Radeon HD 2900 XT UVD Update

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, May 25, 2007, 02:30 PM EDT

We just received word from the Tech Report that they've posted an update to their Radeon HD 2900 XT launch article in an attempt to clear up an issue related to the R600 GPU's UVD support, or lack thereof...

"The UVD logic handles the CPU-intensive bitstream processing and entropy decode acceleration portions of the HD video playback pipeline. These are the most notable video decode acceleration capabilities that would separate the Radeon HD 2900 series from its direct competition, the GeForce 8800 series, if the HD 2900 XT actually had them. Turns out it does not. As the email states, the video playback capabilities of the Radeon HD 2900 XT are essentially similar to those of the previous-gen Radeon X1950.

So the essence of our correction is that the Radeon HD 2900 XT doesn't offer robust acceleration of HD video playback and will not likely reduce CPU utilization or power consumption substantially during high-definition video playback versus a GeForce 8800. We still intend to follow up with testing, but the lack of UVD logic on the GPU resets our expectations dramatically."

We (I) was also under the impression that R600 had the UVD engine built-into the GPU, partly because it perfomed well while playing back an H.264 encoded movie trailer. That trailer wasn't encrypted, however. We have since updated the wording in our article to make it clear that UVD is part of the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400, and not the current generation HD 2900 XT.

Tags: Radeon, HD, Update, Date, PDA, Radeon HD, XT, 290

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com