel sound..makes sense as there are only 2 speakers on the TV
my amp has HDMI input...but its PASSTHRU ONLY

so why on earth would u use a combined HDMI (audio and video) from a HTPC to an AMP and then to the TV?

i just doesnt make any sense in my case where the sound is not processed at the amp....my amp is stupid

it could possibly be used to go from PC-AMP-TV-AMP with the last step being optical audio cable back to the AMP...but then its only 2 channel..and u probably get some lag..more stupidity

so..how i have my current setup is:

PC to TV(DVI-HDMI) for video and PC to AMP(Optical cable) for audio


these new combined HDMI(including audio) mobos just baffle me

could someone explain why ppl would want this?