Will this all work together ?
- Thread starter square_wave
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reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
DDR3 based cards with the same gpu will have roughly half the performance compared to GDDR5 based solutions. If you must have a cheap card, pick up the Sapphire 6570 1GB or a GT 440 1GB.
The current crop of A6 cpus will play 1080p without problem. It has graphics power for that and more. There are lots of people using it with XBMC. I mention XBMC here because rendering XBMC skins itself is quite cpu/gpu intensive work. Moreover when video is playing, xbmc keeps its ui and skin loaded in the background. Lots of users are satisfied with AMD A series processors doing this duty. I don't think you will have issue with it.
Square_Wave: But incase you are wondering - the two motherboards that you linked earlier have expansion slot and looks like they support multiple gpu options. Means, they will let you add a discrete graphics card. So, if you feel the power of APU is not enough, then you can always add a discrete card. Just get a fanless/passive cooled card. So you have the option of upgrading down the road incase performance is not there.
Square_Wave: But incase you are wondering - the two motherboards that you linked earlier have expansion slot and looks like they support multiple gpu options. Means, they will let you add a discrete graphics card. So, if you feel the power of APU is not enough, then you can always add a discrete card. Just get a fanless/passive cooled card. So you have the option of upgrading down the road incase performance is not there.
reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
^^XBMC is anything but GPU intensive. As long as your card supports OpenGL and some form of video acceleration such as DXVA in windows or VA-API/VDPAU in linux, it will work. Even a lowly raspberry pi with its broadcom graphics core is good enough for that. All it can do is bilinear/trilinear upscaling whereas a lot more complicated algorithms for independent luma/chroma upscaling are possible with a renderer such as madVR if you GPU has the horsepower. Also XBMC does not guarantee 24p output. there is quite bit of drift.
XBMC runs fine even on intel integrated solutions. However you miss out on video quality and the state of the art in accurate video playback on PC.
XBMC runs fine even on intel integrated solutions. However you miss out on video quality and the state of the art in accurate video playback on PC.
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square_wave
Well-Known Member
Thanks a million to all of you. Things are looking much clearer now !!
Will post back after I make some progress !
Will post back after I make some progress !
For 1080p sources, there is hardly any upscaling needed. The other processing like sharpening, deblocking is needed only for compressed video sources. Same thing goes for luma/chroma correction. You don't need it for good 1080p sources, may need it for badly encoded mkv files. But then AMD A6 series supports madVR renderer and do some of the processing with limited options like Lanczos3 scaling etc. Again, if the signal is already good, then there is no need for extensive gpu. The APU can be quite sufficient.
I had a HTPC before with ffdshow. It was never ending because I always found some processing option or the other. After trying lots of settings which pushed boundaries, I realized its not worth it and made very little or minute difference with 1080p sources. There was quite a bit difference with DVD's though with different algorithms. Same thing can be done with GPU. What one considers decent can be another man's low end. Choice is ours to find the boundary and play within in it.
As far as APU option, I like it because it presents an opportunity to do quite a good work with graphics at budget and also presents graphics upgrade path if needed in future.
reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
Again wrong! Pretty much all video whether SD or HD is stored as 4:2:0 which needs to be upscaled to either 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 depending upon the display. So chroma upscaling is required irrespective of whatever the size of the video. Its a different matter though that chroma errors are harder to spot than luma errors which hit you in the face for standard definition video.
Whether an APU is sufficient or not is a different question. It depends on what you can tolerate and what you can't. For standard definition - especially for downloaded TV shows, I can't emphasize how much better madVR with jinc scaling looks.
If buying an APU, it might be a good idea to wait for a month. Kaveri which has the GCN architecture is being launched at CES right now. The current gen APUs are already obsolete.
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The 4:2:0 signal is upsampled by the video decoder internally to 4:2:2. This is by default. Then it will be upgraded to 4:4:4 (component or RGB) either by player for display. This is where the renderer in PC comes into picture. You can have it do the work. Otherwise every display can do it without problem. No need for renderer itself to do it.
The bluray players also offer this option of 4:2:0/4:4:4component/4:4:4 RGB option. All the display handles all three perfectly. And there is no right or wrong way to do it if the encoder did a good job. The information stored for Cb/Cr is in delta of the first Y.
The bluray players also offer this option of 4:2:0/4:4:4component/4:4:4 RGB option. All the display handles all three perfectly. And there is no right or wrong way to do it if the encoder did a good job. The information stored for Cb/Cr is in delta of the first Y.
reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
You can force the decoder to not do any upscaling and let the renderer handle the incoming data directly. Upscaling - whether chroma or luma is always done with a filter kernel and the more complex this kernel (eg bicubic and spline), the more GPU processing power the renderer requires. It is pretty easy to spot the difference in the right circumstances.
A very good scene to test this is the start of the Matrix movie with lots of halos from flashlights. A poor quality upscalar will smear the halos. A good upscalar will preserve all the high frequency detail.
ROC -
from my own playing with different softwares and upscaling, the difference was most significant on DVD sources and that too on bad sources. There were few that were badly mastered. Others were done right and the difference was there but not a huge one. At that point, most difference was made by not chroma/luma upscaling, but the pixel upscaling + sharpening algorithms. I did not notice much difference between bluray/Hi-def sources. SD TV shows were also not done so well, and the difference was quite big.
Anyway, I only have the bluray version of matrix. will put into my desktop PC and check it out.
from my own playing with different softwares and upscaling, the difference was most significant on DVD sources and that too on bad sources. There were few that were badly mastered. Others were done right and the difference was there but not a huge one. At that point, most difference was made by not chroma/luma upscaling, but the pixel upscaling + sharpening algorithms. I did not notice much difference between bluray/Hi-def sources. SD TV shows were also not done so well, and the difference was quite big.
Anyway, I only have the bluray version of matrix. will put into my desktop PC and check it out.
Squarewave - I want to clarify a few things. Hope it will help in you getting the system of your choice. I'm on the same journey as well.
There are no motherboards with GPU built into them. Nowadays, all CPUs come with integrated graphics. Please ignore the APU marketing speak - it is a fancy name for integrated graphics - i.e. the GPU and CPU are on the same die or chip.
Now, depending on the graphics horsepower you need, you can get an additional graphics card to act as your GPU (thus bypassing the integrated graphics in your CPU). You typically gain graphics performance but lose on cost, heat (hence, noise), and needing a larger cabinet.
GPUs typically need lots of memory bandwidth for good performance - which is why good quality discrete graphics cards typically come with high bandwidth GDDR5 memory. However, this is expensive.
Integrated graphics use a part of your RAM (DDR3 memory) as the graphics memory. Since this is typically lower bandwidth than GDDR5 (half the bandwidth, IIRC), you get lesser graphics performance. As ROC rightly pointed out.
There is a part-solution though. You can use fast frequency memory to make up for the reduced bandwidth. You can often find fast memory at fairly reasonable prices if you try and hit the "sweet spot" of price/performance (as is usually the case with computer components).
One more thing to note is that if you are going to buy a discrete graphics card with DDR3 RAM, it will be the same as running integrated graphics - as far as memory bandwidth is concerned. You might as well just go with integrated graphics with say, 8GB of reasonably fast RAM.
One more thing to note - and I have a different opinion from ROC here.
Integrated graphics have improved leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. This is for both AMD and Intel.
For an HTPC, one big advantage you get with Intel is that Intel's chips are manufactured in a significantly superior manufacturing process. Plus, they have a significantly more efficient design and a more highly integrated chip. What this means is that the big benefit of integrated graphics (in Intel's scenario) is that your system will run significantly cooler than anything from AMD. I'm referring to the new Haswell series of chips though - not the older generation. The integrated graphics would be called HD4600 or HD4400 (there are higher versions as well, namely HD5000, HD5100, HD5200 - although they are more exotic and expensive and difficult to find). You can read a review of Haswell's HTPC capabilities.
The concluding remarks in the review are worth reading, IMHO. And so is the power consumption. The system draws less than 50 watts of power in almost all cases (unless you deliberate try maxing out CPU and GPU with a synthetic test - and even then it only consumes 80watts or so). That is quite phenomenal for a a system that is capable of doing full blown HTPC duty. Note - this is 50 watts power draw at the wall - including everything in your system.
What this will allow is for you to either build a really small mini itx system with minimal cooling needs, a low power picoPSU, and consequently very little noise. You could probably even run some of the low power variants with a laptop adapter.
Now lest I sound like an Intel sales person, AMD has some compelling integrated graphics options as well. Less expensive than Intel. And better graphics (typically 1.5x-2x for the same price, although that has come down recently). But with a significantly higher power draw. And a lot of their launches have been paper launches. They promised 45W power efficient Richland but they were never available in the market. Their Kaveri is long awaited (and Indian design!) - and in terms of graphics, should be the same graphics capability as a discrete 7750 (with DDR3 RAM). But that will only be their 100W model. In fact, I am waiting for Kaveri too.
The thing is - even 100W is still way lower than the power draw of a CPU + discrete GPU. Plus, it means less fans, more airflow, etc.
Sorry for rambling on. This is a complex field, and I don't understand a lot of it as well. Especially the HTPC software requirement bit. Just sharing some of my research I have done in building an HTPC for myself.
There are no motherboards with GPU built into them. Nowadays, all CPUs come with integrated graphics. Please ignore the APU marketing speak - it is a fancy name for integrated graphics - i.e. the GPU and CPU are on the same die or chip.
Now, depending on the graphics horsepower you need, you can get an additional graphics card to act as your GPU (thus bypassing the integrated graphics in your CPU). You typically gain graphics performance but lose on cost, heat (hence, noise), and needing a larger cabinet.
GPUs typically need lots of memory bandwidth for good performance - which is why good quality discrete graphics cards typically come with high bandwidth GDDR5 memory. However, this is expensive.
Integrated graphics use a part of your RAM (DDR3 memory) as the graphics memory. Since this is typically lower bandwidth than GDDR5 (half the bandwidth, IIRC), you get lesser graphics performance. As ROC rightly pointed out.
There is a part-solution though. You can use fast frequency memory to make up for the reduced bandwidth. You can often find fast memory at fairly reasonable prices if you try and hit the "sweet spot" of price/performance (as is usually the case with computer components).
One more thing to note is that if you are going to buy a discrete graphics card with DDR3 RAM, it will be the same as running integrated graphics - as far as memory bandwidth is concerned. You might as well just go with integrated graphics with say, 8GB of reasonably fast RAM.
One more thing to note - and I have a different opinion from ROC here.
Integrated graphics have improved leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. This is for both AMD and Intel.
For an HTPC, one big advantage you get with Intel is that Intel's chips are manufactured in a significantly superior manufacturing process. Plus, they have a significantly more efficient design and a more highly integrated chip. What this means is that the big benefit of integrated graphics (in Intel's scenario) is that your system will run significantly cooler than anything from AMD. I'm referring to the new Haswell series of chips though - not the older generation. The integrated graphics would be called HD4600 or HD4400 (there are higher versions as well, namely HD5000, HD5100, HD5200 - although they are more exotic and expensive and difficult to find). You can read a review of Haswell's HTPC capabilities.
The concluding remarks in the review are worth reading, IMHO. And so is the power consumption. The system draws less than 50 watts of power in almost all cases (unless you deliberate try maxing out CPU and GPU with a synthetic test - and even then it only consumes 80watts or so). That is quite phenomenal for a a system that is capable of doing full blown HTPC duty. Note - this is 50 watts power draw at the wall - including everything in your system.
What this will allow is for you to either build a really small mini itx system with minimal cooling needs, a low power picoPSU, and consequently very little noise. You could probably even run some of the low power variants with a laptop adapter.
Now lest I sound like an Intel sales person, AMD has some compelling integrated graphics options as well. Less expensive than Intel. And better graphics (typically 1.5x-2x for the same price, although that has come down recently). But with a significantly higher power draw. And a lot of their launches have been paper launches. They promised 45W power efficient Richland but they were never available in the market. Their Kaveri is long awaited (and Indian design!) - and in terms of graphics, should be the same graphics capability as a discrete 7750 (with DDR3 RAM). But that will only be their 100W model. In fact, I am waiting for Kaveri too.
The thing is - even 100W is still way lower than the power draw of a CPU + discrete GPU. Plus, it means less fans, more airflow, etc.
Sorry for rambling on. This is a complex field, and I don't understand a lot of it as well. Especially the HTPC software requirement bit. Just sharing some of my research I have done in building an HTPC for myself.
Thad E Ginathom
Well-Known Member
Your rambling is very welcome --- and, far being being rambling, it is very clear.
Last couple of times around the PC-purchase track, I've bought AMD, and one of my reasons has, for better or worse, been the fact that AMD is not Intel. Let's face it, we're gadget freaks (at least to some extent) or we wouldn't be here. Perhaps, I know I do, we tend to bury our heads in the sand a bit as to the wider implications of buying the stuff that we buy. I've supported AMD because it wasn't the Wintel rule-the-world partnership (and to get more performance/price) but now, yesterday, I read Intel vows to stop using 'conflict minerals' in new chips (BBC) and I'm impressed. I guess there are no angels in the commercial world, but this is a good start.
Now, this might be completely offtopic, but, along with other information in this thread, it means that my next PC build, for whatever purpose, will probably be Intel. But that build is not even on the horizon today, so everything could have changed by the time it is.
Last couple of times around the PC-purchase track, I've bought AMD, and one of my reasons has, for better or worse, been the fact that AMD is not Intel. Let's face it, we're gadget freaks (at least to some extent) or we wouldn't be here. Perhaps, I know I do, we tend to bury our heads in the sand a bit as to the wider implications of buying the stuff that we buy. I've supported AMD because it wasn't the Wintel rule-the-world partnership (and to get more performance/price) but now, yesterday, I read Intel vows to stop using 'conflict minerals' in new chips (BBC) and I'm impressed. I guess there are no angels in the commercial world, but this is a good start.
Now, this might be completely offtopic, but, along with other information in this thread, it means that my next PC build, for whatever purpose, will probably be Intel. But that build is not even on the horizon today, so everything could have changed by the time it is.
I thought I should mention that Kaveri was formally launched a few days ago, and is already selling on newegg and other websites.
Kaveri is selling in 45W, 65W, and 95W TDP and I think even the lowest wattage one should be more than sufficient for HTPC. They are performing at the same level as low end discrete graphics. Here are a couple of reviews.
The A8-7600 (45W) seems to be quite attractive if it sells for $120 like it is supposed to.
Kaveri is selling in 45W, 65W, and 95W TDP and I think even the lowest wattage one should be more than sufficient for HTPC. They are performing at the same level as low end discrete graphics. Here are a couple of reviews.
The A8-7600 (45W) seems to be quite attractive if it sells for $120 like it is supposed to.
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square_wave
Well-Known Member
Aaargh ... nobody online seems to be selling the AMD A6 series ! They all have the A4 or A8 / A10 versions. The A6 seems to be the sweet spot !
reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
Get the new A8-7600. Configurable TDP and hands down the best deal out there.
square_wave
Well-Known Member
Thanks ROC. On a parallel path I am looking for that GT 440 and low wattage intel cpu combo. The GT 440 seems to have disappeared from the market !
btw : My cooler master micro atx htpc cabinet will come by tomorrow.
Also - the cooler master comes only with a 300 watts psu. Will all these work ?
btw : My cooler master micro atx htpc cabinet will come by tomorrow.
Also - the cooler master comes only with a 300 watts psu. Will all these work ?
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reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
Yep 300W should be more than enough. The parts you are looking at aren't power hungry at all.
This 45W/65W A8-7600 looks to be the sweet spot of the Kaveri parts based on the initial benchmarks.
Performance is at par or more than 100W Richland APUs.
In the Graphics benchmark tests it smoked i3 and i5.
Not sure when it will be available in India.
Performance is at par or more than 100W Richland APUs.
In the Graphics benchmark tests it smoked i3 and i5.
Not sure when it will be available in India.
The newly released Asus Eee Box EB1037 would make the perfect audio server and/or HTPC.
Really compact, as big as a wifi router, fanless and completely silent, and enough horsepower and connectivity options to play either role.
I find the CPU and GPU pairing quite interesting.
Quad core Celeron J1900 (Intel Silvermont/Baytrail) that can turbo up to 2.42GHz, paired with a discrete nVidia GPU - GeForce 820M.
Should have more than enough horsepower for 1080p, and even some reserve power for casual gaming.
And all this in a form factor that is as big as a paperback novel!
Really compact, as big as a wifi router, fanless and completely silent, and enough horsepower and connectivity options to play either role.
I find the CPU and GPU pairing quite interesting.
Quad core Celeron J1900 (Intel Silvermont/Baytrail) that can turbo up to 2.42GHz, paired with a discrete nVidia GPU - GeForce 820M.
Should have more than enough horsepower for 1080p, and even some reserve power for casual gaming.
And all this in a form factor that is as big as a paperback novel!
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