HD-DVD Playback - On the Xbox 360 & on NVIDIA GPUs
by Derek Wilson & Manveer Wasson on December 15, 2006 9:21 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
A Look at PC Performance: The Test
As with last time, we will be focusing on the impact of GPU hardware acceleration on decoding HD-DVD movies. Right now, the only players we have access to that support Blu-ray or HD-DVD playback don’t offer any type of frame rate or dropped frame counters, both of which make it much easier to compare CPU performance. We will be taking a look at the performance of different CPUs in our next major CPU review whether we have the tools we want or not.
CPU utilization does work well enough as an indicator of the capabilities of the GPU, provided we choose a fast enough CPU to eliminate any bottlenecks. For our purposes, once again, we will go with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X6800. We could have used a less powerful CPU, as our HD-DVD movies proved to be less stressful on our hardware than the Blu-ray movies we've tested, but we stuck with the X6800 for consistency with our previous article.
As we mentioned previously, we will be looking at benchmarks using Serenity and The Interpreter. Serenity is a VC-1 title, while The Interpreter is encoded with H.264. Remember that most HD-DVD titles currently available are VC-1, but the move in the future will likely be towards H.264.
With Serenity, we benchmarked a scene in Chapter 15 during which an epic battle ensues and our heroes are trying to escape from both sides. The Interpreter benchmark takes place in Chapter 13 during the aftermath of an explosion on a bus. These scenes were selected because they tended to yield higher bitrates than many of the other scenes, though none of the scenes had the same type of huge increase in bitrate that we saw in X-Men III.
The software we are using is unfortunately not as mature as our Blu-ray player. Cyberlink's current HD-DVD beta player is based on PowerDVD 6.5 while the Blu-ray player is based on 6.6. There are a few things missing like bookmarks, and (unfortunately) ATI GPU support. Try as we might, hardware acceleration would not remain enabled when testing with ATI hardware. We have contacted both AMD and Cyberlink to confirm the issue, but until we get a fix we will have to do without ATI numbers.
For reference, here's our test system once again:
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| CPU: | Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 |
| Motherboard(s): | ASUS P5B Deluxe |
| Chipset(s): | Intel P965 |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 7.2.2.1007 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA |
| Memory: | Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Cards: | Various |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.11 NVIDIA ForceWare 93.71 NVIDIA ForceWare 97.02 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920x1080 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
And now on to performance.
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losthours - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
all i hear is how the ps3 is overpriced. but by the time you add the relative hardware to the xbox 360 you get the same price. so it looks like sony didn't dump you with a dvd drive you really didn't need and make you pay later. just a side note i'm note gonna buy either xbox or ps3 i'm gonna go with the wii if i buy one.nah - Saturday, December 16, 2006 - link
How about recording a video to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray and seeing CPU utilization ?artifex - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Thanks for the article!I haven't even read it, yet, but this is what I've been waiting for, since your earlier one. So thanks for getting it out so quickly!
Badkarma - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
All I see these days are articles about video playback of HD-DVD/Bluray. How about the HD Audio formats like DD+, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD? All these HDCP video cards with HDMI don't have connectivity to pass the PCM output of the HD audio soundtracks like the CE devices do. When is this coming?DerekWilson - Sunday, December 17, 2006 - link
Actually, IIRC, all the HDMI cards we tested do have an audio input for pass through.Badkarma - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
Derek. The audio passthrough seen on all current HDMI cards are SPDIF which can only carry regular Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. HD Audio formats go hand in hand with the two new HD formats, but NO ONE has addressed how the HD audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD will be handled on the computer. I've scoured the internet for more information, but there doesn't really seem to be anything to be found. Can you please look into this? You can output TrueHD/DTS-HD via analog outputs on your soundcard if you have them, however, for those of us that would like to apply room equilization to the audio are SOL. There is nothing at the moment available that will allow TrueHD/DTS-HD to be passed as PCM audio via HDMI like the Toshiba HD-A1/2 CE devices.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
Does anything use TrueHD DTS-HD audio right now? I don't know, but if the audio on BRD and HD-DVD is only DD5.1 or DTS, then passing them as something HD won't improve quality. While I can see video truly benefiting from higher bitrates, I don't think audio really needs more than about a DVD's worth of storage tops before any improvements can't be heard. But anyway, I don't have an answer to your question and am merely curious as to what the benefits are. (I don't really think BRD/HDDVD are better than other alternatives, but it's what we're getting from MPAA/RIAA so consumers are stuck.)Badkarma - Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - link
Almost every single HD-DVD has at minimum Dolby Digital + which has a lot more bandwidth than DD5.1. There are quite a few HD-DVD's with TrueHD soundtracks. Unfortunately, a lot of consumers think like you, audio doesn't matter, 5.1 is enough. HD audio goes hand in hand with HD video. It's a complete package.artifex - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
In the case of the XBOX360 HD-DVD player, most of these HD audio formats aren't available, anyway. They should probably mention this in the article.Renoir - Friday, December 15, 2006 - link
Very good question! I would also like to see more discussion/analysis on this situation