AMD's UVD Debacle

by Derek Wilson on 6/4/2007 12:05 AM EST
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  • trisct - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    The reason behind the UVD confusion seems fairly obvious. ATI was just purchased by a CPU company. The original design for the 2000 series GPUs almost certainly included UVD, it would have been an obvious weakness vs. NVIDIA, even if they only have full decode for one compression standard.
    The problem is that parent AMD is meddling with ATI's plans, and decided to do an about-face on the UVD component, in order to promote uses for multi-core CPUs. The marketing material was already done at that point, though, so everything got confusing. This is a clear internal conflict of interest, where on one hand AMD wants to sell high-end CPUs, and make them as useful as possible for as many tasks as possible, but also sell high-end GPUs, which in this instance compete directly with one of the main reasons to get a powerful multicore CPU. I hope this all doesn't boil down to ATI graphics going the Intel route and depending on the CPU more and more.
  • lemonadesoda - Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - link

    Probably will.

    Anyone else get the impression that ATI is suffering major brand dilution. I have been a loyal ATI customer since 8500. My "loyalty" was partly due to driver simplicity (one driver pack for all machines)... but also because you knew-what-you-got and prices and performance was both competitive and leading edge.

    I don't hold the same view anymore.
  • lopri - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    Or take the job offer from NV. He won't be missed.
  • Frumious1 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    Neither will your posts, if you'd care to STFU and get back to sniffing the AMD happy-shrooms.
  • Khyron320 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    People are being way to harsh on this review. It is just good journalism they are reporting the facts here. Now if Nvidia is getting away with something similar and Anandtech is not reporting it then i would call them "anti-AMD". But as far as i know there they have not skipped on any anti-Nvidia news/reviews.
  • lemonadesoda - Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - link

    Good journalism = facts + issues + accurate + well written

    I supprt godd journalism. But his article scores a low 50%, and is not up to Mr. Wilsons usual standards. He can do better
  • DerekWilson - Sunday, July 22, 2007 - link

    actually I appreciate the fact that you feel I can do better, and I agree that this was one of my weaker articles ... but I don't think what was said was unimportant or inaccurate ... companies need to be careful how the present details, especially when it can be so easily misconstrued by their partners (let alone journalists).
  • TheOtherRizzo - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I think AT are absolutely correct in putting down AMD for this. But the question is why have these kind of things never been investigated before and why have AMD been singled out when Nvidia are just as guilty of lies concerning Purvideo. In case someone from AT is interested here is a quick list of issues to get you started:

    -Nvidia still [url=http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html">http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html]claims[/url] all sorts of Purevideo features for AGP cards when in fact they have been disabled in the driver for over a year now. Not even a task as basic as hardware deinterlacing works anymore (even my GeForce 3 could do that). This is a far more blatant lie than what AMD did with UVD.

    -both AMD/ATI and Nvidia claim H264/VC-1 decoding when in fact they skip deblocking in most cases although deblocking is a non-optional part of the spec.

    -both AMD/ATI and Nvidia announced hardware encoding years ago. AMD is still trying to be clever by offering a software only encoder that will only work if certain GPU's are present.

    To find more information search doom9 and avsforums.
  • DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - link

    Thanks for the comments and the email ... Sorry I hadn't stepped in here and updated this thread earlier. I actually haven't been feeling well lately :-(

    Anyway, I just want you to know that we really do take your comments seriously and I'm looking into the issue. Here's a copy of the email I sent a couple NVIDIA PR and technical marketing contacts:

    -----
    -----

    Hey guys,

    In the wake of all the AMD Avivo HD confusion with their HD 2900 XT, I'm getting a lot of requests from users to look into other issues with improper reporting of feature support.

    A number of readers have pointed me to this page:

    http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html">http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

    These readers are saying that current drivers disable support for most (if not all) purevideo features in all AGP hardware, even with MPEG-2. I haven't tested this yet, and I'm not sure if I'll have the time this week. But I'd really appreciate it if you could get back to me with a statement about this.

    If purevideo is currently disabled on AGP hardware, if the feature list is not accurate with current drivers, and if there are any plans to change this, can can you let me know?

    I'm sure, with the current issues we're having with AMD, it goes without saying that accuracy and honesty would go a long way here.

    Thanks,
    Derek Wilson
  • 7oby - Sunday, June 10, 2007 - link

    quote:

    These readers are saying that current drivers disable support for most (if not all) purevideo features in all AGP hardware, even with MPEG-2.


    Thanx, but I guess the question is too general to be answered by anyone at nvidia.

    I just did a quick google to recall my last findings, but it's not complete nor did I always find the source of information.

    WMV AGP Accleration seems to be enabled up to 78.01
    http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t15...">http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t15...

    Audio/Video sync issues seem to be the reason for disabling this Accel mode:
    http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=12150...">http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?show...p;mode=t...

    There exists an additional theory that the AGP Bandwith is not sufficient for the way the work of the different accelerated decoding stages is distributed among CPU/GPU (German only):
    http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showpost.php?p=10...">http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showpost.php?p=10...

    About MPEG-2 and SSE related Stuff, I currently don't have any links.

    When this topic was of more general interest other reviewers also did not get detailed information (Only German: Read the "update" part):
    http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/grafikkar...">http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardwar...zember/b...

    7oby
  • TheOtherRizzo - Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - link

    Thanks a lot for looking into it!

    I hope that you something comes out of this and that you get to do some tests of your own. Obviously I haven't had the chance to test every card with every driver so it would be possible that the "All features on All AGP cards" claim turns out to be innacurate but several forums indicate it's quite probable.

    The card that was personally giving me grief was a 6600 GT with all the drivers that came out until february 2007 at which point I switched to ATI.

    Cheers and get well soon!
  • DerekWilson - Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - link

    I got a response from NVIDIA and asked for permission to reproduce it here.

    Here's what we've got on the AGP issue from them ...

    -----

    Hi Derek,

    It is not true that NVIDIA's current drivers disable support of PureVideo in GeForce 6 and 7 series AGP cards.

    Our Windows XP drivers for those AGP cards support hardware accelerated decoding of H.264 and MPEG2 HD content and hardware accelerated decoding of H.264, MPEG2 and WMV9/VC-1 SDcontent.

    Our Vista drivers drivers for AGP cards support hardware accelerated decoding of H.264, MPEG2 and WMV9/VC-1 HD content and hardware accelerated decoding of H.264, MPEG2 and WMV9/VC-1 SD content.

    It is true that over a year ago we had to disable Windows XP support of HD content in the VC-1/WMV9 format on AGP cards due to AGP memory latency. Too much residual data to read from AGP buffers. At the time we made this change to the drivers, we posted a new purevideo_support web page to show this change. Unfortunately at some point since then, the old web page has been re-posted and we are incorrectly showing that we support HD content in the VC-1/WMV9 format on AGP cards. This will be corrected with the posting of a new spreadsheet on Tuesday, June 11.

    By the way, have you heard of a web site called www.waybackmachine.org ? It is an internet archive site that keeps track of old versions of web site pages. You can use it to verify that we did indeed change our web pages back on April 23, 2006 to delete WMV9/VC-1 from the AGP card section of the purevideo support table. Just paste the link http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.htmli...">http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.htmli... their search bar and press "Take Me Back"



    I hope this helps and thanks for letting us know about our inaccurate web page.



    Best Regards,

    Scott V.
  • TheOtherRizzo - Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - link

    They're trying to make it sound less severe than it is. Hardware acceleration is for HD and that's what doesn't work. And of course they didn't know about the mistake, there are only several threads at their own official forums...

    Sadly I no longer have an appropriate AGP card so I can't test with their newest drivers, but the real show stopper for me was that HW deinterlacing (called "Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing" in their spreadsheet) didn't work from 9x.xx onwards, SD or HD. This made the card absolutely useless for watching DVB streams. If you are interested in testing have a look here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=8358...">http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=8358...

    Well anyway, nice to see your email had an effect, thx for that.

    If you are further interested in the subject of video decoding another thing to look into is why only the 8500/8600 cards perform deblocking on h264 files. Sample clip here: http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/force.php?file=./hd.f...">http://x264.nl/h.264.samples/force.php?file=./hd.f...
    and screenshots with dxva on and off here:
    http://www1.filehost.to/files/2007-06-14_01/031049...">http://www1.filehost.to/files/2007-06-14_01/031049...
    http://www1.filehost.to/files/2007-06-14_01/031059...">http://www1.filehost.to/files/2007-06-14_01/031059...

    Cheers
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Probably because they learned their lesson with PureVideo? That was the first time such a feature was heavily touted, and the original version failed to materialize on 6800 cards. This is recent, not something from 2+ years ago. As much as it sucks for AGP users and the 6800 users to not have PureVideo, I can't say I'm too concerned about an in-depth look at old news. This is news for today, and I'm pretty sure if NVIDIA launched a new product today and failed to deliver on a new feature (like PureVideo HD on 8500/8600 cards) that we'd see similar complaints.

    I'm still wonder WTF ATI/AMD demoed in Tunisia last month. Did they have H.264 on 2400/2600 (which still aren't shipping)? Did they have H.264 on 2900 but it only worked some of the time, and they eventually gave up? Certainly they showed SOMETHING to AnandTech, Tech Report, etc. and that's the real problem. If they hadn't made a point of promoting a feature that appears to be missing, no one would have cared as much.
  • TheOtherRizzo - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I wasn't talking about the broken 6800 AGP cards. This would be old news and Nvidia no longer claims that they support all Purevideo features. I'm talking about current Nvidia advertising (http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html)">http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html) that claims that all of the newer AGP cards have working Purevideo. In reality all Purevideo features were disabled from 9x.xx drivers onwards, even on cards where it used to work. That means no MPEG-2, no h264, no wmv9, no vc-1 and no hardware deinterlacing for all AGP cards.

    That's not old news, that's lying. Many products on that list are currently still in retail.
  • Chunga29 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    Interesting.. I haven't used an AGP card myself for nearly two years now, and I can't remember the last serious look Anandtech gave to the technology. On the one hand, the solution is simple: don't update AGP drivers. On the other hand, I'm not sure why NVIDIA would even bother to remove PV support from AGP cards. Was it buggy? Maybe just an oversight (not likely)? You might try emailing the Anandtech people directly - sometimes they just don't see these comments I'd wager. Derek seems to be the GPU guy with the means to tlak to NVIDIA or AMD/ATI or whoever.
  • TheOtherRizzo - Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - link

    Yes, it was buggy in several ways. For example wmv9 support was removed for 6600 GT in 8x.xx drivers because there were audio synch issues with some files (the driver release notes said the synch problem had been "fixed"). h264 decoding on 6600 GT had heavy artifacting with most drivers.

    And it isn't as simple as not upgrading the drivers: VC-1 decoding wasn't introduced by Nvidia (on any card) until one of the later 9x.xx drivers. So going back to 8x.xx won't help you get VC-1 decoding. It simply never existed for AGP.

    I've followed your advice to contact AT per email and have sent Derek Wilson a copy of this thread.
  • JKing76 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    quote:

    myself and a couple other reviewers had the good fortune


    C'mon guys, basic grammar here. A couple other reviewers and I had the good fortune...
  • Acert93 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I am curious the NV40 debacle with Purevideo encoding/decoding was never really followed up on by the press. That was a pretty major issue of an advertised feature that didn't work.
  • Frumious1 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Probably because it was going to be fixed in a driver update for so long that by the time anyone finally figured out it was broken on 6800 hardware it was almost too late to say much. I remember AT's 6600 articles pointed out that PureVideo was finally working and did complain about the way the situation was handled. AMD would have been better off following that pattern... except UVD apparently does work on 2400 and 2600 cards.

    Still can't figure out how they screwed the pooch on this one. Is the hardware just malfunctioning on R600 (but not on the other chips), or did they intentionally mislead here? If the hardware is broken, it's a bit odd that it works at all on the other 65nm cards; if the hardware wasn't ever there on R600, why in the hell did AMD even start with their vague marketing? (Don't tell me that manufacturers put UVD on 2900 boxes without actually thinking it was there!)
  • LTG - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Please ignore the small number of posts who called the article "blame shifting" or to "get over it".

    This article was not only well done it was important to the integrity of the process because it illuminated what went on behind the scenes.

    Whether or not there was intentional deception in the best case there was inadequate information provided (no proof but if I had to bet it would be that someone at AMD didn't act in good faith at some point in time).

    This kind of honest and direct reporting is why I come to the site. Likewise whenever AT gets hard questions from readers in the comments section, the authors directly respond much more than some other sites I see.

    Keep it up please, you're right on track.
  • kalrith - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I also agree. Those who are calling AT biased, anti-AMD, and pro-Intel are just idiots. AT is for the companies that are providing the best bang for the buck of the average AT reader. AT was pro-AMD for the several years only in the sense that it stated AMD processors provided a much better value than Intel. Now, the tables have turned in Intel's favor somewhat as far as performance goes and lot as far as appropriate release dates and release information goes.
  • coldpower27 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I concur with this.
  • 7oby - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Both nVidia and ATI are very vage about this topic and have in the past sometimes even released false information.

    Although you hardly find any information about this on the web, the following restrictions seem to stabilize in my mind:

    PureVideo:
    . WMV-9/VC-1 Decoding deactivated on AGP Systems in recent driver releases
    . partial H.264 hardware assisted decoding only possible with SSE2 (rules out AthlonXP systems for which the assistence would be very helpful)
    . remember GeForce 6800 where the H.264, VC-1, WMV9 assisted decoding has been announced a later recalled due to hardware defects in this silicon?

    Avivo:
    . actually worse: I can not find any information about AGP, SSE(2) requirements
    . I remember reading on their webpage: X1000 supports hardware assisted encoding (!) of content. What has survived is "The Avivo Video Converter is only supported on Radeon™ X1000 Series or new GPUs.", which leaves a very bad taste, since it has been proven that this software runs without X1000 hardware and doesn't utilize it for the tasks it offers.

    Instead: A lot of confusion and frustration on the consumer side complaining about not properly working hardware assisted decoding.
  • ViRGE - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    On hardware assisted encoding:

    It's actually worse than you think. Both ATI and Nvidia go back to 2004 with promises of this for the R420 and NV40 respectively. I have product overviews and press slideshows from both companies touting hardware encoding of MPEG 1, 2, and 4. Neither company has or will be delivering on this.

    I fear GPU-based physics is going to go the same way.
  • 7oby - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Downl...">http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content...eAssets/...

    states

    ATI Avivo HD video and display architecture present in HD 2900, 2600, 2400
    UVD (Unified Video Decoder) only present in HD 2600, 2400

    Thus pretty much the same as with nvidia

    Pure Video HD architecture present in G80, G84, G86
    VP2 (for full H.264 decode) only present in G84, G86
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Am I the only one that wonders when that PDF was last updated?
  • PrinceGaz - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Well, given that certain review sites which checked their facts before writing their review of the HD 2900 mentioned that it specifically did not include dedicated UVD hardware (instead relying on the shaders to perform the same task because there are enough of them to do it), it would seem the information was available at least a few days before the NDA expired.
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Care to enlighten as to which "certain sites checked their facts"? I saw Firingsquad (well, skimmed it), and Tom's and a few others. I'm not sure who got it right at the start, but someone above linked at least four other places that got the UVD informations wrong. Tech Report, AnandTech, Tom's Hardware, and Firingsquad are all (well, not so much FS) pretty major sites, and they don't usually make mistakes of this sort unless someone gave them wrong info. Then there's Gigabyte and a couple other manufacturers that put UVD on 2900 boxes, I think.
  • Goty - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/in...">http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/in...
  • Chunga29 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    Can't say I've really paid much attention to Driverheaven. I wonder how they got the info correct when others didn't? I also wonder if they were at the Tunisia event. The evidence that the information was not clearly made available is pretty overwhelming, though, even if it may have been present somewhere. Seems to speak to some serious issues within AMD in regards to getting info to the press and other contacts.

    Consider this from the Anandtech article: "Unfortunately, try as we might, we could not get UVD to work with the current drivers provided by AMD and the PowerDVD release that is supposed to enable the hardware acceleration on HD 2000 series parts."

    Why on earth would AMD even provide them a version of PowerDVD to enable acceleration if H.264 accel isn't present? If they were only supposed to test MPEG and VC-1 offloading, you have to figure an email at least was sent to AMD asking why H.264 (PowerDVD in general?) wasn't working. All AMD had to do is say, "You're mistaken; here's a link. H.264 is not present on R600 but is on R610 and R630." Case closed. THG, AT, FS, TR, and plenty of others apparently all made an error and not a single one was corrected until a couple weeks later!?
  • 7oby - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I do not know whether this information is correct, but my Acrobat says:

    created 04/25/2007
    changed 05/11/2007
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Well, it *could* be true, but dates are way too easy to fake. When did that page get published? I'd guess that the content was under revision until then.
  • bob4432 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    not too long ago the a64 was kicking a$$ and the x850xtpe was king, well long in computer terms but not in normal terms. now amd/ati is at the bottom again, and this screw up seems to be following the trend between the 2/1 company.

    hopefully somebody will start to navigate the ship correctly because at the moment they are heading straight towards the iceburg
  • strikermlc - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    This looks to simply be a not so cleverly disguised retraction on the part of Anandtech. Regardless of whether or not AMD's materials were flawlessly put together - if you make a mistake you should own up to it instead of pointing the finger at someone else.

    With that said, it is disappointing to see that AMD had some trouble clearly nailing down their press materials - but oversights do happen. Especially when it comes to large companies where the people putting together the presentations likely don't fully understand the material. I think the insinuation that something sinister is taking place behind the scenes is more than a little far-fetched however.

    I love Anandtech and have followed you guys since the beginning - please, please don't turn into drama queens. You made an assumption and got egg on your face. It happens. Don't blow things out of proportion. Relax, and give use some more hardware reviews to geek out on. ;)
  • defter - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Especially when it comes to large companies where the people putting together the presentations likely don't fully understand the material.


    When it comes to large companies there are also lots of people who know the truth, in this case there were lots of people working for AMD who knew in advance that R600 will not have UVD. So why didn't anyone from AMD do anything when:
    - misleading press material was released at Tunis, certainly some AMD guys knew that that material gives false impression
    - AMD's partners included UVD in their lists of features
    - Most of reviews during launch were claiming that R600 has UVD

    Nobody from AMD came forward and cleared the matter in those cases. Only when it became apparent to the general public that R600 don't have UVD, AMD admitted it. Thus, this simply isn't a matter of a "small mistake". AMD deliberately mislead press and their partners.
  • Chunga29 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    BS! This isn't an "oversight" or "blame shifting" or any other term you care to use to try and pretend AMD didn't outright lie. It looks to me like AnandTech is coming out and saying, "Hey that article on the 2900? Well, some of the information we previously listed was incorrect, and we now know why we never could get HD video decode acceleration to work properly! So if you were interested in 2900 with AVIVO HD, stop now and don't make a purchase mistake based off faulty information!" Why the frak would AMD let AnandTech continue to try and test H.264 decode acceleration on 2900 cards if they knew damn well that it never worked in the first place!?

    AMD deliberately mislead a LOT of people on this subject, and it seems to me that AnandTech is right on the money here. I have seen a bunch of comments (probably by AMD funded geurilla marketing types) that basically said HD 2900 was better than 8800 GTS/GTX "because at least it gets full HD Video decode support". Looking at the slides, and seeing how AMD seemed pretty content to let the mistakes pass, I'd say AMD screwed up with the hardware on the 2900 cards. Sort of like the PureVideo stuff on GeForce 6800 never worked right, and plenty of people are still pissed about that.

    The fact that several of the former ATI PR people are leaving says that something stinks in the state of AMD. Let's just hope we don't see more of this crap when Barcelona launches. "We're 20% faster clock for clock... only we're shipping at 2.0 GHz." (I'm not saying that's the case.)

    I recall previous articles roasting Intel when they released shitty NetBurst processors that jacked up temperatures, underperformed, and cost more than the competition. Now AMD has processors that run at higher temperatures and perform slower, and they've got a new GPU that really jacks up the temps (60W more than 8800 GTS), costs more, and at best appears to match the NVIDIA part. Then we find out that the new AVIVO HD is really not present at all on the HD 2900 - but that's okay because... um... because... Oh! That's right! It's okay because some of you want to bury your heads in the sand and pretend that AMD isn't making mistakes right and left.

    RD600? Late to market, only offers okay performance and nothing really special.
    R600? VERY late to market, can't even best the competition, runs hot, costs more, and missing some touted features.
    Barcelona? Late to market, and we can only hope that's the only drawback. I've got some AM2 platforms that could use a better CPU, but I won't believe AMD actually properly supports older AM2 boards until I see it. I remember a few 939 boards that didn't ever work with X2 chips, after all....

    I'm all for competition, but I'm not going to go out and buy a clearly inferior product just in the hopes that the company will do better next time. Competition means I'm going to get a quad core Q6600 next month for under $300; if AMD continues to slump, I expect prices will start to rise, and then I'll be more than happy to continue running overclocked E4300/4400/6600 CPUs. I really don't need the Q6600, but given the upcoming price cuts I'll make the jump on my next upgrade. Unless of course Phenom lives up to its (silly) name.
  • Goty - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Fanboy? Yup.

    How is it an outright lie from AMD when numerous other sites from around the web seem to have gotten the information right?
  • Roy2001 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    If you are right how can AMD partners also get it wrong?
  • Frumious1 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Yeah, all the major sites somehow get it wrong and have to make corrections, and the small sites make corrections without any mention of the fact, and MANUFACTURERS print UVD on their damn boxes... but AMD certainly didn't do anything wrong!

    http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_ati_radeon...">FiringSquad
    http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-290...">The Tech Report updates article
    http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/14/r600_finall...">Tom's Hardware gets it wrong
    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070514-amd-...">Ars Technica thought UVD was present
    ....
    I could go on, but why don't you AMD fanboys that are defending them provide some links to major, REPUTABLE sites (like the above three) that got all the information correct without needing to do an update? I certainly didn't see anyone making a point about this on the launch day! But I'm just an NVIDIA/Intel fanboy, despite my X1950 XTX CrossFire setup. (Okay, granted that's running with Core 2 E6600 on 975X.)
  • Goty - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/in...">http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/r600reviewz/in...
  • Goty - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    ...soooo the HD2900XT doesn't support UVD. Who cares? I still accelerates HD video play back and can even beat its competition at the feat, so what's the big deal? You guys missed something, get over it.
  • Roy2001 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    ATI card makers cares.
  • drebo - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Yet another pointless anti-AMD "article".

    Look, we realize that Intel buys a shitload of advertising from you, but could we atleast get a shred of real review material please?

    This is bollocks. AMD never said UVD would be on the 2900 XT. nVidia didn't include full decode on the G80. Whatever the reasoning, it doesn't matter. My feelings are that those high end parts don't NEED the help. Your feelings are that AMD is deceptive and nVidia is god. We get it. You don't like AMD (or Intel pays you not to). Get over it already. I'd have rather seen an actual comparison of the video decode features of the 2900 XT, the 8800GTS, the 8600GT and the lower-end AMD parts.

    You know, something that would actually mean something, other than this useless drivel, specualtion and namecalling.
  • Roy2001 - Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - link

    Yeah, AT and many sites dislike AMD, and AMD partners are also dislike AMD so they pretend to know nothing about lacking of UVD and thus printed their box with UVD support.

    Is that your theory?
  • SilthDraeth - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Drebo you are hilarious. Anandtech certainly is anti AMD, and back before core 2 they where anti Intel.

    stfu.
  • chrispyski - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    I can understand if review sites like Anandtech or Tom's get things like this messed up as they have to rely on the information given to them from the PR guys whose job it is to make there merchandise appealing. But when board partners are being mis-informed and then mis-labeling their cards accordingly, then you begin to wonder what the hell is going on with their tactics.

    AMD was deceitful, if not to the review sites, then to their board partners. Either way is just bad business. Plain and simple.
  • tuteja1986 - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Yeah... Like i read around 3 or more reviews like firingsquad article that told it readers that 2900XT didn't UVD.These review were published on the 1st of 2900XT launch and they didn't make fuss about it. Also i have read article that compares 8600GT playback vs 8800GTX playback and it show that Image quality is better on 8800GTX than 8600GT playback.
  • PrinceGaz - Monday, June 4, 2007 - link

    Exactly, some first day reviews of the HD 2900 did mention that it did not include dedicated UVD hardware but that it would instead be implemented using its shaders/stream-processors (because the 2900 has sufficient of them to do the task just as well as the dedicated hardware on lower models does).

    Some people rely on just one review (possibly AT for many readers here); that is always a bad idea regardless of the site you choose. If you feel you know enough about an important new product by doing anything less than reading at least three (preferably more) comprehensive reviews, then you are likely to miss small but significant details. Reading more than one reduces the likelihood you overlook something, and increases your chance of being told about something another site missed such as details of the UVD support in the HD 2900.

    I'm not saying any site is good or bad; the site where I first learned on launch day that UVD on the HD 2900 would be provided by its stream-processors rather than dedicated hardware, is the same site which not long previously had posted a review of the 8600GT/GTS launch which was at odds with just about every other respectable tech site. All sites have their ups and downs, so never trust what any site alone says, including AT, unless others support their findings.
  • Creig - Thursday, June 7, 2007 - link

    http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7888...">http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7888...

    quote:

    Ahh, the guys at Dailytech are at it again.

    AMD made it fully clear at the launch that only the HD2400 and HD2600 had the extra UVD chip since the R600 could handle it in the GPU with the shaders. Heck, I even wrote about that in my article. The UVD chip is put in the HD2400 and HD2600 as they do not have the shader performance to handle it.


    Apparently they haven't turned on that yet in the beta HD2900XT drivers (got new ones a few days agi but cant put in the HD2900XT now to test). So the HD2900XT is definitely supposed to be capable of accelerating HD.

    Incidently this is exactly the same stuff as the 8800GTX has. When playing HD-DVD on my 360 HD-DVD drive i got about the same CPU utilization on both (a bit lower on the HD2900XT). None of the highest end cards have an extra chip to handle the Hd decoding as it is handled by the GPU.

    The only issue I can see is that they haven't been able to get it fully working yet in the drivers. I personally don't see the big fuss here. Playing a 20-25 Mbps HD-DVD on a E6400 and getting around 40% CPU usage is to me not a bad result.

    quote:

    Well, hardware decoding acceleration is supposed to be available in the next drivers coming in the next few days or so (I really need to install my HD2900XT again to see if the new drivers I got a few days ago have this turned on).

    I've read up more on this and I still am quite surprised on this whole debacle. I'm not sure what happened at the US launch event, but at the Tunis launch event there were no uncertaines what-so-ever that UVD was anything else than a feature for the 2400 and 2600 as they needed assists at handle 1080p.

    Apparently AMD did not count on people not being able to read all the slides and thus did nt make it clear on every possible slide that UVD was for 2400 and 2600.


    This is not the first time that it has taken some time for hardware decoding to start working on new videocards. When the X1000 series first was released it took a while before the various programs supported the hardware encoding in them. And I've had issues with Purevideo.

    It definitely is bad though that some AIB's went out and printed boxes where they advertised UVD for the HD2900XT. Apparently AMD hadn't made it clear to them or they jumped the gun and didn't doublecheck this feature.

    I think most of this debacle stems from the fact that they did not have the HD2400 and HD2600 ready for the 14 May launch. This made them talk a lot about a feature (UVD) that wasn't available on the card they were selling which confused a lot of people.

    But the simple fact is that at least at the Tunis event they clearly told us about the lack of UVD on the HD2900XT as well as the fact that the same features was being handled by the R600 GPU.
  • DerekWilson - Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - link

    At the Tunis even, if members of the press specifically asked AMD, they were told that UVD was not in the 2900 XT.

    Aside from us, there were quite a few publications at the Tunis event that did not have correct information becaues we didn't specifically ask someone.

    The presentations and slides were absolutely not clear on the issue, and there is no slide that does make it clear that UVD is not in the 2900 XT. Period.

    Not mentioning it as a feature is not the same as mentioning that something is not a feature.
  • lemonadesoda - Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - link

    Then, Mr Wilson, you have to admit that there are better reporters/journalists representing other publications. Why do you write a 3 page article whining about the fact that you weren't SPOON FED all the information... and that because you didn't get your facts right... you continue to write copy with FUD.

    Not only is the content of this article poor, you could have written it with 80% less words. Do you get paid on a per word basis?
  • DerekWilson - Sunday, July 22, 2007 - link

    If we had to explicitly confirm everything that was implied, we would never publish an article. We don't want to be spoon fed, but we don't need to be mislead (whether on purpose or by accident). It's slightly more costly to the manufacturers who's boxes were printed as supporting UVD than for us, which really underlines the fact that AMD made a mistake somewhere along the way here.

    I don't get paid per word -- I do tend to be wordy though. Sorry about that.

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