Accelerating & Enhancing Video on Kaby Lake processors
Accelerating & Enhancing Video on Kaby Lake processors
CPU with integrated GPU based platforms are a lot about additional features and performance on top of regular processing. So another key feature is of course the embedded GPU with video processor. The combo of the video processor and some additional shader processors inside that chipset allows for high-definition 1080P content playback, acceleration, and though limited... enhancement of overall picture quality. For those that use other content like the immensely popular MKV / x.264 container formats, please download Media Player Classic Home Cinema. This free open source software will DXVA accelerate and enhance your MKV content at 1080P or even higher. We have written an article on Media Player Classic Home Cinema and how to set up that software to make this happen, please read that here.
Above, a Core i5 7600K Kaby Lake example of a movie at 1080P in MKV x.264 format - there is no dedicated graphics card active here, so this is the Intel iGPU at work here and quite frankly it does the job extremely smoothly. You'll notice a CPU load of up-to 5% here, power consumption at this stage was roughly ~65 Watts for the entire PC. We have some extra shaders enabled like Complex Image Sharpening. Perfect playback.
** The bump to 30% at the end of the screenshot is me working the screen capture software.
But let's disable DXVA and try Ultra HD playback. Ultra HD content playback. For the 4K resolution trailer we have an MP4 H.264 file and the CPU load is ~35%. Unlike many APUs we recently tested, Ultra HD video-playback did not result in stuttering, and that is a good thing. Here as well we have additional shaders enabled like image sharpening and darkened black levels. These shaders run over the iGPU.
Normally the reason why we notice stuttering is that the trailer is not DXVA encoded, DXVA at 4K does not yet work. So then the processor cores will kick in and only IF they can handle the content fast enough will this be a successful mission. Any quad-core Kaby Lake generation CPU is plenty fast for this job, as expected.
