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New GPU

One small question. How are the billions of existing devices going to suddenly sprout AV1 hardware support overnight?
 
One small question. How are the billions of existing devices going to suddenly sprout AV1 hardware support overnight?

Yes that what I am wondered so we will have to wait and see to find out when Aomedia will release final AV1 codec any day soon in January 2018 and all developers will begin optimise AV1 decoders and encoders for all CPUs and GPUs. Modzilla announced last month they added experimental AV1 codec in Firefox Nightly 59 for everybody to try out AV1 demo playback of Tears of Steel and Modzilla will enable AV1 final codec playback in upcoming Firefox 60 Nightly build immediately right after Aomedia release final AV1 codec.

Firefox 60 Final expect to release on 8 May 2018 accorded to release schedule.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

It seem all companies will start transition to AV1 format for playback within 6 months after AV1 codec release that will include Firefox 60, upcoming Chrome and Edge versions, Amazon Video, YouTube, Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Hulu to prepare for widely adapted devices to playback AV1 codec.

I tested Tears of Steel AV1 on Firefox 59, Holi Festival Of Colours Tomsk, Summer Nature and Summer in Tomsk AV1 samples on Elecard MPEG player all ran fine, very impressed at smoothly AV1 playback with 8700K did 5% CPU decoder and GPU did 15% 3D rendering but no GPU decoder.

You can download to experience AV1 playback.

https://www.elecard.com/videos
https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/nightly/all/
https://demo.bitmovin.com/public/firefox/av1/
 
I get support can be added to PCs via driver updates and browser support etc. What about the vast majority of the population that access Amazon Prime, Netflix, iPlayer etc via devices like game consoles, tablets, Apple TV & FireTV sticks that are using H.264 and H.265 support on the SoC?
 
I get support can be added to PCs via driver updates and browser support etc. What about the vast majority of the population that access Amazon Prime, Netflix, iPlayer etc via devices like game consoles, tablets, Apple TV & FireTV sticks that are using H.264 and H.265 support on the SoC?

I looked at Aomedia AV1 source, it already compiled for x86, x86 x64, ARM, MIPS, Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS. I guess developers will add AV1 decoder and encoder support through Amazon Prime, Netflix, iPlayer and Facebook apps for games consoles, tablets, Apple TV, android TV sticks and Smart TVs.

I just found out that Facebook had joined the board and Facebook will transition to AV1 within 6 months.

I found something interesting, a developer from Germany Michael Fabian Dirks are currently developing AV1 encoder plugin for OBS Studio.

https://github.com/Xaymar/obs-studio_enc-aomedia-av1

I suppose AMD, Nvidia and Twitch are already develop AV1 encoder for AMD Relive on PC, Nvidia Gamestream on Shield TV, Nvidia Shadowplay on PC and Twitch on PC, iOS and Android.
 
That really doesn't answer my question! Forget processor architectures. Where's the hardware acceleration? Most of these devices do H.264 in hardware, the newer ones H.265.

For decoding H.265 on my HTPC I can either :
1) Run an i5-2500K at high utilisation using ~75W
2) Let the GT 1030 do it in hardware at much lower power consumption and the processor drops back into an idle state.

An android tablet with a ARM CPU isn't going to be able to decode AV1 in software very well.
 
That really doesn't answer my question! Forget processor architectures. Where's the hardware acceleration? Most of these devices do H.264 in hardware, the newer ones H.265.

For decoding H.265 on my HTPC I can either :
1) Run an i5-2500K at high utilisation using ~75W
2) Let the GT 1030 do it in hardware at much lower power consumption and the processor drops back into an idle state.

An android tablet with a ARM CPU isn't going to be able to decode AV1 in software very well.

Aomedia released AV1 reference codec back on 7 April 2016, devices developed during that period between 2016-2018 like Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9 should have hardware acceleration AV1 support. If you look at HEVC timeline MPEG released HEVC reference codec on 7 June 2013, however Samsung Galaxy S4 launched on 27 April 2013 had HEVC hardware acceleration. I had Samsung Galaxy S3, it able to playback HEVC on MX Player with HEVC software decoder very well.

I tested AV1 playback on my desktop and laptop PC below, I tried ran Firefox Nightly 32 bit with AV1 playback crashed everytime on tablet with 32 bit Windows 10 as well as desktop and laptop too but my Linx tablet had 32 bit UEFI only supported 32 bit Windows and cannot upgrade to 64 bit Windows, there was no 64 bit UEFI version existed unfortunately. It seemed AV1 demo worked very well with Firefox Nightly 64 bit. I tried to find special AV1 32 bit Elecard MPEG Player on Elecard website but it did not existed as they only have 64 bit version. Tablets running Windows 10 64 bit should able to playback AV1 very well on Firefox Nightly and Elecard MPEG Player.

Desktop Coffee Lake i7 8700K & Pascal GTX 1070

Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | Youtube 4K VP9 | CPU 2.7% | GPU 30.4% Video Decode | power consumption 70W
Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 6.7% | GPU 4.1% 3D | power consumption 70W

Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 4.1% GPU 3.9% 3D | power consumption 67W
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 1080p AV1 | CPU 5.5% GPU 4.9% 3D | power consumption 67W
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 4K AV1 | CPU 15.4% GPU 13.4% 3D | power consumption 78W

Laptop Haswell i7 4500U & Kepler GT 750M

Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | Youtube 1440p VP9 | CPU 12.6% | GPU 12.4% 3D |
Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 46.4% | GPU 8.6% 3D |

Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 9.8% GPU 4.4% 3D |
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 1080p AV1 | CPU 46.9% GPU 9.8% 3D |
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 4K AV1 | CPU 46.9% Freeze after 2 sec |

Laptop Haswell i7 4500U & Intel HD Graphics 4400

Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | Youtube 1440p VP9 | CPU 13.7% | GPU 13.1% 3D |
Firefox Nightly 59 x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 45.9% | GPU 8.6% 3D |

Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 720p AV1 | CPU 30.1% GPU 4.4% 3D |
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 1080p AV1 | CPU 48.7% GPU 9.4% 3D |
Elecard MPEG Player x64 | 4K AV1 | CPU 98.7% Freeze after 6 sec |

Wow I was very impressed at my Coffee Lake 8700K with GTX 1070 able to playback AV1 software up to 4K very smoothly at lower utilisation and lower power consumption. I had Dell Inspiron 7737 laptop with 17 inch touchscreen back in 2013, it had Haswell i7 4500U with Intel HD Graphics 4400 and discrete Nvidia Geforce GT 750M based on Kepler architecture, I was absolutely astonished to see 5 years old Haswell mobile CPU, Intel HD Graphics 4400 and Geforce GT 750M able to playback AV1 720p and 1080p smoothly but it froze when I tried to playback 4K but YouTube on my laptop only allowed up to 1440p so I suppose my laptop should able to playback AV1 1440p smoothly while it did not have HEVC, VP9 and AV1 hardware acceleration. :)

Majority of Android, iOS, PC, Linux and MacOS devices build between 2011-2018 should be able to playback AV1 both in software and hardware acceleration.
 
Sorry, not seeing it via OS X.

Just tried Firefox on the MacBook Pro with the Mozilla AV1 test stream. Definitely no attempt at acceleration, it's staying on integrated graphics, ignoring the GeForce and using a full core of CPU (95%), triggering turbo (3.1GHz) and pulling 25-30W at the CPU. Within a minute the laptop is getting warm and the fans that are silent 99% of the time are blowing hard. Reminds me of the bad old days of Youtube using Flash.

HEVC is using nowhere near that level of resource for a 720p file at ~1500kbps. 12W CPU, ~40% of a core (1.8Ghz) via VLC software decoding.
 
Nvidia 1030 GT arrived. Couldn't get 2560x1440 over DVI-HDMI cable, but HDMI-HDMI worked at 2560x1440.

I can't get 144hz to work though. 120hz is ok. Using the supplied HDMI cable with the monitor.

Got it working by creating a custom resolution. Strange I had to do that.
 
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Hence the ~ for about. 1920x1200 is the limit for a single link DVI connection, but isn't a standard HDMI device resolution. So that's likely why it stepped down to 1080p. The monitor manual will list supported resolutions for each input.
 
Not too bad, a little blurry, but fonts are bigger. So scaled from 1920x1090 to 2560x1440.

It's working at 2560x1440 now though, for the Nvidia 1030 and ATI 480. Freesync monitor. 480 is gaming PC, 1030 is HTPC.
 
PCI-E 3.0 4x is ~ 4GB/sec which is the same as PCI-E v2.0 8x and PCI-E 1.1 16x. Yeah, it'll likely bottleneck a bit if you benchmark PCI-E 2.0 vs 3.0 with say the latest 3D Mark. For HTPC use you'll never notice as it's not typically loading massive amount of textures into VRAM.

I suspect it's to keep power draw down, my work ThinkPad workstation also runs the Nvidia Quadro at 4x.
 
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