False information in the articles: No UVD in R600

[cadaveca]

lol. my tests('cause i got the cards) show much higher usage. Personally, i think drverheaven has a driver that I do not. you are forgetting about all those sites sampsa posted that are not able to get decode working...driverheaven is just one site.

now, while I agree, there is SOME work being done, let's take AMD's own statements about how UVD works...

ATI Avivo HD technology is designed for high-end, high definition video playback in home theater systems. Free your CPU to power other applications with new UVD (Unified Video Decoder) hardware processing of HD video formats.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/avivo/features.html

Notice this falls under the AVIVO features.

But now for the damnation, the very next paragraph:

UVD is a dedicated video decode processing unit on ATI Radeon HD 2000 series graphics processors that offloads both CPU and GPU rendering pipelines. UVD technology reduces power use, decreases system noise and increases notebook battery life during HD video playback.

now, this translates as hardware decode, sure, but UVD is a specific type of hardware decoding.

Dave Beaumann, ATI marketing man, states quite simply, there is no hardware decode on HD2900 at all, and it is all done on cpu.

So who's right? Websites paid for advertizing, prone to mistakes, or an high-level exec from ATI?

My cpu usage numbers say Dave is. Driverheaven says differently, but then again, they are a "bought and paid for" marketing site, and I have the cards right here and now. I believe the numbers my pc puts out, and not some numbers on a website that have been verified by noone.

So...

The UVD is designed to offload the entire decode process for H.264, H.263 and VC-1 motion video, at the maximum bitrates defined by the DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD controlling groups, so that every SKU of this new generation of Radeon could perform (almost) full CPU offload acceleration for video playback for all three current optical disc formats.




The five major stages of the UVD are shown above, with the entropy decode supporting full sped CABAC and CAVLC for H.264, and VC-1's entropy encode scheme, entirely in silicon. Compressed video data is fed in to the unit at the front end of the block, and then that's passed out for post processing by other hardware solutions on-chip, which differ depending on the GPU in the family.

this stipulates that the work is done in a dedicated hardware unit, but on R600, it's done in shader, which we can hardly call dedicated. Notice that "offload the entire decode process"...25-35% is hardly offloading the entire workload

Problem at hand is that the current driver does not support ANY work offload, so the 70-80% cpu usage I'm getting clearly shows no hardware decoding AT ALL, no UVD, no AVIVO, jsut the cpu doing it's work.

So, although the decode IS happening, AND it's happening quite well, this is not something that me, the end consumer, can replicate. This "shader decode" falls under AVIVO, but it does not fall under UVD...and this is where our trains of thought diverge.

You call it UVD...AMD calls it AVIVO. AMD also has a specific definition, if you will, for UVD, that does not jive with what you are stating...you show no UVD..you show "shader decode", which is a whole differnt technology under the AVIVO umbrella!

You describe AVIVO, I say sure, AVIVO is there, but a specific part of AVIVO, called UVD, that the packaging says is in my product, is not.

Now, before you go spouting some more numbers from websites that clearly have the story wrong, please go buy a card, and show me REAL numbers...show me the lowered cpu usage, and not theoretical. Becuae after all, no hardware decoding is happening on my machine, and not because of a lack of trying.