Radeon DVD

[stormbind]

I'm aware that the original Radeon SDR/DDR included a full hardware DVD decoder chip.

I'm aware that the ATi Radeon 7500 and 8500 also included that hardware DVD decoder chip. Do 3rd party Radeons have it?

Newer Radeon 9500/9800/X800 cards appear to lack that chip. Do they have full hardware DVD decoding?

I have used Software rendering, and DXR2 hardware decoding. The latter is much better (0% CPU usage) because it's not slowed down by background tasks; i.e. no disruption to sound when a network user connects to a shared resources.

 

[Comraddict]

I think they all still have it. And latest version can do in hardwarem any more video streams, WMV for example
Take a look here ( yes it is article about nvidia, but radeons are mentioned):

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2305

 

[stormbind]

The article starts with "The feature list isn't as impressive as say full hardware accelerated encoding, but it's still worth a look."

That says encoding, not decoding, but given that it's the same device for both tasks - if one isn't fully hardware, how can the other be?

Then the image quality isn't very impressive - both ATi and NVidia GPUs display errors, and ATi failed more tests!

The NVidia one is reprogrammable, which I'm going to assume means big drivers. I don't think it specifies for ATi. The article didn't display CPU usage. Edit: Does on last page, upto 49.2% CPU usage? I'm a bit confused as it didn't compare ATi results or have a controlled comparison.

If ATi and NVidia are persuing the same path, it looks like ATi removed the full hardware decoding in favour of some kind of GPU-powered software decoding. In the early Radeons, the decoder was (I think) a seperate chip independent of the GPU.

If I'm right - and I might not be because I'm just starting to look into this, and I'm rather sleepy.. any ideas which was the last Radeon to have full hardware decoding?

Oh, and thanks for the link

 

[HAND]

Are we talking about the Ati rage theater chip? I've got one of those on my Radeon 8500.

 

[stormbind]

Yes, I think that's the thing. It's a rectangular chip roughly between the GPU and VGA-out.

 

[DaEezT]

I think you mean the All-In-Wonder cards that have additional video stuff. Sapphire and Club 3D sell such cards for example.

 

[stormbind]

Nope. All early Radeons had it. Small black chip, about the size of a RAM chip, not the big shiny silver signal decoder seen on AIW cards.

 

[DaEezT]

Well, then you probably mean the "standard" decoding features every readeon card has but which are not advertised
e.g. X850 and 9800 list something like

# Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video in real time
# FULLSTREAM™ video de-blocking technology for Real, DivX, WMV9, and WMV10 formats
# VIDEOSOAP™ noise removal filtering for captured video
# MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration

* DXVA Support
* Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion

# All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
# Adaptive Per-Pixel De-Interlacing and Frame Rate Conversion (temporal filtering)

or

# MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
# All-format DTV/HDTV decoding

They call it VideoShader (HD)

 

[stormbind]

Oh, cheers!

The article linked to by Comraddict makes it sound not as good as a dedicated DVD decoder.