HD content playing
 

Need a bit of help for upcoming article, it's regarding HD content playback

http://www.drfoster.f2s.com/trailers_hd-dvd.shtml

download the "2 Fast 2 Furious" 1080p trailer, let me know your average total CPU usage (not per core) list CPU used (and clockspeeds) and your GFX card?


E6400 @ 2.8Ghz - 8500 GT - 20~30% CPU Usage
A64 3000+ @ 2Ghz - 6600 GT - 100% CPU Usage, choppy playback

T5500 @ 1.66GHz - Intel 945GM - average 40% CPU usage

A6320 @ 1.8 Dual C - 7300 gt - ~22%
Sempron 3000+ @ 1.6 single C- X1200 onboard - 100% choppy
L7200 @1.33 Dual C- Intel 945GM ~to be tested But I expect about the same as geoff

E6320 1.8 DC only at 22% with 1080p? Hmmm, is that Sempron setup of your PCI Express? What happens if you use the 7300 GT in there? if it is PCIE, can I drop by with 8500 GT? (it's supposed to able to offload video encoding to GPU)

It is PCIe. I'll put quickly the 7300GT and 8500 GT, I have both ;-). Give me half an hour.

for 8500 GT you'll need the latest NVIDIA drivers to get GPU acceleration working (but talking about H.264 here and other HD formats for HD DVD & BluRay)

overview of acceleration supported:



I think the movies above with WMV HD are in the "WMV9" column, so both 7300 GT / 8500 GT are on par; you can see though that the 8600gts/8600gt/8500gt have more support than all the others.

Source: http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html if you look at the PDF, you'll see that the AGP 6600 GT lacks WMV HD acceleration, explains the 100% CPU load I'd say.
More info here: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977 about the technology and more recent tests here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047

E2140 @2.9 7600GT

1080P 15 to 25% CPU usage TombRaider.

best to use the same trailer as encoding differs from trailer to trailer

Sempron 3000+ @ 1.6 single C- X1200 onboard - 100% choppy
Sempron 3000+ @ 1.6 single C- 7300GT - 85% 93.81
Sempron 3000+ @ 1.6 single C- 8500GT - around 80% , sometimes spike to 100% normal/older drivers

Sempron 3000+ @ 1.6 single C- 8500GT - around 80% , sometimes spike to 100% 162.18

that's all a lot higher than I had hoped... hmm:(
can you get your hands on 720p x264 content?