Resolution Benchmarks: 1080p vs. 780p
First off, since we noticed smoother playback on the GeForce 8200 at lower resolutions, let’s examine the CPU utilization difference between 720p (1280x720) and 1080p (1920x1080):
Now we’re getting somewhere. While overall CPU utilization didn’t drop that much, note that the CPU utilization is much more consistent at the lower 720p resolution. As a result, we’re not seeing the dropped frames and skipping performance.
Let’s compare this to what happens to the Radeon 3200 when we lower the resolution:
There doesn’t appear to be any CPU spiking at the higher resolution with the Radeon 3200. As the resolution is dropped, CPU utilization lowered a bit. But playback appeared skip-free at either resolution.
Based on CPU utilization, it looks like the GeForce 8200 can decode the demanding H.264 content just fine, but it seems that as resolution is raised past 720p there’s a bottleneck happening somewhere else and playback suffers.
Frankly, this is a serious blow to the integrated GeForce 8200’s potential as a home theater PC platform. While it’s true that it was able to play back two of the three titles we tested at the 1080p resolution, it’s a pretty serious limitation that resolution potentially has to be lowered to 720p for demanding titles, especially since the Radeon 3200 displays no such limitation.
With this in mind, we are curious as to how these platforms will perform with CPUs slower than the 4800+. Are either of these system viable HTPC platforms with cheaper, single-core processors?
It would have been nice to see a 780G board with sideport memory in this test (e.g. GA-MA78GPM-DS2H) as this is meant to improve performance.
Im shocked that they have chosen to use 1 dimm configuration.
both motherboards, due to the nature of the AMD platform, support dualo channel configuration to increase memory bandwidth, which would also have been enjoyed by the intergrated GPU's.
I know toms argue that the likly configuration in this set up would be 1GB, but if u were a self builder you would choose 2x512 to maximise the platforms abilitys.
not good imho.
^^
Or alternatively this was a test to see how well everything runs without dual channel support. You'd be surprised at the number of shop-bought systems that only have 1 RAM chip in them.
Nice article, I had been looking into using PureVideo with the GFX card I just bought.
Just one criticism: Using red and green lines for the charts on page 7 made it nearly impossible for me to tell which line was for which card, as I have deuteranomaly, which is a mild form of red-green color blindness. You should use slightly different colors for charts like that.