Graphic Cards ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Lacks UVD

[thexfactor]

The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT lacks AMD’s highly touted UVD hardware video processing engine, a feature highlighted in roadmaps. Not only that, AMD continues to tout its entire ATI Radeon HD 2000-series as having UVD, when in fact it is only the 65nm HD 2600 and HD 2400 series that possess the hardware decoding capabilities.

Scott Wasson from TechReport came across the issue while testing the UVD features, stating, "True to my word, I set out yesterday to test HD video decode acceleration on a Radeon HD 2900 XT using an HD DVD drive and a version of PowerDVD supplied by AMD for such purposes." He continues, "To my surprise, CPU utilization during playback on our Core 2 Extreme X6800 test system ran between 40 and 50%, well above what one would expect from a solution with full HD video decode acceleration."

Wasson proceeded to contact AMD with his results. AMD confirmed the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT does indeed lack UVD hardware processing capabilities on the GPU and offers video decoding performance on par with the last generation ATI Radeon X1000-series, according to Dave Bauman, technical marketing manager, ATI.

AMD public relations, speaking off the record, tells DailyTech that all trade publications should have known UVD was not present on the 2900 XT. One representative cites the Radeon 2900 family introduction (PDF), claiming, "ATI Avivo HD is a technology platform that includes a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Radeon HD 2000 GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some ATI AvivoHD capabilities may require complementary products."

When asked why AMD never contacted any trade publications to correct the misconception that UVD was included in Radeon 2900, our contact declined to comment. He did add that full HD acceleration is present on the R600 ASIC, and it will eventually be enabled via driver updates.

“Unfortunately, try as we might, we could not get UVD to work with the current drivers provided by AMD and the PowerDVD release that is supposed to enable the hardware acceleration on HD 2000 series parts,” states AnandTech Senior CPU and Graphics Editor Derek Wilson said. “We will have to take a second look at hardware decode when AMD and CyberLink or Intervideo get their software in order.”

AMD has not released a driver that takes advantage of the ATI Radeon HD 2000-series multimedia features nor has a software company released a player that takes advantage of the hardware.

Last year ATI made false claims of HDCP compatibility with its Radeon X1900-series graphics cards, despite the lack of HDCP keys. Eventually ATI was sued over these claims under false advertising pretenses.

DailyTech - Update: Whoops, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Lacks UVD

 

[Shripad]

does it really conclude that it does not have UVD at all?

I think he went too far in this comment.

And i distinctly remember 3-4 reviews which showed off that UVD is actually working.

EDIT: Yup guru3d have updated their review with this line.

Please understand that the entire AMD ATI Radeon HD 2000-family features the latest Avivo HD technology yet only the 2400 adn 2600 series actually have the UVD core logic.

We discovered that HD 2900 does not have proper UVD support; it'll be paried with HD video capable CPU's. The drivers used in this test don't yet have decode acceleration enabled either, first revision of that comes with 8.38

So for the 2400 & 2600 series goes that the entire process of Bitstream processing, Frequency transform, Pixel prediction towards deblocking up-to post-processing (up/downscaling / deinterlacing, color correction) and displaying is managed by UVD on the 2400/2600 graphics cards, and that's including Blu-ray content with a 40MBit/sec bit-rate.

For the Radeon HD 2900 XT it'll be a symbiosis of the CPU and GPU post-processing wise, a little disspointing but the near future will tell how good that combo really is.

 

[leomax]

I think AMD themselves have confirmed it.Cannot have the links atm..