The growing trend of HD DVD and BluRay has resulted in an acceleration of technology to decode such high detail videos by offloading the CPU. If you have seen our previous reviews of graphics card, we threw AVC clips to most cards which claim to be able to handle, they all end up chewing up 90% of the CPU power.

Video bitrates of DVD, HDTV, HD DVD and Bluray
DVD ~9.5Mbps
HDTV (ATSC) ~18Mbps
HD DVD ~30Mbps
Blu-ray ~40Mbps

The challenge remains on how to decode H.264/AVC by offloading the CPU and GPU takes over most of the work load. UVD comes into play.

As you can see from the chart below, the PureVideo HD by NV only offloads it the last two processes in pixel prediction and deblocking whereas in AVIVO HD, all the 4 processes are taken care by the GPU, leaving your CPU free to do other things.

The picture below shows how NV and AMD's UVD handles the decoding of HD videos encoded in VC1 and H.264/AVC.

By removing all decode stages from the CPU UVD significantly lowers the CPU utilization under HD video playback. With UVD HD decide CPU utilization can be as low as SD decode has been previously

Freeing up CPU cycles gives more headroom for other tasks -
- Blu-ray BD-J / HD DVD HDi interactive content
- Multitasking while HD content is playing in a window
- PVR recording with stutter free HD content playback
- Lowers the CPU barrier for full spec HD DVD / Blu-ray playback
 

UVD enables HD decode and full spec HD DVD / Blu-ray playback across the entire range of graphics products. Full HD decode support no longer the realm just of enthusiast GPU’s, but from top to bottom.

Reduces the CPU performance level required for full HD playback. It decreases both system and GPU frame buffer bandwidth utilization for decode process. It also lowers the GPU cost required for HD video support.

On top of all these, it reduces processing load on primary system components
Lowers power use, increases Notebook battery life during content playback and decreases system noise.

Next >>>

Discuss in our Graphics forum.