Elecards AVC/H.264 Decoder with DXVA (NVIDIA) support released

[CruNcher]

Elecard Released its HW assisted AVC Decoder Beta 2.0 useing Nvidias Purevideo for Evaluation
im currently testing it vs Cyberlinks Decoder but knowing the Quality of Elecard, im almost sure it will beat it performance wise

http://www.elecard.com/news/news_arch.php?nid=85

Benchmarks Amd Athlon 64 3000+ @ 2.4 GHz Nvidia 7600GS 91.33
all of of them with Hardware accelleration active
Mbaff decoding all with Deinterlacer off

Main Profile

The Greatest Game Ever Played 1080p (Nero Digital):

CyberLink:
User: 57s, kernel: 19s, total: 77s, real: 93s, fps: 47.4, dfps: 39.3

Elecard:
User: 73s, kernel: 6s, total: 80s, real: 97s, fps: 45.6, dfps: 37.6

seems we wont see much speed diffferences here as both rely on Nvidias work would the same apply for CoreAVC HW assisted Playback hmm :)

[Theliel]

I have been trying. Is very very crappy!! image have some glitches, green bars... and with Cyberlink decoder comparison are slower.

The Greatest Game Ever Played 1080p (Nero Digital):

CyberLink: 20-40% CPU load. are very stable
Elecard: 50-100% CPU are very Inestable, a lot of peak and bad imagen

thank for notice CruNcher, I belive elecard aren't madure yet. In my PC, speed are noticeable between both decoder.

[Jay Bee]

seems we wont see much speed diffferences here as both rely on Nvidias work would the same apply for CoreAVC HW assisted Playback hmm :)

Interesting question. What is the exact nature of HW accelerated decoding? Is it

a) share the decoding calculations between CPU and GPU in parallel, similar to Dual-Core systems?

b) let the GPU run the code instead of the CPU because it is better at it than a general purpose CPU?

c) let the Nvidia hardcoded algorithms deal with the decoding instead of using your own code?

Generally a) seems to be what most people assume, c) is what you are suggesting and reality is probably somwhere in between.

Can anybody who actually knows the answer comment on this?

[foxyshadis]

You have have purevideo do the whole block of decoding on its own, with the cpu simply managing the process, or you can break the decode into steps and let the cpu do some and the gpu do others. For instance, you can do CABAC decoding and idct on the GPU while the CPU does motion compensation and inloop of previously decoded frames. (I'm not up on the specifics, so it probably isn't quite that simple, but it's along those lines.)

[Jay Bee]

So it's pretty much up to the devs how they share the work between CPU and GPU. I guess we'll have to wait for CoreAVC's Purevideo implementation to see if the decoding speed of currently available DXVA decoders can be improved on.

[videomixer9]

I hope more that CoreAVC does a coup and uses one of those compilers for GPU code that don't depend on DXVA. The current solution is beyond being consumerfriendly and highly disappointing in speed especially seeing CoreAVC already plays the greatest game trailer in 1080p fine on my poor Athlon XP 3000+ with GeForce FX 5600 at 60-85% without any hardware assistance.