Don't mean to poo-poo on your hardwork - but almost all of your images are using different frames.
a) Galaxy Quest - differences in star placements, planet alignment
b) Apollo 13 - head is shifted b/w images
c) Friends - characters shift - legs are different locations etc
In fact the only ones that look like they are the same frame show no differences.
Have you looked at the difference in frames? If you took one frame before or one frame after on one card, would it match up to the other card's image you already have?
What nvidia or ATi ought to do is to prove a simplier interface and especially much better documentation on how to access the hardware directly.
The GPU's are incredibly fast for lots of things. For example it would indeed be possible to do video encoding, photo manipulation effects (Apple core.image/video!) or even sound compression.
Shame I'll never be able to use it..seeing as I don't use Windows.
You can use a GPU to do anything. Might be a good idea to make it easier to do so rather than having to develop more codecs as that's a never ending job.
The article really needs to be corrected per the 6800 PCI Express vs 6800 AGP. People are talking about this on numerous HTPC/AVS forums and being mislead. Only the PCI Express 6800 has the new silicon.
ive jumped through the other pages from a comment on page one, so if this has already been answered, lynch me now:
anand said he knows of no manufacturer that bundles nv DVD.
im pretty sure its on my bfg disc that came with me 6800GT OC ;)
thats me sorted then.
karlos
There's a link for the correct driver and the decoder and at the bottom a link which shows which cards support what. Sort of sucks that my AGP 6800 Ultra has less features then a 6600 card but it is what it is...
mcveigh, he provided the link to where you could find that for the ATi side of things. I'm curious about the S3 things, though it wouldn't surprise me if true.
I guess giving you the hardware features now means you should be entitled to the software to take advantage of it as well, huh?
Those of you who think you're entitled to nVidia's DVD decoder are living in la la land. So now they should also give you the games that take advantage of their technology/features too?
I think you would do your readers a great service by retesting all of this on an AMD processor. Your Pentium 4 rig had Hyperthreading on, making this issue look far les serious than it is. Hyperthreading P4 chips report far lower CPU utilization numbers as opposed to even high-level Athlon 64 processors. So those of us with a Geforce 6800 who are running high-end AMD hardware are getting 70-100% CPU utilization in WMV9. It explains why a lot of us are having trouble trusting nVidia now, and in the future.
Will this product work with NVDVD and ForceWare Multimedia?
The new software will upgrade the decoders in ForceWare Multimedia 3.0 to access the new features in the NVIDIA DVD Decoder. The NVIDIA DVD Decoder will not upgrade NVDVD 2.0 as it was a separate application based upon an old architecture.
But still one thing is missing. I use cyberlink powerdvd for watching dvds. My question is that if i have got nvidia or ati dvd decoder. Should i use hardware accelerated decoder or should i stick with cyberlink decoder.
Cyberlink has implemented some smart software deinterlacer and image quality enhancer (CLEV-2). So i would like to see the image quality differences between hardware/software decoders available.
Bah, I would be kind of pissed if I had a high end $500 card only to find out now its more worthless than a sub $200 card at decoding video. A bit of shame on nVidia.
Oh, as a clarification of my previous comment (#41) I meant that I was under the impression that normally the DVD decoding software handled the de-interlacing, obviously PureVideo overrides that. But what I mean is on ATI cards, without any type of hardware de-interlacing, wouldn't the deinterlacing differ from decoder to decoder?
Hey Anand, why not suggest to nVidia that owners of 6800 series GPUs be able to download the codec and just have their serial #'s or proof of purchase? I mean, they shouldn't tout a feature that you need to pay extra for?
They already screwed us 6800GT/U owners with a "broken" feature, now they wanna screw us 20$ more to get the "broken" feature?
I was under the impression that the deinterlacing was done by the DVD decoder app itself. So would not the results differ from WinDVD to PowerDVD to Zoom? Also would have been nice to compare it to other modes of software deinterlacing such as motion compensated.
Something that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that while the hardware deinterlacing is certainly a win for nVidia, ATI wins the WMV9 acceleration category, as I'm pretty sure that all R3x0 cards support it back to the 9500/9700. That means that ATI's WMV9 market penetration is way higher than nVidia's, since very few nVidia cards can do the acceleration.
"The new software will upgrade the decoders in ForceWare Multimedia 3.0 to access the new features in the NVIDIA DVD Decoder. The NVIDIA DVD Decoder will not upgrade NVDVD 2.0 as it was a separate application based upon an old architecture."
They want me to pay twice for it I guess. Greedy bastards.
I got a copy of NVDVD with my eVGA 6800GT. How do I update the DVD codec? When I install the new version from Nvidia, it still asks for credit card info and stuff.
"NVIDIA's DVD decoder has always been $20, unfortunately I don't know of a single manufacturer that gives away their DVD decoders for free."
I know that their DVD decoder has always been $20. But, they never specified that you would need to pay extra for a feature that they touted for months. Thats like making you pay for a special driver to get PS3.0 to work. If they advertise it as a feature on a card I am paying $500 for, it better damn well be free and not another 20 f'ing dollars.
I'm really disappointed with the 6800s not having the wmv9 decoding... was gonna get myself a 6800U for xmas. I was reading on the X800XT-PE coz there's a Sapphire X800XT-PE relatively cheaper than most 6800Us in http://buycomp.hkgolden.com.
hehe... I guess I can wait 3 months for the nv48, but then with the R520 just around the corner... man buying a card is starting to become a tough decision.
neways... I was wonderin if neone could confirm this information on the hardware flaw...
You missed one very important feature to me.
The 6800gt lacks the true hd output formats in component video output. I have a 6800gt and these card didn't include the special 10-pin din connector to the hd-component/s-video/composite adaptor plug. My freind at work bought a 6600gt(Chaintech) for his son for xmas, so I borrowed the card for a test this last weekend. Having a old school sony KDP-57XBR2 HDTV with only firewire and 2-hd component vidoe imputs. The true hd-output of the 6600gt is way more important of a feature to me then the wmv9 decoding.
The output over component(both true 1080i & 720p; the sony can nativly handle both) looked very good, for both hd video(surferp****.com), hd tapestreams recorded from the firewire output of the mot-6208 hd-cable box and the latest games, once you figure out how n-view works and you get the game resolutions correct.
anand, take a close look at the reference 6800gt cards and I think you will see the 10-pin din connector.
I want a RMA for a 6800gt with the true hd-output with component video. eVGA does have a 90-day upgrade program. Maybe a 6900gt will show up quick?
Well, my XFX 6800GT didn't come with the NVDVD decoder. it's a shame nVidia sells a very expensive video card and tout's this feature but doesn't include the software to make it work.
I think nvidia should know how it's customers feel. after all we were the early adopters. it's one thing to have a partially working feature but it's totally a rip-off not to have it at all!!!! $400 for a video card and you need to pay more for software to make it work? :(
nVIDIA has really done it this time. #29 mentioned ATI not doing their part, but at least the features they advertised and are slowly deploying work on ALL OF THE GPUs. nVIDIA owes us something for the false advertising, they've really wrecked my day, I paid for something, and I expect to have it, not half of it.
I should have made this more clear, I used the NVIDIA codec for NVIDIA's tests and I used ATI's codec for ATI's tests. I used Zoom Player for both of them.
ViRGE
They never briefed me on anything like that but I can always ask :)
I know this is an Nvidia article Anand, but could you get on ATI's butt about their lack of features too, and find out what's going on? When the X800 was launched, ATI was talking about decode acceleration for MPEG4 along along with some sort of encode acceleration(i.e. all the features NV promissed but never delivered on). I'm curious to know what happened to that, and if we're going to get something new out of ATI besides WMV acceleration.
I was wondering why AT's results were different than PCPers and just noticed they used MMC & 4.12 while AT used the nVidia codec and player for both cards tests.
I've asked numerous times, never gotten a response. I'll try again :)
For those of you who are wondering, I have asked NVIDIA what their official statement is to early 6800 adopters, but that has also been met with no response.
Most software DVDs either blend or remove one of the fields by some partial de-interlacing algorithm. nvidia's DVD decoder does it ok. The image is sharp but still leaves only half framerate.
I wasn't aware that the 6800s are coming with NVDVD, in that case you are good to go. Just download the updated version (1.00.67 is the official version) from the website.
Rand
The full system was configured as follows:
Intel Pentium 4 570J
Intel D915GUX Motherboard
2 x 512MB DDR2-533 DIMMs
Intel HD Audio Enabled
Anand- Could you provide the details on what the test platform in use was?
You mentioned the processor of course, but it would be appreciated if you could disclose the other components in use.
But the 6800's come with NVDVD (at least mine did), isn't that basically their decoder? Other users are reporting their new (just recieved today) 6800 GT's coming with the DVD decoder on CD.
How to enable WMV9 hardware acceleration on ATI cards:
Note: WMV9 acceleration has been disabled until Microsoft issues a new patch for WMV9. To enable this with other versions of Catalyst (with some rendering errors), RUN regedit -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control ->Video and find your ATI reg value. The key to update is DXVA_WMV = 1
#16, It does. It just doesn't have the full capabilities that it was advertised as having. If you look at the descriptions you'll see only the 6600 AGP/PCI-E and 6800 PCI-E have use of the full capabilities of the encoder.
There are some facts missing when it comes to differences between interlaced and progressive video.
NTSC TV broadcasts are recorded at 60fps, not 30fps. (PAL is 50fps). Each field is recorded after eachother in time. There is a 16.7ms delay between each field.
If you were to de-interlace two fields into one frame you would loose half of the temporal resolution! This is a big mistake - especially for fast moving things like a football or hockey game.
A proper de-interlacing method would render each field as a separate frame (like a TV does!), not blend or discard fields.
24fps content, on the other hand, need to be converted to fit the 60fps NTSC (or 50fps PAL). It is nasty and should be banned. A DVD/MPEG-2 video is perfectly capable of storing 24fps progressive.
So, what we want is to render 24fps content as 24fps progressive and TV content as 60fps progressive.
Remember, a TV is already interlaced. There will be no problems with interlaced content because each field is rendered consecutively. It is only on a computer monitor which is progressive where we need to do field deinterlacing.
I hope nVidia plans to add support for decoding MPEG4-AVC HP at some point. Whether it's this product line or next, MPEG4 will be important for next generation optical media (whether it's HD-DVD or Blu-Ray).
What makes me truly upset is that so far, the sites reviewing PureVideo has not take a stand for the consumers that own the 6800 and were promised the full PureVideo featureset by nVidia. Rather, sites are reviewing the tech, and ducking the issue, as if they are more concerned about continuing to receive nVidia products for review than they are for us. Who's looking out for the little guy?
P.S. Anandtech's review states that the 6800 Standard has a fully functional video processor --this isn't fully true, as the AGP version according to nVidia's website, does not.
Great review. Even though Nvidia doesn't always win the deinterlace test, it wins on picture quality in most tests.Looks like a 6600 Nvidia will be replacing my ATI as the next video card in my htpc.
That is so retarded that it doesn't fully work on the 6800GT/Ultra. Why would they cripple their high end cards? I guess since they aren't very available it doesn't really matter. Hope they add the rest of the functionality to new revs of these cards.
This is pretty interesting and since I already bought the Nvidia DVD Decoder I can upgrade to this new version if the link on Nvidia's site ever starts working lol.
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62 Comments
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phusg - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
Has anyone found a 6600GT card manufacturer that bundles nvDVD including the DVD decoder yet?akozak - Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - link
Hey Anand,Don't mean to poo-poo on your hardwork - but almost all of your images are using different frames.
a) Galaxy Quest - differences in star placements, planet alignment
b) Apollo 13 - head is shifted b/w images
c) Friends - characters shift - legs are different locations etc
In fact the only ones that look like they are the same frame show no differences.
Have you looked at the difference in frames? If you took one frame before or one frame after on one card, would it match up to the other card's image you already have?
b3roldan - Friday, December 31, 2004 - link
hi, I'm using a vanilla 6800 from inno3d w/ Forceware 66.93.I was just wonderin if you guys were also experiencing problems I've had with these games or if t'was just me.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
- Everything's black and white. Wondering if it has anything to do with nvidia's 0x32 Z stencil (shadowing technology).
MAFIA
- Walls are multi-colored, sometimes transparent
I've just upgraded from a 9800PRO 128mb, which worked pretty well with these games.
Just wonderin if there are others with the same prob... thx :)
Gatak - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
What nvidia or ATi ought to do is to prove a simplier interface and especially much better documentation on how to access the hardware directly.The GPU's are incredibly fast for lots of things. For example it would indeed be possible to do video encoding, photo manipulation effects (Apple core.image/video!) or even sound compression.
jago25 - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
Shame I'll never be able to use it..seeing as I don't use Windows.You can use a GPU to do anything. Might be a good idea to make it easier to do so rather than having to develop more codecs as that's a never ending job.
hellokeith - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
The article really needs to be corrected per the 6800 PCI Express vs 6800 AGP. People are talking about this on numerous HTPC/AVS forums and being mislead. Only the PCI Express 6800 has the new silicon.karlreading - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
ive jumped through the other pages from a comment on page one, so if this has already been answered, lynch me now:anand said he knows of no manufacturer that bundles nv DVD.
im pretty sure its on my bfg disc that came with me 6800GT OC ;)
thats me sorted then.
karlos
mikepers - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
This should help:http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_purevideo_requir...
There's a link for the correct driver and the decoder and at the bottom a link which shows which cards support what. Sort of sucks that my AGP 6800 Ultra has less features then a 6600 card but it is what it is...
CrystalBay - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Remember Buy.com ? Where are you Harvey!!!!tfranzese - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
mcveigh, he provided the link to where you could find that for the ATi side of things. I'm curious about the S3 things, though it wouldn't surprise me if true.mcveigh - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
nserra: where do you get your info on mpg4 from?tfranzese - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
I guess giving you the hardware features now means you should be entitled to the software to take advantage of it as well, huh?Those of you who think you're entitled to nVidia's DVD decoder are living in la la land. So now they should also give you the games that take advantage of their technology/features too?
Koing - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Just don't buy an Nvidia card next time if you feel ripped off.You paid 'expecting' a feature to be 'fully' and not half 'assed' in to work 8 months late.
Protest with your WALLETS.
<-- never an early graphics adopter!
Still with my Nvidia GF4Ti4200 :P
Koing
nserra - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
http://www.ati.com/vortal/videoinnovations/flash/i...#29 VIRGE
Ati have MPEG4 encoding and decoding since 18/07/2002 so what do you want?
S3 Omni is better at video then Ati of Nvidia the problem is the rest.... even so, to bad there isnt an S3 in the tests.
I dont know why nvidia doesnt charge some buck or two for each chip/card it makes, so the feature get paied?
Unless this enconder software that they are charging, works on any card in the market, if its the case they are right in doing so.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Anand,I think you would do your readers a great service by retesting all of this on an AMD processor. Your Pentium 4 rig had Hyperthreading on, making this issue look far les serious than it is. Hyperthreading P4 chips report far lower CPU utilization numbers as opposed to even high-level Athlon 64 processors. So those of us with a Geforce 6800 who are running high-end AMD hardware are getting 70-100% CPU utilization in WMV9. It explains why a lot of us are having trouble trusting nVidia now, and in the future.
atssaym - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
NVDVD =/= NVIDIA DVD Decoder, they are TWO DIFFERENT THINGSlink
http://nvidia.com/object/decoder_faq.html#othernv
Will this product work with NVDVD and ForceWare Multimedia?
The new software will upgrade the decoders in ForceWare Multimedia 3.0 to access the new features in the NVIDIA DVD Decoder. The NVIDIA DVD Decoder will not upgrade NVDVD 2.0 as it was a separate application based upon an old architecture.
Decoder Homepage
http://nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html
NVDVD Homepage
http://nvidia.com/page/nvdvd.html
pataykhan - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Nice comparison of ATI and NVIDIABut still one thing is missing. I use cyberlink powerdvd for watching dvds. My question is that if i have got nvidia or ati dvd decoder. Should i use hardware accelerated decoder or should i stick with cyberlink decoder.
Cyberlink has implemented some smart software deinterlacer and image quality enhancer (CLEV-2). So i would like to see the image quality differences between hardware/software decoders available.
bigpow - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
This sucks...ATI doesn't charge $20 for the claimed decoder/accelerator...
And they have the ATI HD component dongle too!
segagenesis - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Bah, I would be kind of pissed if I had a high end $500 card only to find out now its more worthless than a sub $200 card at decoding video. A bit of shame on nVidia.Guspaz - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Oh, as a clarification of my previous comment (#41) I meant that I was under the impression that normally the DVD decoding software handled the de-interlacing, obviously PureVideo overrides that. But what I mean is on ATI cards, without any type of hardware de-interlacing, wouldn't the deinterlacing differ from decoder to decoder?MDme - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Hey Anand, why not suggest to nVidia that owners of 6800 series GPUs be able to download the codec and just have their serial #'s or proof of purchase? I mean, they shouldn't tout a feature that you need to pay extra for?They already screwed us 6800GT/U owners with a "broken" feature, now they wanna screw us 20$ more to get the "broken" feature?
We need a petition site!!!!!
Guspaz - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I was under the impression that the deinterlacing was done by the DVD decoder app itself. So would not the results differ from WinDVD to PowerDVD to Zoom? Also would have been nice to compare it to other modes of software deinterlacing such as motion compensated.Something that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that while the hardware deinterlacing is certainly a win for nVidia, ATI wins the WMV9 acceleration category, as I'm pretty sure that all R3x0 cards support it back to the 9500/9700. That means that ATI's WMV9 market penetration is way higher than nVidia's, since very few nVidia cards can do the acceleration.
Klaasman - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Nevermind. Found info at Nvidia."The new software will upgrade the decoders in ForceWare Multimedia 3.0 to access the new features in the NVIDIA DVD Decoder. The NVIDIA DVD Decoder will not upgrade NVDVD 2.0 as it was a separate application based upon an old architecture."
They want me to pay twice for it I guess. Greedy bastards.
Klaasman - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I got a copy of NVDVD with my eVGA 6800GT. How do I update the DVD codec? When I install the new version from Nvidia, it still asks for credit card info and stuff.jonny13 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
"NVIDIA's DVD decoder has always been $20, unfortunately I don't know of a single manufacturer that gives away their DVD decoders for free."I know that their DVD decoder has always been $20. But, they never specified that you would need to pay extra for a feature that they touted for months. Thats like making you pay for a special driver to get PS3.0 to work. If they advertise it as a feature on a card I am paying $500 for, it better damn well be free and not another 20 f'ing dollars.
/rant
b3roldan - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I'm really disappointed with the 6800s not having the wmv9 decoding... was gonna get myself a 6800U for xmas. I was reading on the X800XT-PE coz there's a Sapphire X800XT-PE relatively cheaper than most 6800Us in http://buycomp.hkgolden.com.Then I came accross this webpage that says the nv48 is still coming... http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20041220A7039.html
hehe... I guess I can wait 3 months for the nv48, but then with the R520 just around the corner... man buying a card is starting to become a tough decision.
neways... I was wonderin if neone could confirm this information on the hardware flaw...
http://www.animenation.net/forums/archive/index.ph...
RCIEGR - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
You missed one very important feature to me.The 6800gt lacks the true hd output formats in component video output. I have a 6800gt and these card didn't include the special 10-pin din connector to the hd-component/s-video/composite adaptor plug. My freind at work bought a 6600gt(Chaintech) for his son for xmas, so I borrowed the card for a test this last weekend. Having a old school sony KDP-57XBR2 HDTV with only firewire and 2-hd component vidoe imputs. The true hd-output of the 6600gt is way more important of a feature to me then the wmv9 decoding.
The output over component(both true 1080i & 720p; the sony can nativly handle both) looked very good, for both hd video(surferp****.com), hd tapestreams recorded from the firewire output of the mot-6208 hd-cable box and the latest games, once you figure out how n-view works and you get the game resolutions correct.
anand, take a close look at the reference 6800gt cards and I think you will see the 10-pin din connector.
I want a RMA for a 6800gt with the true hd-output with component video. eVGA does have a 90-day upgrade program. Maybe a 6900gt will show up quick?
Thanks for you time
Robert
MDme - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Well, my XFX 6800GT didn't come with the NVDVD decoder. it's a shame nVidia sells a very expensive video card and tout's this feature but doesn't include the software to make it work.I think nvidia should know how it's customers feel. after all we were the early adopters. it's one thing to have a partially working feature but it's totally a rip-off not to have it at all!!!! $400 for a video card and you need to pay more for software to make it work? :(
Hope Anand can be a voice for us.
ViRGE - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Anand, check the final X800 press presentation slide-show/PDF, it was in there somewhere last time I read it.sheik124 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
nVIDIA has really done it this time. #29 mentioned ATI not doing their part, but at least the features they advertised and are slowly deploying work on ALL OF THE GPUs. nVIDIA owes us something for the false advertising, they've really wrecked my day, I paid for something, and I expect to have it, not half of it.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
gordon151I should have made this more clear, I used the NVIDIA codec for NVIDIA's tests and I used ATI's codec for ATI's tests. I used Zoom Player for both of them.
ViRGE
They never briefed me on anything like that but I can always ask :)
Take care,
Anand
ViRGE - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Thanks Crimson, but I'm talking about the video features, not the elusive cards themselves. ;-)crimson117 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
#29: http://anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=23531ViRGE - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I know this is an Nvidia article Anand, but could you get on ATI's butt about their lack of features too, and find out what's going on? When the X800 was launched, ATI was talking about decode acceleration for MPEG4 along along with some sort of encode acceleration(i.e. all the features NV promissed but never delivered on). I'm curious to know what happened to that, and if we're going to get something new out of ATI besides WMV acceleration.gordon151 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I was wondering why AT's results were different than PCPers and just noticed they used MMC & 4.12 while AT used the nVidia codec and player for both cards tests.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
YtterbiumI've asked numerous times, never gotten a response. I'll try again :)
For those of you who are wondering, I have asked NVIDIA what their official statement is to early 6800 adopters, but that has also been met with no response.
Take care,
Anand
Ytterbium - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I'm dissapointed that the encode function never made it, that was a killer feature. Any idea if it will come?Spike - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Thanks for that! I have the BFG 6800 GT and on the BFG cd there is the nvDVD software. It's nice to know I can actually use the VP that I paid for!-spike
Gatak - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Here are some examples of interlacing artifacts when redering on a progressive screen:1) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_1.jpg
Most software DVDs either blend or remove one of the fields by some partial de-interlacing algorithm. nvidia's DVD decoder does it ok. The image is sharp but still leaves only half framerate.
2) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_2.jpg
But in reality, half temporal resolution is lost. What should have been done is to render each field as a separate frame.
3) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_3.jpg
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
SpikeI wasn't aware that the 6800s are coming with NVDVD, in that case you are good to go. Just download the updated version (1.00.67 is the official version) from the website.
Rand
The full system was configured as follows:
Intel Pentium 4 570J
Intel D915GUX Motherboard
2 x 512MB DDR2-533 DIMMs
Intel HD Audio Enabled
Windows XP SP2 w/ DX9c
Take care,
Anand
Rand - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Anand- Could you provide the details on what the test platform in use was?You mentioned the processor of course, but it would be appreciated if you could disclose the other components in use.
Thanks.
Spike - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
But the 6800's come with NVDVD (at least mine did), isn't that basically their decoder? Other users are reporting their new (just recieved today) 6800 GT's coming with the DVD decoder on CD.-spike
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
NVIDIA's DVD decoder has always been $20, unfortunately I don't know of a single manufacturer that gives away their DVD decoders for free.The WMV9 acceleration can be had without the DVD decoder, however that you will have to wait on Microsoft for as WMP10 needs to be updated.
The features right now are mostly for HTPC enthusiasts who want the image quality benefits offered by PureVideo.
Take care,
Anand
Spike - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I am still confused on the "free" comment. If I have to pay $20 to enable a feature that was supposed to come with my 6800 GT, how is that free?Thanks,
spike
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
How to enable WMV9 hardware acceleration on ATI cards:Note: WMV9 acceleration has been disabled until Microsoft issues a new patch for WMV9. To enable this with other versions of Catalyst (with some rendering errors), RUN regedit -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control ->Video and find your ATI reg value. The key to update is DXVA_WMV = 1
Take care,
Anand
gordon151 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
#16, It does. It just doesn't have the full capabilities that it was advertised as having. If you look at the descriptions you'll see only the 6600 AGP/PCI-E and 6800 PCI-E have use of the full capabilities of the encoder.Klaasman - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I don't see on Nvidia's website where the 6800GT does NOT have PureVideo capability. They say all Ge Force 6 series.OriginalReaper - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
why couldn't *those* sites shut down next week instead :-\Gatak - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
There are some facts missing when it comes to differences between interlaced and progressive video.NTSC TV broadcasts are recorded at 60fps, not 30fps. (PAL is 50fps). Each field is recorded after eachother in time. There is a 16.7ms delay between each field.
If you were to de-interlace two fields into one frame you would loose half of the temporal resolution! This is a big mistake - especially for fast moving things like a football or hockey game.
A proper de-interlacing method would render each field as a separate frame (like a TV does!), not blend or discard fields.
24fps content, on the other hand, need to be converted to fit the 60fps NTSC (or 50fps PAL). It is nasty and should be banned. A DVD/MPEG-2 video is perfectly capable of storing 24fps progressive.
So, what we want is to render 24fps content as 24fps progressive and TV content as 60fps progressive.
Remember, a TV is already interlaced. There will be no problems with interlaced content because each field is rendered consecutively. It is only on a computer monitor which is progressive where we need to do field deinterlacing.
SlinkyDink - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
How can we enable hardware acceleration on our ATI cards now? (I believe its a registry edit)Cybercat - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Oh, nevermind, that's for PCI Express 6800s, which are apparently the only cards that use the NV41 core. AGP 6800s use the NV40 core.Novaoblivion - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
For anyone who wants it the link on Nvidia's site seems to working I just downloaded it.Cybercat - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
http://nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.htmlHow does the 6800 have acceleration support if it's also based on the NV40 core?
skunkbuster - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
"At the same time, ATI sent us information on how to enable hardware acceleration of WMV9 on their cards before the forthcoming WMP10 update."would someone care to share this with the rest of us ?
KnightBreed - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I hope nVidia plans to add support for decoding MPEG4-AVC HP at some point. Whether it's this product line or next, MPEG4 will be important for next generation optical media (whether it's HD-DVD or Blu-Ray).LoneWolf15 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
What makes me truly upset is that so far, the sites reviewing PureVideo has not take a stand for the consumers that own the 6800 and were promised the full PureVideo featureset by nVidia. Rather, sites are reviewing the tech, and ducking the issue, as if they are more concerned about continuing to receive nVidia products for review than they are for us. Who's looking out for the little guy?P.S. Anandtech's review states that the 6800 Standard has a fully functional video processor --this isn't fully true, as the AGP version according to nVidia's website, does not.
jamawass - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Great review. Even though Nvidia doesn't always win the deinterlace test, it wins on picture quality in most tests.Looks like a 6600 Nvidia will be replacing my ATI as the next video card in my htpc.Aquila76 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
That is so retarded that it doesn't fully work on the 6800GT/Ultra. Why would they cripple their high end cards? I guess since they aren't very available it doesn't really matter. Hope they add the rest of the functionality to new revs of these cards.GnomeCop - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
wow I guess they will get away with touting this feature on the AGP 6800Ultra/GTs , even though it doesn't fully work after all.jg123 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I don't see a link on Nvidia's website for a trial mentioned in this article.Novaoblivion - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
This is pretty interesting and since I already bought the Nvidia DVD Decoder I can upgrade to this new version if the link on Nvidia's site ever starts working lol.jonny13 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
"Considering that PureVideo came as a free feature on GeForce 6 cards"How is paying $20 for the damn codec free?