So basically all boards designed for media centers STILL fall short on the graphics front but sadly it's kind of as I suspected.
Will you possibly be doing a sort of low end graphics cards for media centers article to compliment this at all? It would be pretty handy to have imo :)
790g is due out shortly for those interested and should contain all AVIVo functions of the 2600 /38** series as far as i'm aware which would mean hardware bluray support
correct me if im wrong.
however im going to use a 3850 as my GPU of choice primarily to play the odd game on a large TV.
I just replaced an Abit I90-HD with the Gigabyte & am really pleased. Oddly my impression was that video quality of the 7100 was better than the ATi X1250 on the Abit.
Then again I won't add a bluray reader till they drop below around £80. If it's an issue then, I'll drop in a £40 passively cooled card.
The I90HD wasn't Vista certified & I'd get pretty regular bluescreens, none with the Gigabyte... yet.
The only oddity I've found is that the front panel header on the Gigabyte dosen't seem to drive the HD activity light on my Antec Fusion. Anyone else found this?
Originally Posted by Spiny The only oddity I've found is that the front panel header on the Gigabyte dosen't seem to drive the HD activity light on my Antec Fusion. Anyone else found this?
This might sound blindingly obvious (so apologies if it comes across as patronising) but have you tried connecting the plug the other way round on the header? HDD activity lights genrally only work one way round.
Originally Posted by WhiskeyAlpha This might sound blindingly obvious (so apologies if it comes across as patronising) but have you tried connecting the plug the other way round on the header? HDD activity lights genrally only work one way round.
So if I'm reading those results correctly, h264 content coming from either a BD or HD-DVD disk will use ~75% of the CPU at best, and yet streaming from the harddrive uses at most 50% of the CPU, what's going on here?
What's the difference between the video coming off a shiny disk and that coming off a harddrive? HDCP?
The disks provide much higher bitrates - you're talking 25-50GB for a movie, compared to much-much less.
And also like you say: encryption takes up a ton of processing power. In effect - the movie studios are killing the planet.
Yea you need a killer CPU to decode it, negating the point of an inexpensive system and video processing offloading. The next gen parts should allow low power CPU use.
Just curious when are the new chipsets due out? I'm looking at moving down to a sff and the Asus has been my motherboard of choice for a small gaming rig. However, I wasn't aware of the release dates for G/P45 so if they're going to be better supported delaying my build is no big deal.
P45/G45 are probably not coming out until later in the year (maybe as late as June/July/August). Timeframe is pretty vague at the moment for the new Intel chipsets - Nvidia/AMD are pretty close with AMD-based IGP solutions though.
We've got very early RS780 boards in house already but are waiting for driver development to catch up with the hardware. GeForce 8200 is probably around the same timeframe too, but we don't have hardware yet.
my hcpc is an msi 690g and amd be-2350 cpu at the moment and i have to say im really happy with it. I managed to get the cpu, mobo, and a gig of ram for just over £100 delivered and its really cost effective both in terms of power consumption and that it handles gbpvr very well as well as the odd non graphically intensive game i throw at it.
To get hd-dvd to work glitch free i ended up plumping for a sapphire 2600xt ultimate (fanless job) which runs at pretty low power also ~60W i think.
Im a big fan of the 690G boards tho, it is amazing how feature rich they are for under £40!
my real gripe with a hcpcs at the moment is the lack of an effective solution to get dolby true hd, dts hd etc into the setup. There is some hope with an up coming auzentech add on board for their prelude card which should be released fairly soon but by then it will probably be cheaper to buy a stand alone bd or hd player.
And you cant even use their full bitrate when you use analogue outs as powerdvd downmixes them for drm reasons. GRR!
Originally Posted by Bindibadgi 1/2/3/4 months depending on what you're after.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim S P45/G45 are probably not coming out until later in the year (maybe as late as June/July/August). Timeframe is pretty vague at the moment for the new Intel chipsets - Nvidia/AMD are pretty close with AMD-based IGP solutions though.
We've got very early RS780 boards in house already but are waiting for driver development to catch up with the hardware. GeForce 8200 is probably around the same timeframe too, but we don't have hardware yet.
Thanks guys :D, I guess I'll just sit tight for a bit since I wasn't planning my upgrade immediately anyways.
Very nice review Bindi! A few points and questions for you.
The chart on page 4 says the 690G only supports single-link DVI but I thought it was dual-link?
I think people should keep in mind the fact that the Rightmark audio tests are not purely a test of analogue output quality as the signal gets put through the codec's ADCs before Rightmark can test the signals therefore the test is as much about the codecs input quality as it is it's output.
I remember reading in the past a review in which the reviewer could not get hardware acceleration working on files played from the hard drive but could on discs. The charts on page 9 show results for when hardware acceleration is enabled but I'd be very interested to see results with it disabled in order to compare them and confirm that that glitch has been resolved and that hardware acceleration works on any codec the chipset purports to accelerate regardless of the source of that codec (HDD/optical media).
The chart on page 10 has a typo. It reads "HDQ" where it should be "HQV".
Quote:
Silicon Optix, makers of HQV and HD HQV, provides an industry standard benchmark for looking at video quality by providing tests the cover all areas of video processing playback: (motion adaptive) de-interlacing, noise reduction, 3:2 Pull-down detection (Inverse telecine), Film Cadence and Film Resolution manipulation.
AFAIK the benchmark does not specifically test for scaling which is very important for SD content displayed on high res displays.
I also think people should keep a few things in mind when looking at the HD-HQV tests. Most of the tests are specifically designed to test how well the software/hardware handles interlaced content e.g. 1080i video most likely sourced from broadcast television. That's all well and good but if most of the HD content you watch is HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or online trailers then bear in mind that most if not all of it is stored as progressive scan and so the software/hardware doesn't need to deinterlace or inverse telecine it thus rendering the tests for those processes irrelevant. The noise reduction test however is useful for progressive scan content although again keep in mind that a lot of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs are fairly well mastered and one would hope would not require too much noise reduction in the first place.
BTW, it's not a "rebranded 885". Realtek made ALC889 especially for GIGABYTE. You will not see it on any other board. And it also has 7.1 + 2 Hi-Definition audio, meaning you can play 2 different audio streams on the back audio and on the front audio. I tested this and it works.
Fair enough on the two audio streams but the core is essentially a rebranded 885 made specifically for Gigabyte by Realtek. It's the same as the 890 made for Asrock.
Originally Posted by Renoir Very nice review Bindi! A few points and questions for you.
The chart on page 4 says the 690G only supports single-link DVI but I thought it was dual-link?
Yes, sorry, copy and paste fingers. The HDMI can only output at 1.2 standard though = 1080p (according to AMD).
Quote:
I think people should keep in mind the fact that the Rightmark audio tests are not purely a test of analogue output quality as the signal gets put through the codec's ADCs before Rightmark can test the signals therefore the test is as much about the codecs input quality as it is it's output.
In actual fact it's MORE a test of the ADC than DAC since the ADCs are often of lower quality than DACs. However, this is the only comparative I (and a lot of other sites) have, but it does provide some general area of quality information, even if it's not exactly correct. I mean, it doesn't test every output either - only stereo, and I couldn't test HDCP LPCM output because we don't have a receiver :(
Quote:
I remember reading in the past a review in which the reviewer could not get hardware acceleration working on files played from the hard drive but could on discs. The charts on page 9 show results for when hardware acceleration is enabled but I'd be very interested to see results with it disabled in order to compare them and confirm that that glitch has been resolved and that hardware acceleration works on any codec the chipset purports to accelerate regardless of the source of that codec (HDD/optical media).
Good point - it was enabled in PowerDVD because I simply ran out of time to do every iteration (was here til 12am two nights in a row), but next time when I do the AMD RS780 I will do.
Quote:
AFAIK the benchmark does not specifically test for scaling which is very important for SD content displayed on high res displays.
Well the output from the DVD was 480i and the screen was set to 1080p - the entire thing was scaled which makes seeing "errors" like jaggies far more apparent. This method (according to HQV) tests the processing quality of the system, not the screen.
Quote:
I also think people should keep a few things in mind when looking at the HD-HQV tests. Most of the tests are specifically designed to test how well the software/hardware handles interlaced content e.g. 1080i video most likely sourced from broadcast television. That's all well and good but if most of the HD content you watch is HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or online trailers then bear in mind that most if not all of it is stored as progressive scan and so the software/hardware doesn't need to deinterlace or inverse telecine it thus rendering the tests for those processes irrelevant. The noise reduction test however is useful for progressive scan content although again keep in mind that a lot of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs are fairly well mastered and one would hope would not require too much noise reduction in the first place.
Good to know ;)
Quote:
Again great review Bindi, thanks ;)
Cheers. :D I'll take the points on board for the next one. If there's any other tests you think are relevant, let me know (without requiring a sound room and £10k worth of kit :D)
Comments 1 to 25 of 37
Will you possibly be doing a sort of low end graphics cards for media centers article to compliment this at all? It would be pretty handy to have imo :)
correct me if im wrong.
however im going to use a 3850 as my GPU of choice primarily to play the odd game on a large TV.
Then again I won't add a bluray reader till they drop below around £80. If it's an issue then, I'll drop in a £40 passively cooled card.
The I90HD wasn't Vista certified & I'd get pretty regular bluescreens, none with the Gigabyte... yet.
The only oddity I've found is that the front panel header on the Gigabyte dosen't seem to drive the HD activity light on my Antec Fusion. Anyone else found this?
This might sound blindingly obvious (so apologies if it comes across as patronising) but have you tried connecting the plug the other way round on the header? HDD activity lights genrally only work one way round.
Yeah, first thing I tried. D for Diode :)
What's the difference between the video coming off a shiny disk and that coming off a harddrive? HDCP?
And also like you say: encryption takes up a ton of processing power. In effect - the movie studios are killing the planet.
Yea you need a killer CPU to decode it, negating the point of an inexpensive system and video processing offloading. The next gen parts should allow low power CPU use.
We've got very early RS780 boards in house already but are waiting for driver development to catch up with the hardware. GeForce 8200 is probably around the same timeframe too, but we don't have hardware yet.
To get hd-dvd to work glitch free i ended up plumping for a sapphire 2600xt ultimate (fanless job) which runs at pretty low power also ~60W i think.
Im a big fan of the 690G boards tho, it is amazing how feature rich they are for under £40!
my real gripe with a hcpcs at the moment is the lack of an effective solution to get dolby true hd, dts hd etc into the setup. There is some hope with an up coming auzentech add on board for their prelude card which should be released fairly soon but by then it will probably be cheaper to buy a stand alone bd or hd player.
And you cant even use their full bitrate when you use analogue outs as powerdvd downmixes them for drm reasons. GRR!
Thanks guys :D, I guess I'll just sit tight for a bit since I wasn't planning my upgrade immediately anyways.
The chart on page 4 says the 690G only supports single-link DVI but I thought it was dual-link?
I think people should keep in mind the fact that the Rightmark audio tests are not purely a test of analogue output quality as the signal gets put through the codec's ADCs before Rightmark can test the signals therefore the test is as much about the codecs input quality as it is it's output.
I remember reading in the past a review in which the reviewer could not get hardware acceleration working on files played from the hard drive but could on discs. The charts on page 9 show results for when hardware acceleration is enabled but I'd be very interested to see results with it disabled in order to compare them and confirm that that glitch has been resolved and that hardware acceleration works on any codec the chipset purports to accelerate regardless of the source of that codec (HDD/optical media).
The chart on page 10 has a typo. It reads "HDQ" where it should be "HQV".
I also think people should keep a few things in mind when looking at the HD-HQV tests. Most of the tests are specifically designed to test how well the software/hardware handles interlaced content e.g. 1080i video most likely sourced from broadcast television. That's all well and good but if most of the HD content you watch is HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or online trailers then bear in mind that most if not all of it is stored as progressive scan and so the software/hardware doesn't need to deinterlace or inverse telecine it thus rendering the tests for those processes irrelevant. The noise reduction test however is useful for progressive scan content although again keep in mind that a lot of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs are fairly well mastered and one would hope would not require too much noise reduction in the first place.
Again great review Bindi, thanks ;)
You will never see ADI on a GIGABYTE MB... Is the Realtek 889a: http://www.gigabyte.eu/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2691&ProductName=GA-73PVM-S2H
BTW, it's not a "rebranded 885". Realtek made ALC889 especially for GIGABYTE. You will not see it on any other board. And it also has 7.1 + 2 Hi-Definition audio, meaning you can play 2 different audio streams on the back audio and on the front audio. I tested this and it works.
Yes, sorry, copy and paste fingers. The HDMI can only output at 1.2 standard though = 1080p (according to AMD).
In actual fact it's MORE a test of the ADC than DAC since the ADCs are often of lower quality than DACs. However, this is the only comparative I (and a lot of other sites) have, but it does provide some general area of quality information, even if it's not exactly correct. I mean, it doesn't test every output either - only stereo, and I couldn't test HDCP LPCM output because we don't have a receiver :(
Good point - it was enabled in PowerDVD because I simply ran out of time to do every iteration (was here til 12am two nights in a row), but next time when I do the AMD RS780 I will do.
Well the output from the DVD was 480i and the screen was set to 1080p - the entire thing was scaled which makes seeing "errors" like jaggies far more apparent. This method (according to HQV) tests the processing quality of the system, not the screen.
Good to know ;)
Cheers. :D I'll take the points on board for the next one. If there's any other tests you think are relevant, let me know (without requiring a sound room and £10k worth of kit :D)