GeForce 6800 onboard video processor functionality

[Fam Money]

I have a 6800GT and am curious what programs, if any, take advantage of the video processor on the 6800 cards? I searched around but I never hear anyone talk about this feature.

I saw that it can decode MPEG2 so I turned on hardware acceleration in WinDVD and CPU usage was the same. I see it will help with encoding in Divx as well. What program can I use to take advantage of that feature?

TIA

*Edit*
10/26/04
Adding links to threads on other sites
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....0&pagenumber=1
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=818856
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=72477
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...VIEWTMP=Linear

[bpt8056]

Here are a couple links for you:

Hexus' take on the 6800 video processor

XbitLabs analysis on video performance

If you look at the Xbitlabs article, you'll see that the 6800 finally has the video processor enabled with the 65.76 drivers. But there was a discussion over at Anandtech forums that some of the 6800's video processor was working correctly as the CPU utilization was still too high. That leads me to believe that Hexus may be correct that there is some kind of a design flaw with the early samples of the 6800s. I have yet to check mine and I'll report back on my findings.

[lowdog]

I'd have to disagree with the Hexus opinion.

whenever I play divx movies or use win media player 9 and check my cpu usage it usually sits around 4% occasionaly spikeing up to 8%....that tell me that the video processing unit is indeed working on my 6800U which I have had since they first came onto the market. I got mine on the 4th of June.

[Nv40]

btw.. does anyone knows how to take advantage of the "encoding capabilities? DVD playing only use the decoding part that free your cpu ,the more interesting part for me is the encoding part. since i will really like to encode in whatever format in realtime on the gpu as much as possible with my TV capture card. i can do it already but with terrible performance since my tv card (studiopctv) does the all the encoding in the CPu. i

[|JuiceZ|]

Good question, unfortunately the only method most of us have found to test this is by monitoring CPU usage while divx/dvd media is decoding. This is beginning to sound more & more like a software limitation rather than hardware because encoders send a majority of requests straight to the cpu, which makes sense in the overall picture cause there's really only a small % of ppl w/ 6800 series cards. It's been a while since I've used it but, is there an encoding feature in NVDVD? I'd hope NVDA would make software availible that shows this feature being utilized.

[bpt8056]

Originally Posted by lowdog

I'd have to disagree with the Hexus opinion.

whenever I play divx movies or use win media player 9 and check my cpu usage it usually sits around 4% occasionaly spikeing up to 8%....that tell me that the video processing unit is indeed working on my 6800U which I have had since they first came onto the market. I got mine on the 4th of June.

If you don't mind, go here and download the "Step Into Liquid" file and play it. Monitor your CPU utilization and post it here. Thanks.

[jolle]

I´ve been curious on this video processor myself, there seems to be a big gaping hole where I expected the disection and trials of it..

[hazindu]

I'm not too concerned about cpu utilization, but it does seem that some of my video files are a little more pixelated than I remembered them being before upgrading from the radeon 9800pro. I hope nvidia can implement some kind of "video soap" or whatever tf it's supposed to be called like ati and S3 have.

[bpt8056]

Just as I feared, I installed the 65.76 drivers (same one that Xbitlabs used) and CPU utilization averaged 99% when I played a WMVHD trailer and had a lot of dropped frames. It seems to confirm Hexus' conclusion that the video processor is simply broken on some 6800s. I hope that is not the case.

[lowdog]

Originally Posted by bpt8056

If you don't mind, go here and download the "Step Into Liquid" file and play it. Monitor your CPU utilization and post it here. Thanks.

Okay, I downloaded the file Step Into Liquid-1080p and my cpu usage was between 36 and 45%

Useing the 66.70 drivers

[Cali3350]

Do the 66.51 drivers have the video acceleration enabled aswell? I ran the 720P video and got a constant ~65% CPU usage.

[Pandora's Box]

i ran the 1080P demo. i got 100 percent constant cpu usage with the 66.81 drivers. hmmmmmm

[sgio2]

Originally Posted by Pandora's Box

i ran the 1080P demo. i got 100 percent constant cpu usage with the 66.81 drivers. hmmmmmm

Yeah , I got some HD pr0n ant it skiped in a few spots with my 6800 Ultra

[myshkinbob]

if you read the blurb on nvidia.com for the 6800 series, it says the video processor is programmable, so the support could be actually added to the drivers, it's not a hardware fault most likely. So if you want working hardware encode/decode, start emailing or phoning nvidia asking for them to implement the feature. If they don't know it's important to their customers, they'll keep telling the driver teams to work on other driver areas. I'd like this encode feature enabled especially myself.

I've just looked for a contact email on their site, no email, but google came up with this url -

http://support.nvidia.com/Content/NV...equestTypeID=1

It's a support request form. Go with Technical Problem for the support type. Suggested subject "6800 Series On-Chip Video Processor". Let's start asking.

[Nv40]

well i just loaded Lord of the Ring movie...
and using WIndows Task manager in WinXP the cpu usage.. is from goes from 4% -20% . most of the time .and seem to like to stay in the 10's as average. this is in a Pny GT from COmpusa and atlonxp1900+. and every ~5seconds jumps from 30%-40% for one second. i have tons of small aplications running in the background ,my systemtray filled with firewalls , antivirus ,messenger running and many other programs running in the background. so with all those applications running ,mine seem to be working extremely well. people with high CPu usage should check if you have a virus or something of the like (there are virus that exploits your ports slowing down your machine in a significant way) or running big aplications in the background. if you close all your programs ,not needed for windows to run and even disconect from internet .. i think your CPu usage should remain always very low .forceware 66.31 here. i will love to see what more things this programable video procesor can do .