ASRock Vision HT: Ivy Bridge Carries the SFF HTPC Forward
by Ganesh T S on November 12, 2012 3:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ASRock
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
HTPC Decoding and Rendering Benchmarks
In our Ivy Bridge HTPC review, we had covered the CPU / GPU utilization during playback of various types of clips. In the Vision3D 252B review, we had graphs of CPU and GPU loading with various renderers and codecs. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't provide similar data / sensors for use with their APUs. Hence, we had to resort to power consumed at the wall along with GPU loading in the Trinity HTPC review. In order to keep benchmarking consistent across all HTPC reviews, we will be adopting the Trinity HTPC review methodology in our future HTPC articles.
The tables below present the results of running our HTPC rendering benchmark samples through various decoder and renderer combinations. Entries in bold indicate that there were dropped frames which indicate that the unit wasn't up to the task for those types of streams. The recorded values include the GPU loading and power consumed by the system at the wall. An important point to note here is that the system was set to defaults in the BIOS, but Windows power settings were set for maximum performance instead of the default balanced profile.
madVR
madVR was configured with settings similar to what we used for the Ivy Bridge HTPC review. Full screen windowed mode gaved the best performance in terms of avoiding dropped frames. In our first trial, we configured LAV Video Decoder to use avcodec (software decode). As expected, Intel's GPU / memory bandwidth is not enough for madVR processing of some types of content (namely, 720p60 H.264 and 1080p60 H.264).
| LAV Video Decoder Software Fallback + madVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 78 | 35.46 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 64 | 25.92 W |
| 720p60 H.264** | 98 | 44.52 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 86 | 47.40 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 84 | 42.55 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 86 | 47.10 W |
| 1080p60 H.264** | 98 | 48.81 W |
madVR takes up more than 80% of GPU resources while processing 1080i60 material. However, the unit is quite power efficient on the whole, consuming less than 50 W for 1080i60 material using software decode. In the next trial, we configured LAV Video Decoder to use hawrdware decoding in the form of Quick Sync. Unfortunately, the results are quite similar to what we obtained with software decode (just that the power consumption is slightly lesser than software decode for the HD streams).
| LAV Video Decoder QuickSync + madVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 79 | 36.16 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 64 | 27.45 W |
| 720p60 H.264** | 96 | 43.17 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 90 | 45.23 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 87 | 42.86 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 88 | 44.66 W |
| 1080p60 H.264** | 94 | 46.32 W |
EVR-CP and EVR
With the Enhanced Video Renderer (Custom Presenter) and Enhanced Video Renderer, native DXVA2 acceleration can be used. Here, we are able to process all our test streams without dropped frames. EVR is very efficient in terms of power consumption also.
| LAV Video Decoder DXVA2 Native + EVR-CP | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 32 | 22.28 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 29 | 21.74 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 45 | 26.01 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 47 | 26.87 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 47 | 25.48 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 43 | 33.46 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 62 | 29.42 W |
| LAV Video Decoder Software Fallback + EVR | ||
| Stream | GPU Usage % | Power Consumption |
| 480i60 MPEG-2 | 27 | 20.75 W |
| 576i50 H.264 | 24 | 20.56 W |
| 720p60 H.264 | 49 | 25.23 W |
| 1080i60 H.264 | 35 | 23.44 W |
| 1080i60 MPEG-2 | 35 | 22.23 W |
| 1080i60 VC-1 | 33 | 30.45 W |
| 1080p60 H.264 | 58 | 27.04 W |
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shurik_1 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Could you test the silent data corruption issue I have described in Vision 3D comments? With Vision 3D it is still an issue when 16GB RAM are installed (with 8GB RAM they fixed it via BIOS update that they did not make publicly available) and ASRock although acknowledges its existence refuses to fix it.ganeshts - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I will follow up on this with ASRock. That said, I have been using the Vision HT / Vision 3D 252B to unpack a number of split archives (around 400 MB each unpacking to ~4.37 GB / ~10 GB) and not found any issues so far.But, definitely an interesting case (if there is some data corruption with a different DRAM, that may point to some issue in the DRAM module itself). Are you aware of any other users with the same issue? I am trying to see if there is something common between all the systems exhibiting this problem...
shurik_1 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
It will not complain at unpack because my thinking is that corruption occur at writing (at some point in my lengthy mail exchange with ASRock support Intel ME was mentioned as the culprit). I discovered the issue because par repair invariably fails on large file sets. That is why I call it silent. Did you try to create checksum of archive content and test after unpack? I have only one set of laptop 16GB modules. But when my 2nd gen Vision 3D had BIOS prior to 1.10c ("c" suffix is important here) it was present with 16GB and two different sets of 8GB modules.klmccaughey - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I don't understand why manufacturers can't release a cheap HTPC. It is still much more cost effective to build your own.Every time I see one of these reviews I get excited, and every time I get disappointed as I see the outrageous price tag.
EnzoFX - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I too wish there were cheaper alternatives. I myself have no need for optical (Ew), and am usually eyeing those tiny foxconn's that use E-350's. Though I'd more likely go with something with more performance.Perhaps this segment is too much of a niche (Probably). Intel's NUC looks promising, hope it becomes standardized so that the race to the bottom can start on those chips =P.
lurker22 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Avoid the 350. Yes it will work, but a lot of use end up being slow on it especially when the GPU acceleration isn't available.StealthX32 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
From what I've read on a few Newegg reviews, you can get a Broadcom BCM9700xx hardware decoder card to put into the miniPCI-e slot and achieve <20% CPU utilization on even high bitrate 1080p material.I bought this from them when they had the buy an HTPC get a free SSD combo, but haven't gotten around to buying the Broadcom card yet.
lurker22 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
As I said, it's doing everything outside of the GPU accelerated videos that ends up being very slow. Web browsing, Netflix, etc is all CPU limited.BuddyRich - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Netflix via website and silverlight is bad.Youtube HD is GPU accelerated and Netflix Win8 also works nicely.
One of the few pluses of Win8!
Pipperox - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I have an E-350 based Zotac Nano.It's absolutely silent, can play most media content without a hitch (haven't tried 1080p60 content though, but 24 and 30Hz are not a problem) and with Windows 8 internet browsing and general PC usage is butter smooth.
Sure, i wouldn't do media transcoding or rendering or content creation on such a PC, but for the value and intended use I couldn't be happier.