Topic: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

I've been using SVP for a year or so now, and I'm very happy with it. My current setup (3rd gen i7 and GTX1050Ti) doesn't allow me to use SVP with videos of higher resolution than 1080p. I actually use SVP only at 48fps, and at either 2m or 1.5m interpolation mode. I prefer to retain the cinematic feel of the film and not have it overly smooth.


The new PC will purely be for watching movies using SVP (up to 4k), nothing else. I'll keep the GTX1050Ti (fanless so nice and quiet) and simply purchase a new motherboard and CPU. Will this CPU be overkill, underpowered or just right: https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/I … o-4_70-GHz


Thanks for any advice.

2 Reply by James D (edited by James D 22-07-2018 09:18:23)

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Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

6+ Cores is a must for 4K so definitely not overkill. But I suspectIwill not be the only еще ell you that Ryzen would look like a better choice, especially with tremendous sales for 1st Gen if you live in states.

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

I'm in the same boat here. I want to be able to have 4K @60hz. I'm hoping for 4K 10bit HDR support soon somehow (devs must be working on library updates, don't they?). I wonder if a Ryzen 1600 would be sufficient or whether it would be helpful to raise the Ghz (Ryzen 1600x) or number of cores (Ryzen 1700). I'd like to go for the non-X Versions to keep the TDP/noise in the HTPC low if that's possible.
Also how much GPU power is needed for that? In Nvidia terms GTX 1060? 1070? Or AMD 560/570/580? Or Vega?
Since I'm coming from a mac I can't experiment much and have to buy the right hardware...

4 Reply by Moondust76 (edited by Moondust76 02-08-2018 18:27:38)

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

I'll be waiting for HDMI 2.1 (60+ Hz, variable framerate and more) next year but then I'm gonna make a similar build (with extra GPU for HDMI 2.1). Lots of nice cpu's are coming out soon from Intel (8 core/16 threads for consumers). And next year Ryzen2 with prolly 12 cores and 24 threads. That would be great for a 4K machine.

ronny wrote:

Also how much GPU power is needed for that? In Nvidia terms GTX 1060? 1070? Or AMD 560/570/580? Or Vega?

An GTX1050 is sufficient but if you're using the GPU in MadVR and other uses then you could use a faster one.

5 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 03-08-2018 09:23:09)

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Jarvmeister wrote:

I actually use SVP only at 48fps, and at either 2m or 1.5m interpolation mode.

Uhhh, when using 2m to interpolate at 2x from 24fps to 48fps, there's literally no interpolation occurring - you have to use something greater than 2x for 2m to actually do anything.

But 1.5m does in fact actually result in some interpolation when using 2x.



Jarvmeister wrote:

My current setup (3rd gen i7 and GTX1050Ti) doesn't allow me to use SVP with videos of higher resolution than 1080p.

Wait, really?  That's at least an i7-3770 with a base clock of 3.4GHz, right?


I have a Xeon x3470 @ 2.93GHz (I've disabled turbo for easier undervolting) which is essentially a first gen i7 (performance-per-clock is something like 30% slower than third gen); from my testing and calculations I would think that your third gen i7 should be able to interpolate 4k video with your reduced settings without issue as long as you're using GPU decoding of the video stream (which a 1050Ti should be able to do unless it's something new & fancy like AV1).

When I play back a 1080p video that's hardware decoded by my GPU but I have SVP cranked up to absolutely unreasonable settings so that I'm left with a CPU bottleneck, it shows my CPU utilization at around 65%, so that's essentually my upper limit.

When I played back a 24fps 3840x2160 video that's hardware decoded by my GPU and have SVP set to 2x interpolation with 1.5m, standard shader, two pixels, and 16 px. (see attached screenshot), I have an SVP index of 0.7x but a CPU utilization of only ~40% because my GPU is maxed out and bottlenecking me.  We know my CPU when running SVP can have utilization all the way up to 65% assuming no GPU bottleneck, and 65 is 1.625x that of 40; my SVP index of 0.7 multiplied by 1.625 would be 1.1375 which would mean that I theoretically should have no issue hitting an SVP index of 1.0x if I just wasn't GPU bottlenecked.


Therefore are you absolutely sure that your current i7 can't handle 4k video with reduced interpolation settings (again, see attached screenshot) when combined with GPU decoding of the video?

Also keep in mind that you may experience a weird bug in SVP where setting the "Motion vectors grid" to anything less than 16 px.results in considerably higher CPU utilization than one would expect (24 px. uses more CPU than 28 px. which itself uses more CPU than 32 px; meanwhile 32 px's CPU utilization is actually similar to 16 px.).

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Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

ronny wrote:

I wonder if a Ryzen 1600 would be sufficient or whether it would be helpful to raise the Ghz (Ryzen 1600x) or number of cores (Ryzen 1700). I'd like to go for the non-X Versions to keep the TDP/noise in the HTPC low if that's possible.

AMD Ryzen 7 is recommended (https://www.svp-team.com/wiki/Manual:SV … quirements), so that means a 2700, 2700X or 1800X. But my experience with SVP is that more cores and faster cores are always better. Better have everything run on 50% with better cpu than on 75% on worse cpu.

7 Reply by Moondust76 (edited by Moondust76 03-08-2018 09:23:51)

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

@Nintendo Maniac 64
What do you think of these settings for 1080p @ 60fps? Running on an i7 2600K @ 4GHz with an GTX970. Seems to do well, almost no visible artifacting.

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SVP4_settings.jpg 109.11 kb, 481 downloads since 2018-08-03 

8 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 03-08-2018 09:36:59)

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Moondust76 wrote:

What do you think of these settings for 1080p @ 60fps?

"by two with global refinement" can be a killer of CPU.

With that set to disabled, even my Xeon 3470 @ 2.93GHz can run those exact settings but with "frames interpolation mode" set to 'Uniform' with even software-decoded 1080p 5mbps HEVC @ 25fps --to-> 62.5fps (2.5x) as long as I'm using a 64bit media player (because 32bit HEVC software decoders are quite unoptimized).

For reference, the that 1080p 5mbps HEVC 25fps video interpolated to 62.5fps was my go-to stress test when I was setting up this Xeon system with the logic that, if my hardware could do that just fine, then darned near any 24fps 1080p video should be able to work without issue (unless it was HEVC with a pretty crazy bitrate).  For actual real-world use I'd use 2x interpolation for 25fps videos as my display can run 50Hz without issue (but it can't handle anything above 60Hz without skipping frames).

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Most of the time I'm running 25-30 mbps H264 24fps video @ 60 fps and that seems to go well with the above settings. But I have to admit that for quite some settings I don't know what's better. The user manual isn't really clear on some points as well. Like any SVP user I'm looking for the ideal settings that my cpu and gpu can handle. Is there a guide somewhere to do this step by step?

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Unless it's in 10bit or you're using mpv, the bitrate doesn't matter for H264 video as that can be hardware decoded on any GPU made in the last 10 years without issue.

And with that hardware decoding I wouldn't be suprised if you could even disable your i7's overclock and you'd still be fine - heck my own Xeon locked at its turbo clock of 3.2GHz combined with H264 hardware decoding almost gets me there when using your exact settings - around 80% of the time it's running at 1.0x SVP index while it's only at 0.9x or so for the other 20% in certain scenes that are apparently more demanding (it's not clear why however as the entire test video is full of motion).

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Nintendo Maniac 64 wrote:

Unless it's in 10bit or you're using mpv, the bitrate doesn't matter for H264 video as that can be hardware decoded on any GPU made in the last 10 years without issue.

And with that hardware decoding I wouldn't be suprised if you could even disable your i7's overclock and you'd still be fine - heck my own Xeon locked at its turbo clock of 3.2GHz combined with H264 hardware decoding almost gets me there when using your exact settings - around 80% of the time it's running at 1.0x SVP index while it's only at 0.9x or so for the other 20% in certain scenes that are apparently more demanding (it's not clear why however as the entire test video is full of motion).

If you had a 32 core/64 thread AMD threadripper cpu, what settings would you try? What would make SVP's result better than what you have now?

12 Reply by Nintendo Maniac 64 (edited by Nintendo Maniac 64 06-08-2018 20:03:56)

Re: Building new PC - Requirements for SVP @ 4k

Moondust76 wrote:

If you had a 32 core/64 thread AMD threadripper cpu, what settings would you try? What would make SVP's result better than what you have now?

TBH I would just enable "global refinement", use "half pixel" even on 4k video, and pretty much call it a day.  Note that I use Uniform + Complicated for my day-to-day SVP settings.

Maybe I'd set 16px for 4k video, but certainly nothing less than 24px.

The main thing is that I'd not settle for anything less than a 90Hz display as the next step would be increasing refresh rate.