My evolving space heater

[Stereodude]

So it seems I'm turning my HTPC into a space heater. I just ordered one of these to replace the Radeon HD 7790 I have in their now. What's an extra 105W TDP between friends?

What did I do that for? Why for madVR of course. Yes, I know it's an AMD card, but they are much better performers with all the pixel shaders madVR uses for scaling than the comparable Nvidia cards. This card should let me run additional processing / better scaling algorithms over the 7790 I'm using now.

I'm probably the only person in the world pairing a R9 380 with an E5200.

 

[ddrueding]

I was running that based on your recommendation a while ago. Re-installing now. Is it really that GPU and that little CPU intensive?

 

[Stereodude]

Is it really that GPU and that little CPU intensive?

For the most part, yes. The video card basically does all the video codec decoding in hardware. The CPU doesn't do a lot. Mostly just IVTC if you've got film based interlaced content with a telecine applied to it. The pixel shaders do most of the magic, and some of the routines are VERY GPU intensive.

 

[Mercutio]

I put a GTX960 into a Core 2 Quad machine a few months ago. I thought it was a stupid-ass idea and I said so, but it runs Call of Duty 4 at 1080p and apparently that's more important than having a generally decent PC.

 

[snowhiker]

Michigan does get a bit chilly in the winter so an extra heater won't hurt. :grin::grin:

 

[Stereodude]

I put a GTX960 into a Core 2 Quad machine a few months ago. I thought it was a stupid-ass idea and I said so, but it runs Call of Duty 4 at 1080p and apparently that's more important than having a generally decent PC.

A Core 2 Quad with a SSD is still a perfectly serviceable machine for the typical home PC uses. Current, no. But from a performance standpoint just fine. Or did you mean something else with the generally decent comment?

 

[Mercutio]

It would be decent for something other than gaming. For gaming, it's actually going to be CPU and I/O bound. Putting a mid-range GPU in that thing is a bit like sticking a Corvette engine in a Toyota Corolla.

 

[Stereodude]

So I got my R9 380 today. I had to use the drivers off the included CD because apparently AMD doesn't provide drivers anymore for Windows 7 32-bit. Who knew... Long story short with the same madVR render settings as before using my worst case scaling scenario (DVD -> FullHD) render times dropped from about 38.x to 27.x ms. Now I can increase the settings and try some of the new options in madVR.

 

[ddrueding]

What are you using and how are you judging the results? Did you identify something you didn't like and pursue a fix? Are you trying a bunch of stuff and seeing if you prefer something else? Working from settings listed by others?

 

[Stereodude]

What are you using and how are you judging the results? Did you identify something you didn't like and pursue a fix? Are you trying a bunch of stuff and seeing if you prefer something else? Working from settings listed by others

Ehh... That's sort of nebulous. No, I didn't see something I wanted to fix. I don't know if the more advanced intensive settings I can run would even be visibly better in a ABX test. In general NNEDI3 gives better quality the more nodes you give it, but that cost more from a processing perspective. The new card has enough headroom to bump the NNEDI3 settings one step. There are also some new algorithms in madVR like super-xbr and superRes that are more GPU intense or require some extra overhead. I didn't have the headroom to enable those before without lowering some other settings. Now I can come pretty close to maxing out all the possible settings. At least in theory it should have better image quality.

Ultimately, I bought the card cause I wanted it, not because I actually needed it.

 

[ddrueding]

"Need" is never a requirement. I was actually surprised how intensive MadVR was; I can't run a 720p video while playing Fallout 4 @ 4k with everything maxed.

 

[Stereodude]

It all depends what options you pick. I should be pretty benign with the defaults, but it doesn't display video in the same way normal applications do. That's intentional and how it gets better video quality by bypassing all the normal manglings of Windows.