RV10 w/ NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GPU

[LiFe]

Heya Folk,
Before you release RV10 this or next month (got a date planned yet?), has anyone contact nVidia for the whitepapers/SDK/doc to find out how much of their new GPU's video encoding functions can be utalised by RM10?

Toms Hardware Brief (http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/geforce_6800-16.html)

RV10 has seen a massive speed-down, so being able to dump some of the load on one of the fastest GPUs ever seen not only increases the speed with dedicated optimised video encoding hardware, but also gives those free clocks to the data that can't be thrown at the GPU....

LiFe.

[Sirber]

RealVideo 10 has been released last 1½ month. Also, RV9 EHQ which was released lot before, is RealVideo 10. About the GPU, from what I've read, it's for MPEG4/WMV9.

[LiFe]

The CMD Encoder may be released, but Producer 10 has not. The last CMD encoders I looked at were all Beta as well.

I'll bet there are some functions of MPEG-4/MPEG-2 that the GPU can encode that are also common with RV10.

LiFe.

[Sirber]

producer is an interface for RealVideo codec. Beta or not it's the same :)

[damrod]

what can be cool is the gpu to be used for deconding mpeg4/mpeg2....so your cpu is entirely disponible for encoding in rv10...

but i'm not sure it can be done actually...

[Sirber]

yes. drivers hijack DX calls. GPU will decode mpeg2/4 while CPU encode RV10.

[McoreD]

This is from µ...

The PVR part is the most interesting as Nvidia claims that the NV4X generation will have support for no more and no less then MPEG 1/2/4 encode and decode as well as WMV9 decode acceleration.

This means that all decoding and encoding operation previously done by software and very CPU dependant will be able to be processed on NV4X chips. We are not aware specifically how Nvidia plans to do that but it sounds promising.

From HTPCGuide.com...

The WMV9 decode acceleration ought to be useful for folks who might want to try out Microsoft's WMVHD stuff and don't have the requisite 3.0 GHz CPU. But more intriguing than that is the claimed encoding acceleration for MPEG 2/4, WMV9 and DivX.

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GPU looks very promising. :)

[Sirber]

Promizing and expensive :(

[Neo Neko]

Those features are not new or innovative. Just slightly more advanced than the previous generation. Decoding is generally able to be implemented adequatly in such devices. But from a historical point the encoding features are never impressive. I can assure you today that when you get the card in a month guys with ancient equipment and some spare time will be able to make encodes who's quality will run rings around what this card will produce at best. Complex resizing, deinterlacing, and other general filtering algorythms are to expensive to implement in such low grade hardware. Same for motion estimation systems and many other important parts that go into producing quality encodes. In the consumer space it still takes software and therefore CPU to do it propperly. I don't think technology or demand has come far enough to see decent quality in consumer space hardware yet. So don't get your panties in a bunch before the card comes out.

That and this thread seems a bit redundant. I believe we have 3+ similar threads in various other forums. Plus a similar resurected thread in the general forum. Friendly reminder sans strike to use the search feature guys. Nope. Don't want to be redundant.

[LiFe]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Those features are not new or innovative. Just slightly more advanced than the previous generation. I can assure you today that when you get the card in a month guys with ancient equipment and some spare time will be able to make encodes who's quality will run rings around what this card will produce at best.

nVidia never claim to implement full encoding. They only claim to do some functions. It is designed to speed up encoding, not create a dedicated hardware encoder. As for not new or innovative? The card performs at nearly twice the speed of it's predecessor. Jumps in performance like that have been very very rare.

Complex resizing, deinterlacing, and other general filtering algorythms are to expensive to implement in such low grade hardware.

Did you read about that new GPU? It has double the transistor count of the P4, and 50% of the P4 is cache. It's one sophisticated piece of hardware with very extensively dynamically programmable shaders.

I don't think technology or demand has come far enough to see decent quality in consumer space hardware yet. So don't get your panties in a bunch before the card comes out.

Dedicated encoding hardware has been available from Osprey for some time. Up to RM6 or 7 they encoded in hardware. RM8 they accelerated. Dunno about the latest generation of stuff.

That and this thread seems a bit redundant. I believe we have 3+ similar threads in various other forums.

Sort of like your post? Which was mostly redundant ill-informed opinion? You can have an opinion, just inform yourself beforehand.

Originally posted by Sirber: Legendary RV10 Nerd
RealVideo 10 has been released last 1½ month. Also, RV9 EHQ which was released lot before, is RealVideo 10. About the GPU, from what I've read, it's for MPEG4/WMV9.

Really? That must be why the latest release of the CMD Until is called Beta 2 (https://helix-producer.helixcommunity.org/downloads.htm) - 10Beta2 10.0.0.195 2004-Feb-27

RV9+EHQ does not include the new VBR_Unconstrained or AAC or the Live Encoding scalability improvements. Features that I use.

Main Entry: leg·end·ary
Pronunciation: 'le-j&n-"der-E
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of legend or a wife's tale
2 : Not factual, incorporeal, insubstantial, mythical
3 : a story coming down from the past; especially : one popularly regarded as not verifiable
4 : a person or thing that inspires legends
synonym see FICTITIOUS

You really do live up to legendary eh? : )

LiFe.

[slavickas]

Originally posted by LiFe
RV9+EHQ does not include the new VBR_Unconstrained or AAC or the Live Encoding scalability improvements. Features that I use.
[/B]

and how video codec can include aac? ;)

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by LiFe
nVidia never claim to implement full encoding. They only claim to do some functions. It is designed to speed up encoding, not create a dedicated hardware encoder.

I never claimed they were claiming to have the whole codec on the chip. I was speaking rather generally since I was not reffering to Nvidia's new card alone. But it and all it's bretheren that have been released over the last decade. But getting specific the very things that Nvidia will be claiming to accelerate will be the things they are least likely to do well. Consumer silicon especially with graphics accelerators etc tend to go for the best performance/cost ratio they can. Therefore they tend to go with whatever takes the least transistors. Which generally means that the best methods are to expensive and therefore don't get implemented. Motion estimation IIRC is a very computationally complex process if you want to get the best quality. Just talk with syskin or some of the other Xvid devs and I am sure they will have similar things to say. Having ME on the chip could greatly speed up the encoding process. But I highly doubt that they could implement the best MS methods on the card without a serious increase in development and production costs. And ME is very important to the output quality of the codec. Therefore the card acceleration is very likely to put out consistantly inferior material. Though it will do it considderably faster. But I am a bit more concerned for quality than speed.

Originally posted by LiFe
As for not new or innovative? The card performs at nearly twice the speed of it's predecessor. Jumps in performance like that have been very very rare.

But that does not require any innovation. What frequency is the GPU clocked at compared to previous cores? How much do you want to bet that the up coming ATI card equals or betters it? Also could the on board ram play a part. I hear it has the fastest ram currently on the market in it. How much do you want to bet ATI will have it to? Where are you getting that performance increase is directly proportional to innovation. I think faster GPU speeds and faster RAM speeds account for a good part of the speed increase. The rest is likely due to having a ton more pixel pipelines than the previous card. Not that ATI could not easily duplicate it. So again hardly innovative. But this is all irrelevent to the larger thread because what you are speaking of is it's general gaming performance and not the multimedia performance. I have yet to see any good reviews of the multimedia performance.

Originally posted by LiFe
Did you read about that new GPU? It has double the transistor count of the P4, and 50% of the P4 is cache. It's one sophisticated piece of hardware with very extensively dynamically programmable shaders.

And this is something that ATI has not or will not duplicate? And to what does this speak of the multimedia performance? ;) Did they really need that many more transistors? Or was it just bad design? More transistors is not always something to celebrate.

Originally posted by LiFe
Dedicated encoding hardware has been available from Osprey for some time. Up to RM6 or 7 they encoded in hardware. RM8 they accelerated. Dunno about the latest generation of stuff.

And last I heard software encoders we still able to produce visably better quality. It just takes a bit longer. ;) There is that Plextor MPEG4 device as well. And it is pretty poor performance wise.

Originally posted by LiFe
Sort of like your post? Which was mostly redundant ill-informed opinion? You can have an opinion, just inform yourself beforehand.

That just screams "Strike mE!". But seeing as you are being largely hypocritical with that sentance I will take pitty for now. Funny you try to call me for being un-informed when I have taken a pretty even handed approach to the whole thing. This thread in general falls under 1a. (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm) but it is a bit more specific to this forum due to the RV9/10 mention. But not so specific it would not have been just as well off in one of the many other threads discussing the 6800 or similar topics. Of which we already have several. Further you are going for a 4. (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm). And only 16 posts in. Not good. Other mods might likely have given a strike already. Im not trying to stop you from speaking or anything. But we like organisation around here and not filling up the forum with repeat or redundant posts.