NVIDIA GeForce 8600: Full H.264 Decode Acceleration
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 27, 2007 4:34 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Yozakura (H.264)
The Yozakura test isn't the highest bitrate test we have, but it is the most stressful we've encountered due to how it uses the H.264 codec. Our benchmark starts at the beginning of chapter 1 and continues until the 1:45 mark.
We start off with PowerDVD and immediately we see the tremendous difference that NVIDIA's new video decode engine offers. While even the previous generation NVIDIA hardware still eats up more than a single CPU core, the 8600s average in the low 20% for CPU utilization.
All of the steps that happen outside of the green box are responsible for any remaining CPU utilization seen when playing back H.264 content on a GeForce 8600.
Why isn't the CPU utilization down to 0%? The entire H.264 decode pipeline is handled on the GPU, but NVIDIA claims that the extra 20% is simply related to processing and decrypting data off of the disk before it's passed on to the GPU. If you had an unencrypted disk, the CPU utilization should be in the single digits.
The maximum CPU utilization for these two cards is still significant, but obviously much better than the 70%+ of the competitors. Surprisingly enough, ATI's hardware actually does worse than NVIDIA's in these tests despite offloading more of the decode pipeline than the GeForce 7 or 8800.
To confirm our findings we also ran the tests under WinDVD 8, which as we mentioned before doesn't support ATI hardware acceleration so the only GPUs compared here are from NVIDIA.
NVIDIA's older hardware actually does worse under WinDVD 8 than under PowerDVD, but the 8600 does a lot better.
Maximum CPU utilization is particularly better on the 8600s under WinDVD 8, the two never even break 24%.
Looking at the PowerDVD and WinDVD scores, it's interesting to note that while the 8600 GTS is clearly faster in PowerDVD, the two cards are basically tied under WinDVD. There is definitely room for further optimizations in PowerDVD at present, so hopefully we will get that along with bug fixes in a future update.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
64 Comments
View All Comments
yacoub - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Wait, so is H264 decoding is so terrible with gaming cards that anyone who wants to watch H264 encoded DVDs or videoclips would waste the extra $$$ to get a GTS?Outside of HTPCs there's really little market for it and even for HTPC there's likely something cheaper that gets the job done just as well (8600GT?).
Let's see what NVidia does for the G80 refresh in a few months... hopefully it includes putting out a card with the spec sheet the 8600GTS should have had: 64 stream processors and a 256-bit bus.
bearxor - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
EIGHTYFIVE
HUNDRED.
-----------------
That's the HTPC card. No one with a HTPC is going to spend $70-150 more if it performs exactly the same. But we don't know because no site seems to be able to buy one from newegg even though they've been available since last Tuesday. I guess they're waiting on nVidia to send review samples. I have a hundred bucks in hand ready to buy a 8500 but have been waiting to see how it performs with video decoding.
PLEASE!
kilkennycat - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
The 8600GT/GTS has HTPC built-in. THe 8500GT does NOT. It apparently is a vendor-supplied option in the case of the 8500GT.Newegg has been very careful in their listings of late to include "HDCP" in their text-description of graphics cards if they are aware of it being available. However, you should also check the manufacturer's website specsheet. If no mention of HDCP there... buyer beware !!
For an example, see the BFG website and the specs for the 8600GT and the 8500GT ( Other vendor websites very conveniently hide the HDCP detail in their summary descriptions, eg: eVGA )
See:-
http://www2.bfgtech.com/bfgr85256gte.aspx">http://www2.bfgtech.com/bfgr85256gte.aspx
and
http://www2.bfgtech.com/bfgr86256gtoce.aspx">http://www2.bfgtech.com/bfgr86256gtoce.aspx
Compare and look at the last couple of paragraphs, No sign of HDCP on the 8500 spec.....
kilkennycat - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Ooops sorry. No edit-function for past-postings on Anandtech nor Daily Tech. ( I suggest that Anand and DT personnel take a look at The Tech Report website http://techreport.com/">http://techreport.com/ for the proper way to handle edits in comment-postings....)Anyway, I meant to type HDCP on the first line of the above posting. So anybody with a H...T...P...C requiring H...D...C...P needs to be a little careful in their choice of whether to invest in a 8500 or a 8600 card and double-check the manufacturer's spec for the magic abbreviation "HDCP". Otherwise, iirc the video decoding capabilities of the two families are identical.
bearxor - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Yes, HDCP is a option on the 8500. Newegg has a HDCP 8500. The gigabyte with passive cooling, perfect for a htpc.The problem is the 'supposed to have'. Who knows? I've not seen benchmarks on it. the 8600GT and GTS are 'supposed to be' the same but in this review there were some significant differences between the two. At one point the 8600gt required 8 percent more cpu power. How do I know the 8500 won't be 10-15% higher than that?
A5 - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Is there any chance of a review of the various PVR/TV/MC packages out there, like a comparison between SageTV, BeyondTV, Vista MCE, and a free option (GB-PVR/MediaPortal)? No one has really done anything like that since you guys did it a few years ago, and a lot has changed, especially with the advent of practical HDTV cards.ssiu - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Are there any image quality differences between G8600 / older NVIDIAs / ATIs / no hardware acceleration?In your previous article http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2923">Coming Soon to HD DVD: Silicon Optix HD HQV you talked about both ATI/NVIDIA flunked the HQV DVD tests when the HQV tests first came out, but now had improved to almost perfect score, but then they all got 0 score on the "(beta) HD HQV" tests. Has the situation improved with newest hardware+driver?
Final Hamlet - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
It's really great to know that this GPU is better at playing back videos I would never buy because of the DRM crap on it...It's like buying a car for it's colour...
yzkbug - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
There is still no retail version of WinDVD HD available. Any news when InterVideo is going to release one? They must be really afraid to repeat thier previous fiasco when thier master key was revoked :)ZetaEpyon - Friday, April 27, 2007 - link
Was this article written a while back or something? I have an 8500GT in hand right now.