Intel's Haswell - An HTPC Perspective: Media Playback, 4K and QuickSync Evaluated
by Ganesh T S on June 2, 2013 8:15 PM ESTConcluding Remarks
The Haswell platform ticks all the checkboxes for the mainstream HTPC user. It fixes some nagging bugs left behind in Ivy Bridge. Setting up MPC-HC with LAV Filters was a walk in the park. With good and stable support for DXVA2 APIs in the drivers, even softwares like XBMC can take advantage of the GPU's capabilities. Essential video processing steps such as chroma upsampling, cadence detection and deinterlacing work beautifully. For advanced users, the GPU is capable of supporting madVR for most usage scenarios even with DDR3-1600 memory in the system.
Admittedly, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in madVR capabilities over the HD4000 in Ivy Bridge. The madVR developer has also added more complicated algorithms to the mix and made further refinements to existing ones (such as the anti-ringing filter). The improvements in the Intel GPU capabilities haven't kept up with the requirements of these updates. That said, madVR with DXVA2 scaling works well and looks good, satifying some of the HTPC users who have moved to it from the default renderers. We could certainly complain about some missing driver features and the lack of hardware decode capabilities for 10b H.264 streams. HEVC (H.265) decode acceleration is absent too. However, let us be reasonable and accept the fact that despite anime's adoption of 10b H.264 in a big way, it is yet to gain mass-market appeal. HEVC was standardized pretty recently, and Haswell's GPU would have long been past the design stage by that time. To further Intel's defense, neither NVIDIA nor AMD support these two features.
Talking of display refresh rate support, Intel has finally fixed the 23.976 Hz bug which has been plaguing Intel-based HTPCs since 2008. This is going to make HTPC enthusiasts really happy. The fact that Intel manages the best match for the required refresh rate compared to AMD and NVIDIA cards is just icing on the cake. The 4K H.264 decode and output support from Haswell seems very promising for the 4K ecosystem. It also strengthens H.264's relevance for some time to come in the 4K arena.
The biggest disappointment with Haswell in the media department is the regression in QuickSync video transcode quality. The salt in the wound is really Intel's claims before launch of significant increases in QS video quality. Ivy Bridge definitely produces better quality QSV accelerated video transcodes. Combine that with a lack of significant progress on the software support side until recently (hooray for Handbrake, boo for no substantial OS X deployment) and you'd almost get the impression that Intel was trying its best to ruin one of the most promising features of its Core microprocessors. Haswell doesn't ruin QuickSync, the technology is still a great way of getting your content quickly transcoded for use on mobile devices. However, in its current implementation, Haswell does absolutely nothing to further QuickSync - in fact, it's a definitely step in the wrong direction.
The low power consumption of the Haswell system makes it ideal for HTPC builds, and we are very bullish on the NUC as well as the capabilities of completely passive builds as HTPC platforms. Our overall conclusion is that Haswell takes discrete GPUs out of the equation for a vast majority of HTPC users. The few who care about advanced madVR scaling algorithms (such as Jinc and the anti-ringing filters for Lanczos) may need to fork out for a discrete GPU, but even those will probably be of the higher end variety rather than the entry level GT 640s and AMD 7750s that we have been suggesting so far.
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jhoff80 - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
This article and the power consumption stats just make me wish that Intel would just make it easier to get a hold of their -T chips for end users. A 35W or 45W chip would be great for me, but the only thing that has full retail availability is the 65W one. (And it's not because it's so early in launch, it's always been way too difficult to get -T versions.)EnzoFX - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Not to mention expensive! You get the same results by undervolting/underclocking, typically.Laststop311 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
You are correct in a way but you could undervolt the T series as well and get better thermal performance then the 65 watt version. atleast that is my experience. If i was making an HTPC i would use the i7-4770t or the i7-4650t if thats the equivalent of the i7-3770t this year. The power consumption is amazing and proper 24hz is great for 1080p24 playback. upgrade to the htpc just isn't in my budget right now and ivy bridge + gt 660 isnt a bad htpc. MY PC budget is going to an ultrabook upgrade this year. The increased battery life and performance is insane. i7-980x desktop still does not have a large enough upgrade to make it worth it. Ivy bridge-E is not THAT much faster and I dont think even haswell-e next year will be enough to upgrade the desktop.Death666Angel - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link
"but you could undervolt the T series as well and get better thermal performance then the 65 watt version."Not to the same extent. The T series will already be driving much tighter voltages than normal SKUs. While you may save 15% power consumption by undervolting normal SKUs, undervolting already power efficient SKUs would result in sub 5% probably.
vnangia - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Well, it helps that there are 35W parts this time around - at least on the timeline. IVB didn't get any 35W parts, so the HTPC is still on SNB, and yeah, I could definitely use the incremental improvements to QuickSync.jhoff80 - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Yes, but I'm not talking about only 35W specific chips. The i7-3770T was just as difficult to get as any other -T series chip, because they don't sell them to end-users directly.vnangia - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I'm agreeing with you! What I was trying to say is, Intel did announce low-TDP SNB parts and delivered: SNB had a bunch of -T versions available to end-users at both low (G4xx, G5xxT, 2100T, 2120T) and high end (2390, 2500T). I bought my 2100T at Microcenter B&M for instance.By contrast, Intel didn't announce any end-user -T (and just a handful of -S) parts and we saw that IVB had virtually no -T parts available. I'm optimistic that now they've announced a few -T parts at the high end, we might actually see these materialize in the retail chain and hopefully it bodes well for -T parts at the low end.
Fortunately (*knocks on wood*) the current SNB-based HTPC is still going strong, so I don't feel the need to upgrade. If and when I do, though, I expect that it won't be so clear cut - I may end up going with AMD's lineup, despite the relative paucity of AMD ITX boards.
jhoff80 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Sorry, I must've misunderstood.Krysto - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
This is insane. Why use a $400 Intel Haswell media box for 4k video, when you can use the much cheaper and much more efficient Mali T622-based media boxes that should be appearing next year?http://blogs.arm.com/multimedia/977-a-new-branch-f...
NirXY - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
"should be appearing next year"