NV40 broken video processor

pxc

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You may not have read it yet, but Anand wrote an update in his 6200 preview: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238&p=2

I personally emailed NVIDIA every other week from May until August asking for an update, with no official or unofficial response as to why nothing had happened with the illustrious Video Processor. Finally, when 23 out of the 35 slides of the NVIDIA press presentation about the GeForce 6200 featured the GPU's "Video Processor", I had had enough. It was only then that NVIDIA came clean about the current state of the Video Processor.

The Video Processor (soon to receive a true marketing name) on the NV40 was somewhat broken, although it featured MPEG 2 decode acceleration. Apparently, support for WMV9 decode acceleration was not up to par with what NVIDIA had hoped for. As of the publication of this article, NVIDIA still has not answered our questions of whether or not there is any hardware encoding acceleration as was originally promised with NV40. So, the feature set of the Video Processor on NV40 (the GeForce 6800) was incomplete, only in its support for WMV9 acceleration (arguably the most important feature of it).

NVIDIA quietly fixed the problem in the 6600GT and since the 6200 is based on the 6600, the 6200 also features the "fixed" Video Processor with WMV9 decode acceleration support...

NVIDIA is currently aiming to have us a functional driver and codec that will enable the Video Processor and take advantage of its capabilities in the next month or so; given that the feature has already been on cards (in one form or another) for 6 months now, we're just going to have to wait and see.

I'm going to start bugging BFG about this, even though they wisely didn't put anything on the box about the Video Processor. There's no point in bugging NVIDIA directly because they sell chips, not cards, and don't respond to card end-users. If NVIDIA doesn't have a fix "in a month" they should eat the cost of the recall/replacement since the NV40 is clearly a defective chip. The NV41 is coming out soon.
 
its not "broken"

the video processor just isn't as complete and as fast as NVIDIA hoped with the NV40 in some areas

but I wouldn't call it "broken"

it still has features that are untapped, you'll be hearing more about it in a month
 
You know, as long as its not broken, I'll take it. BUT Why has it taken so long for them to make the use of it available. Its still not available as far as I know. Even "some" hardware acceleration for encoding/decoding would help.
I'm also wondering if the current encoders/decoders out there will need to do something special to make use of this.
 
Heck no mention of WMV9 on my PNY box, only states FULL MPEG decode support...
 
WM9V playback is great on my 6800GT. The WM9V HD clip of Terminator 2 uses 25-35% of CPU usage during playback and seems very smooth. But if there are issues with the video processor then I'd rather know what they are instead of NV keeping it a secret. :(
 
coz said:
WM9V playback is great on my 6800GT. The WM9V HD clip of Terminator 2 uses 25-35% of CPU usage during playback and seems very smooth. But if there are issues with the video processor then I'd rather know what they are instead of NV keeping it a secret. :(
With a fast enough CPU, of course CPU utilization is lower. Mine runs at 45%-50% on that clip, but that's even with pre-65.xx drivers. I also have the T2 special edition that comes with the HD video on one of the discs.

"Broken" might be too strong of a word for Brent, but for something that's not working (or not working right), that's a pretty accurate label. I could understand delays with getting the encoders working, but several months after touting that as a feature of the NV40 and still having nothing is unacceptable.
 
I don't even use WMV9 files so it doesn't matter to me but I'm glad that it was fixed in the 6600 series since I want to get a GT for my HTPC.
 
So I've been reading through the nvnews and anandtech forums on this issue.
I think to test if its working or not, you need to do the following.
Disable HT for P4 CPUs
Enable FastWrites for the video card

To know if its working or not, for a system with the above done with a CPU around 3Ghz or equivalent, playing the Step into Liquid WMV9 HD 1080i video, your cpu utilization should be around 20-30% most of the time if it works. If it does not, it seems to be at around the 60s.

I'll go home and test later. I got an Athlon XP 3000 and 6800GT running 66.81. The cpu utilization should be low for this setup.

I remember running some WMV9 HD videos to see the utilization before and it was around 60-70% back then using 61.77 drivers. We'll see if its still the same.
 
Looks like its NOT working. CPU usage hoovers around 70% playing the 1080i videos.
 
i feel some what taken on the deal, if i had never owned a video card that had good onboard encoding that would be one thing .But after having a xtasy 9500 pro and a xtasy 9800 256 pro that had much lower cpu usage and no choppy or dropped frames ,i must say this does not seem right.Yes the hd videos are very demanding yes i only have a 2.5 mhz xp but they didnt chop on those.And i never went above 50-60 cpu usage now im stuck at 100 %.which makes doing anything else while whatching a vid imposable,something i do often.
One of the major factors for me was the video processore because i have a nice hd tv that i pump video out to and do much xvid and divx decoding .And lets face it the things are what make the 6800 standout from others, yea any of the x800 or 6800 will run your games plenty fast for most people who dont care about who got what in 3d mark xxxxx.I really hope this can be taken care of by driver updates or mybe bios update.

P.s it sucks showing your freinds how bad-ass step into liquid looks only to have it studder and drop frames ,mean while knowing my p3 1g with a 9800pro will run it fine.


pss Yes i have reformated on install, turned fastwrites off and tryed all drivers up to the 66.81.And by the way the thing with turning on bilting on rivertuner makes your video play back 2 times as bad. Although does seem to help with the direct x studder,Hate to rant like this its just that 400.00$ is the most ive spent on a video card that will be out dated in less than a year.Im i being a asshole to want it to work like what they advertise? . Thanks for your time!
 
Well i just downloaded te latest 66.81 display_property_users_guide. Heres a snippet:

Windows XP Media Center Edition — “Symphony” Support
Release 65 optimizes and stabilizes video processing for the new family of
GPUs, and includes the use of shaders in SPAD deinterlacing and DirectX VA
subpicture compositing.
Release 65 also includes
• Support for VMR9: ARGB-ARGB 4x5 Scaling
• Support for WMV9, including
• 720p DirectX VA pipeline acceleration and fine tuning
• 1080i/p decode and display
• Improved concurrent processing of video and 3D graphics.

I guess we all knew this but it doesn't have anything under normal win xp or 2000 (unless its assumed to also be supported under xp). I hope all this talk of the video functions being 'broken' are just rationalisations based on no certified updated driver from nvidia for months now (the 61.77 on the nvidia site were released in July!). Their silence on the issue is either them wanting to surprise us all with a really good driver or as most people feared, who spent their mostly hard earned cash on a card which promoted all these seemingly great features, it is indeed 'broken'. I personally have never spent so much money on a single piece of hardware and it was the features of the 6800 that led me to purchase it. If it doesn't support all the features it specified then I am going to feel rightly ripped off.
 
I wonder if this is the reason that my windows media player freezes up my entire system everytime it tries previewing a large divx/xvid dvd. Damn...
 
nova-z said:
pss Yes i have reformated on install, turned fastwrites off and tryed all drivers up to the 66.81.And by the way the thing with turning on bilting on rivertuner makes your video play back 2 times as bad. Although does seem to help with the direct x studder,Hate to rant like this its just that 400.00$ is the most ive spent on a video card that will be out dated in less than a year.Im i being a asshole to want it to work like what they advertise? . Thanks for your time!

Try enabling fastwrites. I read on the other forums that the choppy video was fixed when fastwrites was ENABLED. But the CPU usage still hoovered around 70%.
 
Yea i have heard that too but with my bfg turning on fast writes gives me the horrid studdering in dx game far cry, joint ops ,ect. so its kind of a double edged sword.Bfg also said that the 6800gt oc does not support fastwrites or better yet does not work with fast writes.
 
nova-z said:
Yea i have heard that too but with my bfg turning on fast writes gives me the horrid studdering in dx game far cry, joint ops ,ect. so its kind of a double edged sword.Bfg also said that the 6800gt oc does not support fastwrites or better yet does not work with fast writes.
It's probably your motherboard. I have a nForce3 and have had FW (and SBA) enabled since day 1. I've never had stuttering in any DX game.
 
particle9 said:
I wonder if this is the reason that my windows media player freezes up my entire system everytime it tries previewing a large divx/xvid dvd. Damn...
Wonder if this is the reason why my system crashes every once in a while watching a music video in iTunes....
 
It's probably your motherboard. I have a nForce3 and have had FW (and SBA) enabled since day 1. I've never had stuttering in any DX game.
__________________
by the way how is that board ive been eying it for a upgrade?Good overclocking working agp and pci lockdown.
 
particle9 said:
I wonder if this is the reason that my windows media player freezes up my entire system everytime it tries previewing a large divx/xvid dvd. Damn...

i have noticed that too but never thought it was the video proc on graphics card , it crashes , mobo beeps and all keyboard/mouse movement halts

i thought it was my 6800 memory overclock ?

what happens exactly with yours ?
 
When I open up a folder with preview icons of 700+ meg divx/xvid files the entire system starts chugging, similar chugging to a really slow computer but this thing should not be chugging, then maybe one preview file comes up and then everything inside the folder dissappears and then the system hangs and then reboots. That is pretty much it. WMP also crashes a lot when listening to music. Basically everything that uses more than 100megs of ram at a time seems to totally crash the system. But this is odd because the RAM is testing absolutely fine. When I get my RMA vid card back I will try upping the voltage to my RAM.
 
I disabled the preview pane because sometimes it would cause explorer to crash while trying to load the preview, haha.
 
well, on my Gainward 6800GT GS, it's definately running windows media player through some different aspect of the video card, as my fans will spin up like it's playing a 3d game.. So it's alteast doing some kind of work..
 
Can you tell us what kind of cpu usage you're getting. Make sure nothing else is running in the background to add to any cpu utilisation test and disable HT if you have a HT-enabled p4. Plus if its a DVD your talking about please play say a divx or wmv hd file off the microsoft site.cheers if you can.
 
I'll check it out when I get home, at work right now.. But this was on XP Pro SP/2 using the latest DIVX codec on WMP 10. using the 61.77 drivers..
 
Hey-hey, whassup Barn? Long time no see! Nice gfx card BTW. :D

Is WMP10 worth the DL?
 
Barnaby said:
well, on my Gainward 6800GT GS, it's definately running windows media player through some different aspect of the video card, as my fans will spin up like it's playing a 3d game.. So it's alteast doing some kind of work..

you probably have a 3D visualisation...

that happened to me before when I still had my 9800pro and ATI tool, my 3d overclock would kick in everytime I launched WM9 or WM10...

and it reset itself back to 2D as soon as media player was closed..

in the windows media topic, can anyone enable hardwae acceleration? (mine is grayed out)
 
coz said:
Hey-hey, whassup Barn? Long time no see! Nice gfx card BTW. :D

Is WMP10 worth the DL?


Yea, haven't seen ya on in awhile.. haven't been at our other forum for alittle bit.. hard to get the details on new hardware from there.. :D Yea, it's a kickass cards, but it's frickin' huge, and now I have to be mindful on the mobo's I use, since some will have clearance issues.. but I'm not worried too much.. It'll fit on the new boards I want..

I like WMP10 myself.. Atleast for the fact that it fixed some problems I was having playing back some video's.. A little while back I used a movie joiner program to try and consolidate my vid's, since WMP has this strange problem with messing up the contrast/brightness of a movie when it goes to the next clip in a series from the playlist on it's own.. if I hit next myself, it's all good..anyways, so I had to reinstall everything after I messed up my rig playing around, and when I did I used the latest DIVX coded.. With WMP9 and the latest coded, my a few of my joined movies would error out and crash WMP..

But, upgrading to WMP10 with the latest codec fixed that problem, so I'm happy about that.. :D
 
NEODARK said:
you probably have a 3D visualisation...

that happened to me before when I still had my 9800pro and ATI tool, my 3d overclock would kick in everytime I launched WM9 or WM10...

and it reset itself back to 2D as soon as media player was closed..

in the windows media topic, can anyone enable hardwae acceleration? (mine is grayed out)


last time I checked, a DIVX avi file didn't count as a 3d visualization.. And neither do XVID clips, MPEG's, or MP4 flicks on quicktime..
 
Well for those who just go a 6600 and are readin this thread (or aren't and would like to help out) could you please download the "ste-into-liquid" (or any wmvhd vid) and tell us your cpu usage (with ht off if u have a p4). If you have time maybe try testing with the latest whql (66.81) and the latest site drivers (61.77).


cheers
 
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=824574

UAEstar said:
GF 6800 onboard video processor functionality
If you read this thread N V News you will see that there is a big chance that video processing fuctions will never work in Nvidia 6800 cards

I just posted this over at anandtech.... for those that arnt members there....

I've been following this thread since day one and only now have I registered...

oh well it's a sad sad day.... I just got off the phone to nvidia UK, i'm really suprised she phoned me back as from past experience the customer service has been really bad with nvidia. She found out some information from the engineers.

Anyway... this is what she said: The video processing functions will never work on the 6800, this is due to a hardware failure within the processing unit. The later cards will work fine, e.g. 6600 series, 6200 series and soon to come 6700 series.

I asked if an updated driver would enable the video processing and she explained that the fault is hardware so even a driver update would not fix the problem.

I did not ask if this affected the PCI-E versions so this is only relevant to AGP version of the 6800.... maybe it affects the PCI-E too?

Anyway does anyone else feel they have been conned not just by nvidia but by it's reseller partners? It clearly says on my box about the video capabilities.

I'll be doing an RMA on this card and swapping it for something that is usefull to me.

Kind of ironic that the lower end cards have more "working" capabilities than the king of the hill 6800

shame on you nvidia and all it's partners that couldnt be bothered testing the cards before selling it. Hoping we wouldnt notice????

fools.
 
Brent_Justice said:
its not "broken"

the video processor just isn't as complete and as fast as NVIDIA hoped with the NV40 in some areas

but I wouldn't call it "broken"

it still has features that are untapped, you'll be hearing more about it in a month

Can you elaborate any, Brent? I'm very interested in knowing just what untapped features you're hinting at, or at least a solid date for when that information would be released.
 
I posted this in the other thread but its a flame war so here it goes.

I got off the phone with BFGtech support and they told me they just got a tech bulletin on this today. They also told me it is software related and they expect a fix in mid to late November. When I told them I heard it was hardware related they guy said thats not what he is hearing and that it would be fair to say nvidia would have some sort of replacement.

Hopefully this is all true ... and not BFG trying to pass the problem.. He did tell me it was nvidias problem not BFG.

I currently have my comp hooked up to my tv with s-video i was waiting to hook it up with component Y Pr Pb so I could get some HDTV ... but if this is all true imma be hella screwed. I only have a 2500+ that performs like its a geriatric special.
 
particle9 said:
When I open up a folder with preview icons of 700+ meg divx/xvid files the entire system starts chugging, similar chugging to a really slow computer but this thing should not be chugging, then maybe one preview file comes up and then everything inside the folder dissappears and then the system hangs and then reboots. That is pretty much it. WMP also crashes a lot when listening to music. Basically everything that uses more than 100megs of ram at a time seems to totally crash the system. But this is odd because the RAM is testing absolutely fine. When I get my RMA vid card back I will try upping the voltage to my RAM.
Not just an issue on your system.

For stability, use Media Player 6.4 or Media Player Classic and turn off previews and thumbnails.

More of M$'s better ideas that frell a perfectly good system.

btw, Barnaby and Coz... is the KIA taking over?
 
Well i Just downloaded a 1080i movie "the power of flight" and checked my cpu usage...

Cpu usage jumped from nothing to 65-80 cpu usage ... with spikes into the 90's This really sucks ... I really hope this is not a hardware issue but rather a broken driver.
There were studders and blurring in the movie because of this.
 
downloaded surfer video, getting like 65-75% cpu usage.... this was on the 720 v.

with the 1080i (which my monitor cant actually view full screen) i was getting 100% usage and mega lag

stupid 6800nu...bad...bad
 
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