1 Topic by DMD (edited by DMD 14-09-2015 10:09:45)

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Topic: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

Good morning
I have to build me a HTPC in standard mini-ITX, ask what are the minimum hardware requirements, to process HD video 1920x1080.
Can you recommend some configuration?

Thank you

2 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 14-09-2015 21:16:42)

Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

Broadwell and Skylake have the only PC GPUs that are currently capable of decoding both VP9 and HEVC with hardware acceleration, so you'd probably want to start with one of those...

Broadwell has better general iGPU performance while Skylake has better CPU cores and better VP9 and HEVC decoding.

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Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:

Broadwell and Skylake have the only PC GPUs that are currently capable of decoding both VP9 and HEVC with hardware acceleration, so you'd probably want to start with one of those...

Broadwell has better general iGPU performance while Skylake has better CPU cores and better VP9 and HEVC decoding.

As I recall, Broadwell's hardware accelerated decoding of VP9 is only partial.  HEVC seems to be the prevailing codec so I'm not sure it matters much.

4 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 16-09-2015 05:09:28)

Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

VB_SVP wrote:

As I recall, Broadwell's hardware accelerated decoding of VP9 is only partial.

That's why I said Skylake's VP9 decoder is better, but even in Skylake it's still somewhat partial (though I believe it to be more hardware than it is in Broadwell).

VB_SVP wrote:

HEVC seems to be the prevailing codec so I'm not sure it matters much.

Maybe for bootlegs and non-internet based content (outside of 4k via Netflix), but for the majority of legit internet content HEVC has turned into a complete legal mess in the recent months.  It's gotten bad enough that some very big names in the internet video space have created a new alliance for royalty-free video codecs:
http://aomedia.org/

But regardless, YouTube has been serving VP9 videos for the last 18 months, and heck SVPtube even supports it!  Besides, there's no PC GPU that supports VP9 and not HEVC, so you might as well go with one that can do both.

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Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

But regardless, YouTube has been serving VP9 videos for the last 18 months, and heck SVPtube even supports it!  Besides, there's no PC GPU that supports VP9 and not HEVC, so you might as well go with one that can do both.

Google owns VP9, that's why YT uses it and that's what makes it so problematic.  I am concerned about what is essentially software decoding, albeit on the GPU, of VP9 as hardware makers-particularly AMD-have been emphasizing how poor of a solution that is for HEVC. 

I wonder if the OP is planning on using a dGPU on that mini-ITX build.

6 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 16-09-2015 18:31:02)

Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

VB_SVP wrote:

I am concerned about what is essentially software decoding, albeit on the GPU, of VP9

But that doesn't make much of a difference when there are no pure hardware decoders for VP9 on the PC.  Lower CPU load means better SVP performance, plain and simple.

Lastly, it doesn't matter who or what owns VP9 and what the ideological arguments against it is since the only PC iGPU with HEVC decode and not VP9 is AMD's Carrizo, and that is currently a mobile-only part.

My whole point of my first post wasn't emphasizing a HEVC-compatible part that was specifically able to do VP9 but that there are part that can do both.  This is important because, as it currently is, neither HEVC or VP9 qualify as quality standard material (the former for patent reasons, the latter for ownership reasons) - I mean, this is why the Alliance for Open Media is a thing after all.

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Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

Lastly, it doesn't matter who or what owns VP9 and what the ideological arguments against it is since the only PC iGPU with HEVC decode and not VP9 is AMD's Carrizo, and that is currently a mobile-only part.

I'm not sure that's really accurate as Carrizo could decode VP9 via the GPU, which seems to be the same way that the Intel chips are doing it but, as you say, Carrizo is (tragically) irrelevant as it is a "paper launched" product ATM anyhow.

But does any modern system out there struggle with h264 and YouTube currently?  Even on my old Trinity APU, which is lacking in the bona fide HW dec "department", YT and h264 videos at 1080 run decently.  Would Haswell really not meet the OP's requirements?

8 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 17-09-2015 02:22:55)

Re: [mini-ITX] Minimum hardware requirements

Well you'd pretty much want an Intel quad core anyway for SVP + 1080p (getting a desktop AMD CPU now would be silly when everything is going AM4 next year).  You could possibly get away with a dual core with SMT, but you still want the extra CPU grunt for any future codecs and the like (h.264 usage on the internet is something like 7-8 years now!) not to mention for help with any 10bit h.264 encodes (which are not able to be decoded in hardware).


Regarding h.264 vs VP9 on YouTube, the VP9 encodes are of higher quality while also having a smaller filesize - the latter being very important for people like me with only 3Mbps (~372KB/s) downstream internet connections.