Quick Sync technology

[AVITRY]

Hi all. Well, I'm still dragging my feet on what to build for my next PC. I did just put one together for my friend, and it really is very fast only running Windows XP Pro 32bit. It was a socket 775 build because I was afraid of the Sandy Bridge Intel chipset problems. ( I will list the components at the end of my question for anyone interested in what turned out to be a very solid easy build)

Anyway, I have since learned that the Chipset recall for all Sandy Bridge based P67 and I believe H67 chips on any motherboards to be purchased can be identified by the "LACK" of the number "B3" at the end of the motherboard part number. If it says "B3" it is the revised chipset version without problems. I'm probably the last guy on earth who didn't know this, but anyway, to the question at hand.

Even after speaking to people at Asus they did not have a definitive answer. The Sandy Bridge CPU's socket 1155 are equipped with an iGPU that has a video encoding - transcoding ability that far outdoes CPU's without the technology. (As I understand this) It is called, "Quick Sync" technology.

Now, I find this is totally unavailable when using motherboards with P67 chipsets and ONLY available when using H67 chipset mainboards and the integral video. If you have an add on video card it you can't take advantage the the GPU transcoding ability on the CPU.

Now there is a new chipset call the Z68 that will ( I think) allow the use of a separate video card while still being able to take advantage of the video transcoding speed of the Sandy Bridge CPU.

Except ... ( I think) only when done using a software program that has to run in the background.

This all is becoming clear as mud to me, with the added confusion of reading that only two video transcoding programs take advantage of the CPU even if you run the special software that enables quicksync. A program from Cyberlink is one of them. Man oh man, I'm lost as could be.

Does anyone understand this stuff who could set me straight. I'm thinking about just going with that socket 775 build. Oh.... below is that list FWIW


Intel Pentium E6700 Wolfdale 3.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E6700
Item #: N82E16819116370
CPU Replacement Only Return Policy

$84.99
. 1

GIGABYTE GA-P45T-ES3G LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813128496
Standard Return Policy
Gigabyte (626)-854-9338 option 4 http://www.giga-byte.com

$79.99
. 1

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136771
Standard Return Policy
This item is serviced by the Western Digital. Please call 800 832 4778 for service.

$38.99
. 1

Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT25664BA1067
Item #: N82E16820148150
Memory Standard Return Policy

$44.99
. 1

XIGMATEK ACXTNRP-PC602 600W ATX12V Ver.2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817815009
Standard Return Policy

$59.95
. 1

Galaxy 43GGS8HX3SPZ GeForce GT 430 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
Item #: N82E16814162067
VGA Standard Return Policy

$59.99
. 1

MASSCOOL 8W553B1M3 90mm Ball CPU Cooler
Item #: N82E16835150083
Standard Return Policy

$11.99
. 1

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
Item #: N82E16835100007
Consumable Item Refund Only Return Policy

$11.98

. 1

GIGABYTE Triton 180 Black 0.7mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #: N82E16811233016
Standard Return Policy
Gigabyte (626)-854-9338 option 4 http://www.giga-byte.com

$64.99
Subtotal $457.86

thanks, joe

[Bob]

Joe, you've got most of the information already.

All the Sandy Bridge motherboards in the retail channel are using the revised chipsets. The boards with the bad chipsets were recalled and removed from the channel long ago. If you're buying from an established retailer, you shouldn't have a problem. If you're buying graymarket, say from some guy working out of his garage through eBay, you need to excercise due dilligence.

The Sandy Bridge CPUs have several onboard video features. "Intel® Quick Sync Video" is Intel's name for the onboard video transcoding technology. Sandy Bridge also has an HD graphics capability and advanced vector graphics instructions. Quick Sync can dramatically speed up transcoding, but, the application has to be specifically written to access the feature. It's not something you get automatically. There are several products that support the technology to some degree or another: Arcsoft MediaConverter, Arcsoft MediaImpression, Corel Digital Studio, CyberLink MediaEspresso, CyberLink PowerDirector, Mainconcept (H.264/AVC Encoder SDK for Intel® Quick Sync Video), and Roxio Creator. There may be more by now, but I'm not keeping track. Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro do not currently support Quick Sync.

Motherboards using the P67 chipset cannot utilize Quick Sync. The H67 chipset supports Quick Sync, but motherboards using that chipset are low end. The Z68 chipset is a better choice for many. However, Quick Sync is disabled if a discrete video card is installed. Lucidlogix has created a GPU virtualization utility called Virtu that can get around that. Virtu creates a virtual GPU that passes Quick Sync traffic to the CPU on-board unit and sends DirectX and other discrete GPU traffic to the video card. It's on the cludgy side though. You have to connect the monitor to the video socket on the motherboard, not the video card, and the video card's control panel application cannot recogize the presence of the video card and will not work. There may be other issues.

One point often overlooked is that Intel has two HD Graphics capabilities. HD Graphics 3000 is the more capable and has 12 GPU channels. HD Graphics 2000 has only half that number. To get HD Graphics 3000 in a desktop cpu, you have to get the i7-2600k.

Does that help thin the mud out a little?

[AVITRY]

Thanks Bob, initially I also believe that in order to take advantage of the quick sync the monitor cable had to be switched. But ... I think that may not be the case.

I'm looking at an Asus Deluxe Z68 board without connections for an onboard video, and it is advertised as still capable of running in "D" mode or discrete mode, which I am assuming means using a separate or discrete video card, since there isn't a connector for one on this board and still have access to quick sync.

In this video clip ...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131753

check out what the tech says at the 9:30 mark of the video.

So, if this is true, would this also be consistent with the "PRO" version of the board that DOES have a video port. Would it not seem logical that even though a port exists, I should be able to use D mode as on the Deluxe model yet not have to switch cables?

This leaves me with some questions about the Viru software. Does this run TSR in the background all the time, or do you have to manually launch the program when you decide to run one of those other programs that take advantage of the quick sync.

Also, I wonder if the next Intel chipset will overcome this entire need for that Viru software layer.

Might be worth holding out a tad longer ....

EDIT:.... another question comes to mind. Probably will sound dumb, but, at 11:58 of this same video, where he is showing the 90 degree SATA ports on the MB, I look at them and ask myself, ok, if you plug a 90 degree cable into the top port, how do you plug one under it? Is there a special SATA cable with an extension that has to be considered for use in cases like this where you plug in over another SATA cable?

Ya step out of one mud puddle, and fall face first into the next one ... LOL.
thanks again,
joe

[jackfalbey]

Intel has a plug-in that allows Premiere Pro/Elements to use Quick Sync:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... echnology/

[Bob]

I hadn't looked at the P8Z68 Deluxe before. That's interesting what they did with dropping the video connector. My understanding was that Virtu utilized the frame buffer in the integrated video and displayed through the associated motherboard video connector. Take a look at this page from Lucidlogix about Virtu: http://www.lucidlogix.com/product-virtu.html. At the bottom of the web page is this block diagram. I'm repeating it here for convenience.

virtu.jpg

The red blocks are the Virtu driver. The blue blocks are the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics. And, the grey block is the discrete video card. As you can see, the video connector for the discrete card is not used in that configuration. Obviously, the P8Z68 Deluxe board is displaying through the descrete connector. I don't know if that's a Virtu configuration option or whether ASUS contracted with them for a custom driver.

The P8Z68 Pro does have the motherboard video connector. It would appear that you could hook that board up the conventional Virtu way. Whether you have a choice of which connector to use or not, you wouldn't need to switch cables. Virtu acts as a virtual gpu and redirects everything through the same connector. That was the whole point. Without Virtu, you would need to switch cables and enable/disable the discrete video card to get one or the other.

Virtu is a driver and loads when you boot. It's there all the time. I would hope that Intel will rethink their chipset/cpu strategy in the future and ease the restrictions that make a driver like this necessary.

The 90° SATA ports on the MB don't use 90° cables, they are called that because they are facing to the side instead of up. The cables themselves are straight and you will need to allow for that when choosing a case.

Jack, I've seen that plugin. It's a prototype, not an actual product. And, I've heard it doesn't play well with the Mercury Playback Engine. Still, as a technology demo, it's very interesting. I'm wondering if Adobe has any thoughts of natively incorporting support for Quick Sync in any of its products.

[AVITRY]

The 90° SATA ports on the MB don't use 90° cables, they are called that because they are facing to the side instead of up. The cables themselves are straight and you will need to allow for that when choosing a case.

LOL ... I was never accused of being smart, that's for sure.

On a more serious note, do you know how much video memory you can provide to the Sandy Bridge iGPU? I downloaded the motherboard manual and it seems they say 128megs.

Now I don't do any gaming, I wonder if it's a good option to simply use the integral video and don't bother with a card. What do you think? I sure don't want to be switching cables just to transcode. Hmm, I'm fighting it now with my P4 socket 478 3ghz. I'll bet it's gonna be so fast regardless, it won't be an issue at all even if I opted for the less expensive P67 mainboard. (although that ssd cache is interesting)

I thought about the P67 chipset, get a small ssd drive and just point the swap file there. For what I do that may be good enough, but I'm really not sure about all this.

[Bob]

On a more serious note, do you know how much video memory you can provide to the Sandy Bridge iGPU? I downloaded the motherboard manual and it seems they say 128megs.

The 128MB is dedicated memory. In addition, memory may be allocated dynamically. The maximum memory that can be used is 1748 MB.

[Chris B]

Quick note - remember that if you do put a discrete graphics card in almost any modern card has it's own transcoding/GPGPU architecture (the 430 you've specified above does). Again there are compatibility issues with video editing software and some offer better support/performance increases than others.

Loosing an HD3000 is not much to worry about - although why Intel have put this in their unlocked multiplier part only is a mystery as if you're really looking to overclock your CPU are you going to be satisfied with onboard graphics? Here's a hierarchy chary showing where the various graphics cards stack up.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bes ... 964-7.html