GeForce 8200 Update - HDMI 1.3a is here...sort of....
by Gary Key on February 8, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
NVIDIA GeForce 8200 -
NVIDIA has been discreetly working on the GeForce 8200 for the past several months and introduced it at CES 2008. We have provided preliminary details on new features like HybridPower and Hybrid SLI (GeForce Boost) along with NVIDIA already providing early specifications on their website. The GeForce 8200 is shaping up to be a formidable competitor to the AMD 780G and from all indications an excellent uATX platform for SOHO or HTPC applications.
After posting some early comments about the 780G chipset, we had a flood of requests wondering about the HDMI output capabilities of the GeForce 8200. We will have further details later today but at this time the chipset is HDMI 1.3a "compliant". The mGPU does not support the additional 12-bit or 16-bit deep color modes but meets the other video specific criteria. Also, 8-channel LPCM output is fully supported but transporting a TrueHD or DTS-HD (MA) audio stream is not available. Update 2- From NVIDIA:
"The ISV player (Intervideo or Cyberlink) will demuxe the audio stream from the HD/BD disc. If it's a TrueHD or DTS-HD audio stream, the 8200 does not support transporting these across HDMI. The application can instead decode it and output it as uncompressed audio (multichannel LPCM) with no loss of audio quality."
In the meantime, we have to continue to express our concerns about the lack of multichannel LPCM output over HDMI in the AMD 780G product. Intel has already introduced this feature in the G35 chipset and NVIDIA will be introducing it later this month or in early March.
The specifications and features of the 780G and GeForce 8200 are very similar and most users will probably be satisfied with either solution. However, when it comes HTPC duty, generally the more advanced features the better, and in this case having multichannel LPCM output is an important distinction. We will have to wait to compare the video quality of AMD's UVD technology to the revamped NVIDIA PureVideo HD engine along with Hybrid CrossFire versus Hybrid SLI, but right now it appears NVIDIA is a couple of steps ahead in the audio area.
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LostPassword - Monday, February 11, 2008 - link
ntDigitalFreak - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
The whole point of passing the TrueHD / DTS-MA bitstream is that the hardware (in this case, the PC) doesn't decode the audio. It sends it directly to the connected receiver, which does the decoding.mikesm - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
When I was at CES, Nvidia told me they had heard the complaints about issues with purevideo HD from their OEM's, and would be releasing in a couple months their own directshow compatible codecs for MPEG2, VC-1, and H.264. This would remove the need to use cyberlink's and other's codecs which have issues with using purevideo HD properly (though you'd still need a player that would understand the menus, etc...), and enable playback of these formats on any directshow compatible player with no additional software.Can you verify they are bundling these with the drivers for the 8200?
lopri - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
I now use this movie as a barometer for properly handling H.264 encoded 1080p feed.http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-nhk.ht...">http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/bbc-nhk.ht...
It's heavier (30fps) than usual HD clips (24fps), so I guess that makes it tougher for GPUs/CPUs. There hasn't been a SINGLE on-board GPU that allowed smooth playback of the above clip @1080p. I would be very impressed if 8200 can handle this flawlessly under Vista. (w/ any CPU)
lopri - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
? Too difficult? :POlaf van der Spek - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
> In the meantime, we have to continue to express our concerns about the lack of multichannel LPCM output over HDMI in the AMD 780G product.Argh, how hard can it be to send 8 channels instead of 2?