CoreAVC
Wednesday 6th February, 2008 12:57 Comments: 13
I decided to bite the bullet and pay for CoreAVC Professional. It's less than £8, and I'm hoping (because it's the professional version) that the SMP support will allow me to play 1080p H.264 files without any trouble on my 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo system. If it does work, I won't have to worry too much about my next upgrade. I've been toying between a fast dual core CPU (E8500 3.16GHz for around £176) or paying slightly more for a slower quad core (Q9450 2.66GHz for around £211) that would provide more overall processing power - good for playing games or encoding things. But if my 1.86GHz can cope with 1080p using CoreAVC (it can't using ffdshow, as it's not multithreaded so it maxes out one core and drops frames), the quad core option definitely wouldn't be a problem - it'd probably even be fine with ffdshow, but I don't want to take a risk. Not when it costs less than £8 to come to a conclusion. I hope they add GPU support soon, as I expect my new 3870 will drop the CPU usage to something negligible.
And once I've come to a conclusion, it'll probably just be a waiting game until the CPUs are in stock. I still have to decide on a new motherboard though. And maybe some more RAM, a pair of 2GB sticks are dirt cheap right now.
And once I've come to a conclusion, it'll probably just be a waiting game until the CPUs are in stock. I still have to decide on a new motherboard though. And maybe some more RAM, a pair of 2GB sticks are dirt cheap right now.
Fab - Wednesday 6th February, 2008 13:05 What does CoreAVC do? I am taking the guess that it allows non-multithreaded applications to take advantage of multi-core cpus...?
To be honest, aren't you paying too much money for a vastly overpowered system? 2.4ghz single core is powerful enough to run just about anything, thus having a quad core version works a treat. Paying an extra £100 for a mere 0.2ghz per core improvement seems pointless. This is made especially pertinent if the Core AVC does the job.
To be honest, aren't you paying too much money for a vastly overpowered system? 2.4ghz single core is powerful enough to run just about anything, thus having a quad core version works a treat. Paying an extra £100 for a mere 0.2ghz per core improvement seems pointless. This is made especially pertinent if the Core AVC does the job.
Google is your friend :P
It should allow me to decode H.264 content using both cores (and hopefully eventually GPU), rather than a maxed out single core (with no GPU support).
I'm not quite sure where you're getting that 0.2GHz figure from. Going from 1.86GHz to the 2.66GHz quad core would be an improvement of 0.8GHz (which I hope would be enough of an improvement to also give me the option of running ffdshow), if you completely ignore things like SSE4 support and various other improvements that should gain about another 5-10%. And the 3.16GHz dual core is 0.5GHz faster than the 2.66GHz quad core (although you're talking an overall speed of 6.32GHz vs 10.64GHz, both are better than my current total of 3.72GHz).
And if CoreAVC significantly reduces the load on my processor (or can eventually offload it to my otherwise idle GPU with a very quiet fan on it), it will reduce the overall temperature, so I can hopefully continue to run my systems with passive cooling on the processor. Passive cooling means less noise, which means I'm a lot happier.
My CPU is currently the weakest point in that system, as shown by my Vista Experience scores. I reckon my overall 3DMark06 score will improve by a good 1000 if I upgrade the CPU. Once I've done the upgrade, I don't plan on doing any more hardware upgrades to that system for about a year (until reasonably priced Nehalem based chips arrive, at which point I'll also move to DDR3, and we might have the new RV700 based graphics cards?).
The CoreCodec CoreAVC High Definition H.264 video codec is based on the MPEG-4 Part 10 standard and is one of the codecs used in Blu-ray and in HD-DVD. AVC / H.264 is the next-generation standard for video, and CoreAVC is being recognized as being the world's fastest H.264 software video decoder.
It should allow me to decode H.264 content using both cores (and hopefully eventually GPU), rather than a maxed out single core (with no GPU support).
I'm not quite sure where you're getting that 0.2GHz figure from. Going from 1.86GHz to the 2.66GHz quad core would be an improvement of 0.8GHz (which I hope would be enough of an improvement to also give me the option of running ffdshow), if you completely ignore things like SSE4 support and various other improvements that should gain about another 5-10%. And the 3.16GHz dual core is 0.5GHz faster than the 2.66GHz quad core (although you're talking an overall speed of 6.32GHz vs 10.64GHz, both are better than my current total of 3.72GHz).
And if CoreAVC significantly reduces the load on my processor (or can eventually offload it to my otherwise idle GPU with a very quiet fan on it), it will reduce the overall temperature, so I can hopefully continue to run my systems with passive cooling on the processor. Passive cooling means less noise, which means I'm a lot happier.
My CPU is currently the weakest point in that system, as shown by my Vista Experience scores. I reckon my overall 3DMark06 score will improve by a good 1000 if I upgrade the CPU. Once I've done the upgrade, I don't plan on doing any more hardware upgrades to that system for about a year (until reasonably priced Nehalem based chips arrive, at which point I'll also move to DDR3, and we might have the new RV700 based graphics cards?).
The 0.2 figure and the £100 cost difference was comparing what you are looking at against a quad core like mine which I got for about £120 last August. You can definitely passively cool my quad and it can be overclocked to about 3ghz thus paying for the super specced quad seems extravagant. You wouldn't need a new mobo and DDR2 ram is definitely a great price these days. :)
I would need a new motherboard as I'm currently using a very cheap Intel 945 based board that doesn't support quad core. The Q9450 is 0.26GHz better per core, about 10% faster than the Q6600, and costs about 25% more (that's based on the pre-order price I've seen, it may well drop down after a few weeks). The retail Q6600 (G0 Stepping) is therefore slightly better value (I can't compare OEM prices as no one has a price for the Q9450 OEM yet), but I won't get SSE4 support (I often quickly recode stuff using DivX) or the impressive 12MB cache (Q6600 only has 8MB), and the Q9450 should have about a 5% IPC advantage. I expect the Q9450 will run about 4-5 degrees cooler under full load (which helps on the whole passive cooling front), and will draw about 10-15W less under load and about half the power of the Q6600 when idle (which it'll probably spend most of its life doing). So it might work out as £25 more expensive to begin with, but in the long term it should work out cheaper. Especially if I can save £5-10 by going with a cheaper third party heatsink to passively cool the CPU. You know I prefer to go passive instead of overclock (otherwise I would go for the Q6600 as the 8x multiplier on the Q9450 will make it a pain to overclock).
Aha now that makes more sense. I can't wait until I get that 3870 (in 10 days maybe?) as that will make my quad system truly awesome. With 4gb of DDR2 to play with as well, I am hoping that it will make Crysis look very pretty indeed. To quote Jeremy Clarkson, "MORE POWERRRRR!"
After getting a very cryptic error message in Vista, I stumbled across a forum post, and that led me to the CoreAVC forum. It turns out that e-junkie is sending out emails with a link to a dodgy installer. If you use the retrieve link mentioned here, it'll send you an email with a valid installer that accepts the serial: http://www.corecodec.com/forums/index.php?topic=694.0
The error was:
The error was:
Error loading C:\\Program Files\\CoreCodec\\CoreAVC Professional Edition\\CoreAVCDecoder.ax
A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed.
A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed.
Using CoreAVC, the wmplayer.exe process seems to hover around the 40-65% mark, which is why ffdshow was struggling to keep up (as every time it went above 50% for video, it would have to drop frames). That means I still have a lot of processing power leftover, which hopefully means I can keep running my CPU passively, and that the 2.66GHz quad core should be more than enough.
However, I used to use ffdshow to display subtitles, it looks like I might have to go back to using VobSub again. This could be a pain for files with embedded subtitles. I can get the Haali Media Splitter to autoload VSFilter, but for some reason it's not showing subtitles.
However, I used to use ffdshow to display subtitles, it looks like I might have to go back to using VobSub again. This could be a pain for files with embedded subtitles. I can get the Haali Media Splitter to autoload VSFilter, but for some reason it's not showing subtitles.
I think I've talked myself into the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme with a Q9450 (which I reckon I can probably just about get away with running passively), now I just need to decide on the motherboard (probably avoid Gigabyte to avoid any problems with fitting the Ultra-120, would prefer PCI-E 2.0 to go with my 3870, and would prefer two PCI-E slots so I can always think about Crossfire [even though I probably won't] or fit any new PCI-E cards - so possibly an X38 based board? Maybe a cheap Asus one?).
Asus are good. I have Asus boards on both machines and they both have SLI/Crossfire even though I am unlikely to actually use that. The only word of warning is that Vista doesn't seem to let you install the Asus utilities such as PC probe. When I tried, I got a BSOD and a warning an application trying to access the kernel message. Maybe their website has a solution?
Talanzar has a version of that Thermalright. It is a monster heatsink which uses up a lot of space. Does the trick nicely though.
Talanzar has a version of that Thermalright. It is a monster heatsink which uses up a lot of space. Does the trick nicely though.
I have a number of Asus motherboards (including a couple of Asrock, which are technically a subsidiary of Asustek that are supposed to be much lower quality, but seem reliable enough for me), and an Abit. I think all my other brand boards have died over the years, although there might still be a Foxconn around somewhere.
I'm pretty sure your PC Probe issues are because you're using Vista x64, although I'm surprised you managed to make it BSOD. I tend to use Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool and/or RMClock to get info about the CPU, and the ATI CCC lets me view info about the GPU. And I'm fairly sure I can flash the BIOS (if I really wanted to) during the POST sequence if I put the new BIOS onto something like a CD or USB pen drive. I can check voltages in the BIOS (but I have a decent PSU so I'm not that worried), and IIRC I don't currently have any fans hooked up to the motherboard.
I was looking at the Scythe Ninja-CU, which is only available this half of 2008, and is made entirely of copper. But it's about £2 more and doesn't appear to be any better at cooling than the Thermalright (in some tests, it worked out as 1-2 degrees hotter!), although I think it looks prettier and it's not as high. However, the Ninja-CU is a lot heavier, and the Thermalright appears to have a much better mechanism for attaching the heatsink.
I'm pretty sure your PC Probe issues are because you're using Vista x64, although I'm surprised you managed to make it BSOD. I tend to use Intel's Thermal Analysis Tool and/or RMClock to get info about the CPU, and the ATI CCC lets me view info about the GPU. And I'm fairly sure I can flash the BIOS (if I really wanted to) during the POST sequence if I put the new BIOS onto something like a CD or USB pen drive. I can check voltages in the BIOS (but I have a decent PSU so I'm not that worried), and IIRC I don't currently have any fans hooked up to the motherboard.
I was looking at the Scythe Ninja-CU, which is only available this half of 2008, and is made entirely of copper. But it's about £2 more and doesn't appear to be any better at cooling than the Thermalright (in some tests, it worked out as 1-2 degrees hotter!), although I think it looks prettier and it's not as high. However, the Ninja-CU is a lot heavier, and the Thermalright appears to have a much better mechanism for attaching the heatsink.
My Vista kept BSOD for a while and the error message was IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL. Reading around the web seemed to suggest i was Windows not coping with the 4gb of memory very well. The solution seemed to have been to drop the memory speed in the bios from Auto to 667mhz. So far it seems to have worked although I suspect fiddling around with the paging file might also have been influential.Going 64 bit is a pain, but I want to try and get the most out of having 4gb of ram.
The ATI tool is pretty good, but lacks in any decent performance measurement tools. Eg it will tell you how hot the card is, but not much else beyond the overclocking options, or any fan control. Having said that, my 1900 is running Crysis surprisingly well as I thought it would be a lot worse on the framerates. Considering my hearing, a cooler system is more important than a quieter system although I do plan on making my TV machine a bit quieter via the use of some foam insulation.
The ATI tool is pretty good, but lacks in any decent performance measurement tools. Eg it will tell you how hot the card is, but not much else beyond the overclocking options, or any fan control. Having said that, my 1900 is running Crysis surprisingly well as I thought it would be a lot worse on the framerates. Considering my hearing, a cooler system is more important than a quieter system although I do plan on making my TV machine a bit quieter via the use of some foam insulation.
If you get a BSOD, try following this advice: http://blogs.technet.com/petergal/archive/2006/03/23/422993.aspx
As you're on an x64 machine, you'll probably need to use http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/install64bit.mspx instead.
The error message you see is typically caused by faulty hardware or a driver problem. This is for XP, but should back up my point: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314063
If dropping the RAM to 667MHz fixed it, that does point the finger towards dodgy RAM, or perhaps RAM that needs a bit more voltage to keep it happy. Have you run memtest86?
Aside from a VMWare driver problem using release candidates of Vista, I haven't seen Vista ever do a BSOD.
What else do you need to know about your graphics card? All I can think of is how hot it is and what speed the core and memory is running at. It's not like you can tweak anything else (except the firmware, but I had more success with the original one).
As you're on an x64 machine, you'll probably need to use http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/install64bit.mspx instead.
The error message you see is typically caused by faulty hardware or a driver problem. This is for XP, but should back up my point: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314063
If dropping the RAM to 667MHz fixed it, that does point the finger towards dodgy RAM, or perhaps RAM that needs a bit more voltage to keep it happy. Have you run memtest86?
Aside from a VMWare driver problem using release candidates of Vista, I haven't seen Vista ever do a BSOD.
What else do you need to know about your graphics card? All I can think of is how hot it is and what speed the core and memory is running at. It's not like you can tweak anything else (except the firmware, but I had more success with the original one).
It hasn't done it in ages. I think it was due to the paging file on the C drive. The problem is that I partinioned this HDD under XP and when my mobo died and I upgraded to the quad, I had to fit Vista into a 20gb partition. I now have less than 2gb free on that partition after setting a 2gb paging file. Thus I suspect that before I did a small clearout and tiding it up, I was geting BSOD as a result of the paging file and insuffient HDD space. I ran memtest and all was ok on that front.