26 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 22-10-2015 05:51:24)

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Wow, that sounds like a pretty crappy scalar to me if it washes out the colors!  It wouldn't happen to be an older set, would it?  It's my impression that the scalars in lower-end TVs have gotten a lot better in the last few years.

Alternatively, maybe the TV's video settings are applied on a per-resolution basis?


Anyway, here's something absolutely blasphemous - have you tried MPC-HC's bicubic upscaling?  It's nothing incredibly fancy, but it should still be pretty good (for reference, 1.00 is sharper looking than 0.60, but may be too "oversharpened" for some people).

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Hi, I'm aware of the scaling done in MPC-HC but my goal is still to keep madVR. Trust me, I've watched with EVR-CP + scaling Bicubic in MPC-HC and the colors and sharpness are nowhere near what I get with madVR. I did a print screen of a scene in Gravity from the beginning of the movie with both config and compared the images, it's like watching a different movie.

Regarding the TV, yes it's a poor 26 inch model so nothing to expect here even if it's branded Sony (2011 model by the way).

I've also ripped the Hobbit last part to an mkv (video and audio left untouched) and tested intensively with my current config. At 1g I still get spikes of 95-99% CPU usage with SVP at the beginning of the movie. In madVR I have done all the tweaks possible to increase performance (debanding off, dithering off, image doubling off, image up/down done in DXVA, checked most of the options in trade quality for performance including DXVA for chroma) and GPU load is now in the range 50-60%. What I have also noted is that if I pause the movie for couple of seconds the CPU load stabilizes between 67-75% with spikes around 80-85% and there is a very smooth experience thereafter. Is there any option to even downgrade 1g level in SVP a little bit so that the CPU does not record the spikes mentioned above? I know for sure that 2g is out of discussion at this moment. If I install back SVP 4 what would be the equivalent of 1g and would it be more easily to downgrade a little until i found the sweet spot?

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Try reducing the shader settings in the 1920x1080@24 profile to "Simple Lite".

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

If I install back SVP 4 what would be the equivalent of 1g and would it be more easily to downgrade a little until i found the sweet spot?

there's nothing can stop you from both SVP 3 and 4 being installed simultaneously wink

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Hi,

Just a short update. I have managed to lower the madVR usage to the point that it interacts well with SVP on my poor NUC by following some hints received on madVR thread at Doom: use old path with backbuffers instead of new path with frames presented in advance. This together with Chroma DXVA dropped the GPU usage significantly ...

31 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 30-10-2015 18:03:07)

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

ionutm80 wrote:

This together with Chroma DXVA dropped the GPU usage significantly ...

But the question is, was it enough to use higher settings in SVP as well?  SVP is not really GPU-heavy, it's much more CPU-heavy.

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Hi again, no it was not possible. Only 1g profile with plenty of trade quality for perf in madVR ... but still visible improvement in image sharpness and colors vs EVR-CP.

33 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 30-10-2015 21:35:53)

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

But what about manually increasing the video settings above what 1g uses by default?  Also, have you tried the 2c default profile?

Really what we should be asking is how much CPU headroom do you have when using MadVR but SVP is flat-out closed and not running?

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

I've tried to push the limits according to what you suggested and by only looking at the stats in madVR, SVP, ReClock, GPU-Z ... I was fooled in considering it was possible to achieve more but was not thr case. What I suspect in fact is that after you push certain limits on the iGPU HD Graphics 4400 it starts to become less stable. Why am I saying that, I've spotted that once you pass 60% combined load with SVP and madVR things start to get nasty leasing to drpped frames increasing dramatically. Maybe it is due to power limitation or some safety caps implemented by Intel to avoid over heating ... I really don't know. But the point is that GPU load should be max around 60% to avoid jerky playback on these puny devices. For me is a case closed, anyway is not my main HTPC.

35 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 31-10-2015 19:00:43)

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

You're getting dropped frames at only 60% load?  That doesn't seem right...



Nevertheless, I mentioned profile 2c because it's meant to be used with weak GPUs or without GPU acceleration altogether.


Lasty, I can't help but wonder if maybe a quad-core AMD APU would have been a wiser choice...unless you have some kind of use-case where you need Haswell's stronger single-threaded performance.

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Hi, I dropped AMD path long time ago after having some pretty bad experience with an E-350 Zacate as my main HTPC. Drivers were so bad that I could not believe what damage they were doing to image, simply the colors were crap ... not to mention the poor implementation of DXVA, high power consumption for my taste, etc. I've dropped it and went for Pentium G620 with Intel HD Graphics at that moment and ... finally the colors came to life. Never looked back to AMD ever since. Maybe in the meantime things have changed but I will stick to Intel for now on. I've purchased the NUC due to its form factor, at that moment there was no AMD Kabini or something similar with those dimensions. Now, indeed there are better alternatives ...

Anyway for my main HTPC I'm using a GTX 750 TI which at the moment is the best bang for buck in terms of consumption, low profile iterations and sufficient power for HTPC and light gaming. I'm running it together with a Core I5 3470S from a PicoPSU-160XT 192W and OCCT Power stress test put the system at max 138W at the wall measured with a watt meter.

To answer your question about 2C, the Core I3 4010u is only 1.70 GHz sad which is still far from the min. 2.00 GHz recommended, so no profile w/o GPU help is possible.

37 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 02-11-2015 18:12:19)

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Your AMD color issue sounds like a feature, not a defect.  Look into full range (0-255) color vs limited range (16-235) and maybe you'll get the jist.  For reference, Intel does not let you select the color range (heck even Nvidia doesn't) but AMD does.

Your comment regarding high power consumption is very strange considering the E-350 was low-powered enough to be put into netbooks (I have an HP DM1 with it) while the Pentium G620 is only a desktop part.  Are you sure you don't mean temperature?

Also I am unsure what you mean by a poor DXVA implementation...I've been able to play 1920x1080 30fps or 1280x720 50fps AVC videos perfectly fine with low enough CPU utilization that I can even unplug the only fan in my DM1 and it will stay cool enough to never hit or go above 90c (that's Brazos's "danger zone", it does a thermal shut-off around 95c).


Anyway, recagarding the profile 2c, there is no "2GHz recommendation", there is only a recommendation that if you have an Athlon II x3 that it should be at least 2.7GHz.  For reference, an Athlon II is like half as slow per-GHz compared to your Haswell i3.  It's not on this chart, but Haswell is anywhere from 10% to 40% faster per GHz than Sandy Bridge:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/processor-architecture-benchmark,2974-15.html wrote:

http://media.bestofmicro.com/I/O/298752/original/overall.png


EDIT: After selecting the 2c profile, make sure you try it with GPU acceleration enabled in SVP as well as GPU acceleration disabled in SVP.  Interestingly enough, regardless of whether you're using GPU acceleration or not, the 2c profile does in fact use different (lower) settings than the 2g profile.

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

Interestingly enough, regardless of whether you're using GPU acceleration or not, the 2c profile does in fact use different (lower) settings than the 2g profile.

not interesting at all big_smile
SVP 3 profiles are completely static
surprisingly, "xC" profiles are for "cpu only" systems and "xG" are for systems with a GPU

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Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

@Nintendo Maniac 64
Regarding AMD path we are already poluting this forum, I have plenty of arguments against it but this could be only my personal experience (it was my first HTPC attempt based on Asus E35M1-I Deluxe, passively cooled). Anyway we should debate on this topic in another place. smile

Anyway thanks again for all the hints given!

Re: Recommended settings for Intel NUC Core I3 4010u

It's just that the color thing sounds exactly like what you get if the GPU is outputting a different color range than your TV is accepting.