Feature Articles

GeForce 8 Mobile - The Next Chapter in Notebook Graphics

By Vijay Anand - 10 May 2007

Showcase - PureVideo HD in Action on the VP2 Engine

Showcase - PureVideo HD in Action on the VP2 Engine

Recall our previous HD tests not too long ago with the Virtual Trip Yoazkura HD DVD? Using a desktop system with a GeForce 7600 GT (VP1 engine), this video encoded at around 26Mbps taxes the CPU to a 75% loading level. A similar system outfitted with a VP2 based GeForce 8600 card managed a very much lower CPU utilization...

Just under 20% CPU utilization! This difference is greatly appreciable and yes, even notebooks with the right GPU can achieve this.

Here's a notebook playing a H.264 encoded HD DVD title. Notice the CPU utilization chart? The segment registering low utilization (just under 20%) is with PureVideo HD enabled on this VP2 equipped notebook GPU. The later portion with above 90% CPU utilization is when we disabled PureVideo HD. It's amazing just how much the new VP2 engine can offload the CPU and yet conserve more power.

The VP2 video engine is equipped to even tackle H.264 encoded HD video content beyond the 40Mbps Blu-ray spec. Take for example this screen shot of a Full HD movie trailer encoded in H.264 on a Blu-ray disc, it surpasses the 50Mbps bitrate, but yet the VP2 equipped GPU is capable of playing this clip smoothly and with plenty of CPU headroom available. Surprising, but it is a very strong assurance of the VP2's capability.

Processing the interactive overlays on top of the video stream is computationally intensive, thus the higher CPU utilization noted in this photo shot.

Activating features like Picture-in-Picture and a story-board overlay kick up the processing requirements higher yet, but this VP2 equipped system takes it well in its stride and shows no lag, frame dropping or other anomalies. Don't expect a VP1 equipped GPU to walk through this same test without a performance impact though.

A rather interesting interactive function of this particular movie title is a car damage assessment report which is shown on the left hand-side overlay. Very apt indeed.

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