Doom9's Forum - View Single Post - Quick Sync, CUDA, OpenCL or only normal CPU? What is the best?

Asmodian · 20th July 2014, 00:44

*Note Rule 12*

1) Software decoding speed depends on your CPU but other than software I believe:
Quick Sync > CUDA > OpenCL. Of course the different versions of each are different speeds, new CUDA is faster than old Quick Sync. Quick Sync and CUDA both use dedicated hardware to do the decoding while OpenCL is using the GPU sort of like a CPU to do the decoding. This means that Quick Sync and CUDA use less power and generate less heat than OpenCL. With a modern CPU software decoding can be fairly low power as well.

2) Quality: they should all be the same baring corrupted streams or other issues. Software decoding (CPU) is generally the most robust. The need to deinterlace can complicate this issue (hardware deinterlacing can be different qualities; both better or worse than software deinterlacing).

3) No idea; there is a quality hit so I haven't paid much attention to hardware encoding.

4) I have heard good things about Handbrake for simple H.264 encoding via x264. Personally I use x264.exe.

20th July 2014, 00:44	#3 \| Link
Asmodian Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: San Jose, California Posts: 4,407	Note Rule 12 1) Software decoding speed depends on your CPU but other than software I believe: Quick Sync > CUDA > OpenCL. Of course the different versions of each are different speeds, new CUDA is faster than old Quick Sync. Quick Sync and CUDA both use dedicated hardware to do the decoding while OpenCL is using the GPU sort of like a CPU to do the decoding. This means that Quick Sync and CUDA use less power and generate less heat than OpenCL. With a modern CPU software decoding can be fairly low power as well. 2) Quality: they should all be the same baring corrupted streams or other issues. Software decoding (CPU) is generally the most robust. The need to deinterlace can complicate this issue (hardware deinterlacing can be different qualities; both better or worse than software deinterlacing). 3) No idea; there is a quality hit so I haven't paid much attention to hardware encoding. 4) I have heard good things about Handbrake for simple H.264 encoding via x264. Personally I use x264.exe.