Benchmarks - Pure Video CPU Utilisation
Recently NVIDIA have provided some software updates in order to improve the video playback performance and quality on the GeForce 6's new video processing engine for the emergence of "PureVideo". The software include new drivers, NVIDIA's Video Decoder application, that can be purchased from NVIDIA, and Microsoft will soon be supplying an update to Media Player 10 to better facilitate the video rendering capabilities of the new generation of hardware. We didn't use the newer drivers in the previous test as they were still beta, however we'll take a look at the video performance of the 6200 whilst using these drivers as well as the performance with these and the purchasable NVIDIA Video Decoder application.
The tests are as they were in the previous video test, and all running via Media Player 10.
| DVD MPEG2 (% CPU Usage) | Min | Max | Average |
| 66.93 | 4.69% | 15.63% | 9.09% |
| Video - 67.02 w Decoder | 3.13% | 10.94% | 6.30% |
| Video - 67.02 w/o Decoder | 4.69% | 17.19% | 10.16% |
Without the NVIDIA Decoder the standard MPEG2 CPU utilisation actually increases from the 66.93 drivers with the 67.02's on the 6200, indicating a greater overhead. However, with the decoder application installed the CPU utilisation does drop a reasonable amount and is lower than the 66.93's.
| DiVX (% CPU Usage) | Min | Max | Average |
| 66.93 | 25.00% | 34.38% | 30.64% |
| Video - 67.02 w Decoder | 25.00% | 34.38% | 30.26% |
| Video - 67.02 w/o Decoder | 26.56% | 35.94% | 30.26% |
Although there are slight variances, it doesn't look as though the new software makes much difference to the CPU utilisation whilst playing back video in the DiVX format.
| WMV8 - 1080i (% CPU Usage) | Min | Max | Average |
| 66.93 | 32.81% | 56.25% | 45.54% |
| Video - 67.02 w Decoder | 12.50% | 39.06% | 27.28% |
| Video - 67.02 w/o Decoder | 12.50% | 43.75% | 28.05% |
Some more significant performance gains have been made with these later drivers and high resolution WMV9 video content - both the performances on the newer drivers with and without the Decoder show significantly lower CPU utilisation than the performance of the WHQL 66.93 drivers.
Bear in mind that the NVIDIA Decoder software is not, presently, a free option available to all GeForce 6 users by default and needs to be purchase separately in order to get the performance benefits seen here.
