ATI ships out Radeon HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics cards

[oddjob]

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...ews_view_popup

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMD (NYSE: AMD) is now shipping ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 and ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 graphics processors in volume to its board customers. The ATI Radeon HD 2400 and ATI Radeon HD 2600 deliver feature-rich DirectX® 10 gaming and high definition video for Windows Vista®. Graphics cards based on these processors are expected to be available at online retailers within a few weeks from board customers including Asus, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, GeCube, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, Palit, PowerColor, Sapphire and VisionTek.
Both graphics processors feature AMD’s innovative UVD (Unified Video Decoder) technology. UVD is a hardware feature that offloads video decoding from the CPU to the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to significantly lower system power consumption. This is particularly important for media center PCs (because lower power consumption means quieter cooling solutions) and notebooks (where power consumption dictates battery life). UVD is designed to be used in a range of video applications, for example, watching Blu-ray™, HD DVD or standard definition movies.
HDMI and HDCP support2

[bjterry62]

Found a review on these cards pertaining to UVD. Looks pretty good.

BT

[bialio]

I just got the 2400PRO. First test with Sage was in XP. None of the decoders I have available were able to use the HW acceleration on this card in XP. I'm hoping Vista will have better results......

[Vinylvision]

Bialio, please keep us informed about results of your Vista test. Thanks.

[bialio]

So the 2400PRO is better on Vista than it was on XP. I'm not sure however that it is actually working correctly yet.

There seems to be a common problem getting mpeg2 acceleration working on this chipset with the current drivers from ATI. There is a thread over at avsforum talking about this. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=869903

So - CPU utilization is hanging in the 20% to 50% range depending on the decoder I use. 20% with the Microsoft MPEG-2 Decoder. 50% with SageTV's built in. I think microsoft decoder might be offloading some of the decode to hardware - but I'm used to 5-8% utilization for mpeg-2 with my NVIDIA cards, so I don't think I'm quite there yet.......

HD playback is almost there. There are occasional jumps in the picture, but it is watchable. Once the driver / decoder / hw issues are squared away I think this card will be a real winner.

----

Picture quality - without HW accel - is suprisingly good. I've got it hooked up through the component out right now to an OLD 53" Rear Projection 1080i Panasonic set. The picture is crisp and very clear. Much better analog picture quality than I've ever been able to get with NVIDIA products.

btl.

[bialio]

I think I've got the 2400PRO working well enough now to actually put the client it's in "into service."

The decoder that finally did the trick was Intervideo's - included with WinDVD8. (I downloaded the trial)

It has a great picture on both HD and SD, and CPU usage for HD (coming in from HDHomeRun) is about 18-20%. This I can live with. I expect in the future even more of the decoding can be pushed to the GPU once the drivers / decoders mature - however I've got a very nice picture now that is easy on the eyes. So I'm happy.

For $59 it's a deal. It is very much superior to the NVIDIA 7 Series onboard graphics on my motherboard (Biostar TF7050-M2) - I never got smooth HD playback with the onboard graphics.

btl.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by bialio

I think I've got the 2400PRO working well enough now to actually put the client it's in "into service."

The decoder that finally did the trick was Intervideo's - included with WinDVD8. (I downloaded the trial)

It has a great picture on both HD and SD, and CPU usage for HD (coming in from HDHomeRun) is about 18-20%. This I can live with. I expect in the future even more of the decoding can be pushed to the GPU once the drivers / decoders mature - however I've got a very nice picture now that is easy on the eyes. So I'm happy.

For $59 it's a deal. It is very much superior to the NVIDIA 7 Series onboard graphics on my motherboard (Biostar TF7050-M2) - I never got smooth HD playback with the onboard graphics.

btl.

This is under vista right? Which ATI drivers are you using? I take it you are using the intervideo codec and not the MSFT codec that comes with Vitsa Ultimate?

Thanks,
Mike

[mikesm]

PS are you using the builtin HDMI audio also? I can't figure out how it's supposed to be integrated into an HDMI connector.

Thanks,
mike

[bialio]

It is under vista. There is a HotFix available on the ATI websight that installs a beta version of the ATI CCC driver suite. I'm not sure of the version number.

The MS codec works pretty well also, but it's got an inferior SD picture. Microsoft and Intervideo decoders are the only ones I've got HW acceleration working with on these cards. From some comments on avsforum, I think the fact that this isn't working in the Cyberlink decoder is a bug on Cyberlink's end.

I'm not using HDMI at all - I'm currently hooked up to an OLD OLD tv that only has a 1080i Component input.

Interestingly, when I first installed this card on an XP system, I lost all sound because it apparently was routing the audio through the "sound card" on the video card. So HDMI audio might have worked in that scenario.

[mikesm]

Which specific 2400 model are you using? This card http://www.directron.com/2400proscs3256.html looks very nice, passive cooling, low profile and cheap.

Thanks,
Mike

[bialio]

I'm using the Saphire model that newegg is selling.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102100

btl.

[autoboy]

I can't get h264 acceleration with sagetv with my 2400pro. I have it all set up to use the Haali media splitter, cyberlink 7.3 decoders, and I fixed the registry problems with the 2400pro (from the AVSforum thread). When I use Media player classic, everything works fine. I get 5% cpu with x264. However, in sage I don't get the Haali splitter in the tray, and I don't get acceleration. Anybody have any ideas?

[KJake]

You probably need to enable always_use_dshow_player=true to get Sage to use the Haali splitter, otherwise it will use the SageTVPlayer.exe. There are some more specific settings for mpeg4 based content, but I'm failing to find them at the moment.

[KJake]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Which specific 2400 model are you using? This card http://www.directron.com/2400proscs3256.html looks very nice, passive cooling, low profile and cheap.

I like the looks of that card, it would fit well in my client to replace my X600 that is failing on smooth HD playback. I want to use this in XP MCE tho...must research.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by KJake

I like the looks of that card, it would fit well in my client to replace my X600 that is failing on smooth HD playback. I want to use this in XP MCE tho...must research.

Look at the end of this thread - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post11025598 . There is a user (autoboy70) that is running in exactly your configuration.

[autoboy]

Yep, it is working for me except for the mkv problem with sageplayer.exe. I'll fix that when I get a chance to work on it.

Here is how I set it up:

Windows XP (MCE)
SageTV 6... I can't remember what I am running anymore
720p DLP via DVI
Biostar tforce 6100 S754
Athlon 3200+ at 2.2ghz and 1.1V
1GB DDR400 ram
Saphire 2400pro @ 585 clock / 500 ram
Cyberlink 7.3 Decoders - set in the sage properties
VMR9 - set in the sage properties
Haali Media splitter - I hope but it seems l might be running sage splitter
3:2 pulldown enabled
automatic deinterlacing

I used the following registry hacks:
in 0000
DVXA_NOHDDECODE = 0 (Dword) - add it if it is not there - turns on mpeg2 acceleration
DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264 = 0 - exactly what they say
DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2 = 0
DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1 = 0
TrDenoise = 0 (Dword) - add it if it is not there - turns off the noise reduction
DXVA_DetailEnhance = 0 (Dword) - add it if it is not there - turns off sharpening

This looks like one more fix I didn't try:
WMV acceleration broken. Search for DXVA_WMV_NA, change to 0. Now a new option to allow acceleraiton appears under the control centre's video settings (maybe needs a reboot).

There are also some packages you can download from this thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8&page=1&pp=30

I'm gonna have to recomend people buy the 2600pro over the 2400pro at this time. It looks like the 2400pro is a litttle crippled. The 2600pro should work out of the box and does not need the regisrty hacks.

With the registry hacks I get 70-95% GPU load which is a little high. I'm still working on getting it down.

[KJake]

Originally Posted by autoboy

I'm gonna have to recomend people buy the 2600pro over the 2400pro at this time. It looks like the 2400pro is a litttle crippled.

There are only three low-profile 2400 models out there (only one with passive cooling) and zero low-profile 2600 models. I may have to suffer the registry hacks.

[sleonard]

There is a passive cooled 2600 coming soon from Gigabyte (?). I don't know if it will be low profile or not though.

Scott

Edit: The fanless 2600XT is from Gigabyte but it is not low profile.

[phelme]

so how well do the new cards work with VMR9?