Hardware R600: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT

I know not everyone is made of money, but there are ultimately people who spend their life and soul on their PC.

 

I've just listened to the presentation twice over and I stand corrected. Reading around a few sites, there are quite a few that fell into the same trap, meaning that the presentation particularly because the presenter talks about UVD and how great it is. Then, almost right at the end, he refers to the fact that R600 doesn't have it built in (it is literally mentioned in passing), yet he's gone down the route of talking about how great Avivo HD and UVD are.

I am now under the impression that R600 doesn't even have dedicated hardware for Avivo HD (!) Instead, it uses the stream processors for HD CABAC/CAVLC decode (UVD) and post processing (Avivo HD) - I guess they've got to be used for something...

As far as I am aware, the whole HD 2000 series is HDCP compliant because the presentation talks about the HD 2000 series' integrated HDCP support - there is no need for an additional CryptoROM on the PCB, because the keys are stored on the ASIC. It's an ongoing battle I've had with Nvidia, because most people want a low-end card for their HTPC (not a high end card) and they've got to spend more on a card that has HDCP (which may only be available if one of the partners chooses to cater for that market). It's crazy, IMO but at least one of the IHVs is listening.

I'll add a note to the bottom of that page.

 

I've read 5 or 6 reviews and bjorn3d were the only ones who picked up on it so it was obviously easy to miss.

Yeah the bjorn3d article suggests that the processors on the 2900 are powerful enough to do the decoding without dedicated hardware. Would be interesting if you could test a 2400 (when it's released) against the 2900 and see if the 2900's decoding performance suffers at all from not having dedicated logic.

It certainly seems from reading in forums that a lot of people bought a 7600gt just to get a card with HDCP for a HTPC which is clearly overkill. The other reviews also seem to confirm that the whole 2000 series will haved integrated HDCP keys so you should be able to buy any card and be assured of HDCP compliance. I just thought I'd check but it seems pretty clear that's how it is.

 

This is partly my fault for not picking it up when I read Tim's review before it went live: The R600 has enough native processing power to do HD playback without any UVD, it's all done through the stream processors and the same software. AMD said it was possible (didn't highlight if it was theory or actual reality) to game and playback video at the same time but stopped short at discussing the performance hit.

I seriously doubt it falls from not having the dedicated logic, there's enough horsepower within it to compensate and do it properly.

The HDCP cryptologic is now within the R6xx architecture itself and doesn't need an external chip.

 

On a note related to the mobile R6xx chips and the 690M I previously asked in the 690G thread a question about what display connection is used in laptops to connect to a laptop's display but noone was able to provide a concrete answer. I have since done some reading and have found that the connection that most laptops use is FPD-Link which is based on LVDS technology. So my question now is do the GPUs mentioned above support HDCP over FPD-Link/LVDS?

 

You really, really are an awkward ******* aren't you! LOL!

LVDS is just another version of DVI. The GPUs support HDCP natively, in silicon, so yes it should (not tested personally, so can't confirm ) support it on laptops.

 

HD 2400 and HD 2600 won't be around for another month or two (making it impossible to test).

 

Bindi, flattery will get you everywhere

Even if FPD-Link is similar to DVI the fact that I can't find anything suggesting HDCP is supported over it makes me somewhat suspicious.

I guess the possibilities are:

1) All laptop Integrated/Discrete GPUs that have HDCP keys also support their use over FPD-Link

2) HDCP keys are not supported over FPD-Link but aren't actually required anyway due to the powers that be deciding it doesn't need to be protected due to the relative difficulty of intercepting the visual data as it travels to the display in a relatively closed system like a laptop.

It would be interesting to test an HD-DVD (Xbox 360 add on) on a laptop that doesn't have HDCP keys and see what happens.

 

Well, if we (TR) ever get a lappy with blu-ray or HDDVD drive in ill let you know

 

Cheers Bindi. It's a shame the answer isn't documented anywhere. I would have thought that if FPD-Link supports HDCP I would be able to find something on google somewhere. Ah well I guess once the new drives become more popular in laptops the answer will surface.

Right I wonder what other difficult questions I can bug you with

 

I noticed on ExtremeTech that the 2900 usually outperforms the 8800 with settings at 1920x1200 and 8xAF. Is this just crap reporting? --I couldn't find if they were using the 640 or 320 version.

 

Maybe they forgot Anti-aliasing? That's where the 2900 XT falls over at the moment and I can't see why any high end gamer would want to play without AA these days (unless you have to because of game engine limitations).

 

Seems they used 4x Anti-Aliasing...

 

Sorry to bring this thread back but nowadays, It seems you can get these X2900's for cheaper than the most basic 640Mb GTS's, so does that make it a better deal?

 

Maybe they are cheaper because nobody wants to buy one?

 

I guess there is more volume in the channel now