New PC Suggestions

[VLSmooth]

Random Update

1280x720 h264 is becoming ever more common. Luckily, there are usually low-quality (LQ) encodes, but I still occasionally view choppy high-quality (HQ) encodes as well.

I'm holding out until there's a no-brainer time to upgrade to a quiet semi-portable system(1) that doesn't drop any frames during playback. If anyone knows of an upcoming time, it'd be appreciated.



(1) I might even get a laptop now! Provided good external connections and a price premium on par with a Shuttle case (~$250) or less.

[Dave]

My 1Ghz laptop I bought in 02 is barely able to decode the HD/1080p whatever endoded tv shows I occasionally download to my tv without choppiness, so I typically just avoid them or get LQ ones. I think most laptops are "widescreen" now.

[Jonathan]

I'm holding out until there's a no-brainer time to upgrade to a quiet semi-portable system(1) that doesn't drop any frames during playback. If anyone knows of an upcoming time, it'd be appreciated.

Here's the Timeline according to Me (TM):

May - Intel laptop platform refresh, includes ITM. Incremental perf improvements and prices drops.

I'd call this your first inflection point. Probably a good time to buy, either the older cheaper systems or the new ones.

2H 2007 - AMD launches Barcelona. Independent clock gating of cores may lead to some improved thermals, certainly will be a perf improvement over current AMD systems. Some reports have them launching sooner rather than later (i.e. summer), but I haven't seen a confirmed date other than second half this year. Should create even deeper price cuts in the existing AMD products, which have already been slashed something awful.
2H 2007 - Intel launches 45nm Core 2 Duo (and 45nm quad core, of course). Even milder incremental perf improvement. I have no comment on thermals or power. I believe our official launch date is more towards Christmas (i.e. later).

Pre-release info on 2C Barcelona is thin on the ground, so I really can't say if the mainstream offering will be stellar or not. Certainly if you are considering a 4C system, you'd probably want to wait for one or both of these products.

1H 2008 - I think a DDR3 platform will launch sometime around here. As far as I can tell, DDR3 is about pushing frequency beyond what DDR2 can provide, and not about improved thermals or capacity or anything.
2H 2008 - new Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem. For publically available information, see this thread. For not publically available information, find a source within Intel.
Late 2008-2009 - both Intel and AMD have announced products which combine a single cooling solution for video/graphics and CPU by putting graphics into the CPU package. Should provide value-level 3D graphics performance, but for watching anime it might be a cheap, quiet, and effective solution.

Now we're in the distant future.

One possible thing is you are starting to see laptop manufacturers put dedicated hardware on board for DVD playback. I have no idea if XviD H.264 playback is can be accelerated on these things, but if so it might be your ideal solution. I think it is most common with the Japanese manufacturers like Toshiba or Sony. Might be a bit of a price premium, but essentially switching off your CPU during movie playback will be a huge noise reduction.

I have not seen any announcements from Nvidia that would indicate they are launching a product specifically to cater to you in the near future, but certainly they are aware of the marketplace situation as anyone.

As far I can tell, the PCIe roadmap is fairly quiet in this timeframe. I wouldnt' expect any big platform changes, just socket refreshes. I don't think the accelerator market is going to target HD playback, but you can always hope and check.

[George]

Most discrete graphics cards have supplied hardware MPEG2 decoding for years now. I've heard from some that the quality is below a software solution, but I don't really know why that would be the case.

My HDTV tuner card can use that hardware to decode HDTV streams, which are just MPEG2. I don't know anything about the HD DVD formats, so I'm not sure if they need some kind of new hardware or not. If they do, it's a sure bet you'll see it quietly built into every nVidia and ATI offering. If anything, it's odd that they haven't trumpeted their existing hardware decoding more.

I also recall nVidia has something called PureVideo HD, which is at least partially hardware supported.

[VLSmooth]

I remember reading about PureVideo months ago and declaring it "utter crap", so much that I forgot why. I did find a fairly recent Anandtech article that might refresh my memory:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2798

Will read later.

[Jonathan]

Our tests will show that PureVideo is more of a resource shift that draws the same amount of power rather than a feature that will enable mobility. It will still be some time before we see a notebook capable of playing an entire HD-DVD or BD movie at resolution on one charge.

If it doesn't consume less power, it won't be any quieter. Might be something that won't drop frames, I guess. Still don't know if it can handle whatever codec/container you prefer.

[VLSmooth]

All of the parts that made this demo work are still in beta, from the CyberLink player to the NVIDIA drivers used.

Hmm... I wonder if it's reality yet. Also, it didn't specify how to actually enable it. However it did mention GeForce 7 PureVideo exists.

Without PureVideo HD running The Chronicles of Riddick (Japan), the CPU was at 100% the entire time. Enabling PureVideo HD with the GPU running at retail speed (580MHz), CPU usage dropped to about 80% on average. With other titles using VC-1 content, we saw CPU usage at around 80% without GPU assistance. Turning on PureVideo HD gave us about 60% CPU usage. In general, it looks like a 580 MHz NVIDIA GPU is capable of decreasing the load on a Pentium D 830 by about 20% in any given situation. This isn't a huge drop, but it is definitely significant and can help in those tough situations (like H.264 encoded imports).

Unless PureVideo's CPU reduction changed drastically for the better, I'm still pretty sure my current system would be hosed. Anime groups often push the envelope with encoding, bitrates, etc. so the HQ encodes will definitely require some beefy processing.

[VLSmooth]

Also, I didn't see any reference to non-bluray encodes. I wonder if PureVideo is tweaked to a subset of h264. If so, that doesn't bode well...

[VLSmooth]

Another, more recent article

[H]Enthusiast : NVIDIA's PureVideo HD Interview & Experiences

Edit: Meh, most of the article was about DRM bollocks, although it seems as of 2006-09-14 beta drivers are still required.

[Jason]

For not publically available information, find a source within Intel.

And how would I go about doing that?

Say both your desktop and your laptop were dying on the vine and you had to replace both of them. Which would you do so first? I need to put my refund to good use.

One of the guys at work keeps telling me I have to get the 30" Dell monitor.

[Jonathan]

To Vista or not to Vista?

Hard to buy OEM XP machines now, but if you hurry you just might find one.

For Mac, I'd wait for Leopard. Most of the new machines in my office are Mac.

If one wanted to wait, for laptops I think anytime after May. For desktop, I'd want a DX10 mainstream card which I think are not out yet.

If one wanted to spend an outrageous amount of money on a desktop, now's as good a time as any for the next 18 months.

[Jonathan]

I amend my previous statement. On April 22, the cheapest Intel quad core drops to $530. So for a mildly outrageous amount of money, you will want to wait until after the 22nd.

[Jonathan]

Also, mainstream DX10 cards are not out yet.

[Jonathan]

For those with existing AMD platforms, latest AMD price cuts make a quick upgrade very tempting.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1 ... X1K0000532

[VLSmooth]

One of the guys at work keeps telling me I have to get the 30" Dell monitor.

If you only want to use it for computing, go for it.

However, I've already researched it and am reluctant. The Dell 30" only has a single DVI port. This pretty much limits it to computer use. On the other hand, both the 24" and 27" models have DVI-D, VGA, component, S-Video and composite inputs. Therefore you can hook up two computers, game systems, a DVR, etc. simultaneously. More importantly, if you get a better display, you (or relatives) can still use the LCD without a computer as a generic display/TV.

[VLSmooth]

For those with existing AMD platforms, latest AMD price cuts make a quick upgrade very tempting.

Yep, I'm hoping this is just the beginning of a price war, allowing me purchase during a low lull.

Also, I tested four HQ anime encodes on my roommate's Athlon X2 overclocked to 2.5 GHz. It played three of them without dropping frames. The last one occasionally dropped frames during large panning shots. Therefore, a cheap socket 939 is looking mighty attractive (provided they're attainable/in stock).

[Jonathan]

Act now if you want a 939, they're not going to be around forever.

My .02 is the huge numbers of 939 systems sold in the retail channel combined with the relatively low numbers of AM2 systems sold after the launch of C2D combined with declining numbers of 939 systems produced will actually increase the street price of 939 CPUs later this year. It's a pattern that has occurred a couple of times.

I don't think AMD can cut prices much more than this. At some point you have to accept your market share losses and actually make some profit.

[Jonathan]

My crystal ball says that Barcelona will fill in the gaps in the high end ($250+) of their lineup. I wouldn't expect huge drops in the reasonably priced products, just incremental ones. Still, if they launch in the summer it might be worth to wait.

[VLSmooth]

Act now if you want a 939, they're not going to be around forever.

Unforunately, it seems I'm already out of luck (at least at newgg, link).

Currently, the fastest one left is 2.0 Ghz (3800+). Since my reference system was 2.5 Ghz and still occassionally dropping frames, the chances of a quick upgrade have become slim to non-existant.

[Jonathan]