CPU-Usage Benchmarks: Picture-In-Picture Acceleration
In this interesting benchmark, we're going to see what happens when these IGPs are tasked to decode a picture-in-picture Blu-ray disc. To help us see what's happening, we've chosen to benchmark a part of the Blu-ray "Sunshine," where the second video stream is dropped after a minute or so, but the CPU usage results are recorded for another couple of minutes. This lets us see a tangible difference of CPU usage between one and two streams of video:
The benchmark is a little muddled, so pay close attention. It looks like the GeForce 8200 (green line) is running somewhat flat at the top of the results. The 785G (light red line) is running flat at a lower CPU utilization and the 790GX (dark red line) starts off at a higher CPU utilization but drops about a third of the way in.
What's happening here is that both the GeForce 8200 and Radeon 785G possess dual-stream acceleration and aren't fazed much by the transition between two-to-one video streams. However, the 790GX does not have dual-stream acceleration, so it has to use more CPU resources at the beginning of the video.
Oddly enough, regardless of the 790GX's lack of dual-stream acceleration capabilities, it still pulls similar CPU utilization compared to the GeForce 8200 when processing multiple streams. When it drops down to a single stream of video, the 790GX lowers CPU resources and approaches 785G levels.
The Intel systems show a clearer story, with the GeForce and the new 190.38 driver demonstrating good dual-stream acceleration, but keep in mind that the 190.38 driver does not offer all of the visual-quality enhancements that the old 182.5 driver does. The 182.5 driver doesn't appear to have picture-in-picture acceleration and neither does the Intel G45, although the G45 is performing a bit better.
Once again, however, the CPU usage by any of these solutions is somewhat insignificant. Even lower-budget CPUs should be able to easily handle what Blu-ray throws at them. As time goes on and as CPUs become even more powerful, benchmarks like this will inevitably offer less and less useful information.
- Graphics,
- avivo ,
- purevideo ,
- clearvideo
"To do this, we will use the Blu-ray dick Sunshine, which utilizes the H.264 codec and features PIP commentary during playback."
lmao
So Intel's offering isn't good enough, and needs to come upto scratch to be able to perform with the competition. If AMD can be criticised in this way with some (not all) of their portfolio, so should Intel
Small error on page 2: GF9300/9400 is listed as IGP for AMD CPU's.
i cant find a bluray compatible player that ever looks good they always make bluray look like dvds
so i just end up ripping it to hard disk and then watch it with ffdshow enhancements. looks way better and i dont think you have to worry about all the gpu based stuff (or you can use DXVA on MPC-home theatre.) but i guess this article really applies to low end systems not quad core machines whith plenty of power to spare 
Nice article there Don
Good bit about the AMD AoHDMI issue: if you're that worried about top-quality 7.1 over HDMI you're probably better off with a Xonar anyway! 
Great to find this kind of article online but I'm confused, why would you need to enable noise reduction to play a Blue-ray disc on your 1080p screen - surely the Blue-ray disc is already encoded at the very best of picture quality?! (I have an 8200 chipset with the lovely AMD 4850e and was considering the purchase of a blue ray drive.)