Quote:
Originally Posted by Nintendo Maniac 64
I just did some tests with my trusty 4c/8t Nehalem Xeon x3470 @ 2.93GHz, and I was able to play back a particularly intensive 40fps (not a typo) 3840x2160 20Mbps HEVC video clip without issue, though it seems just barely as even 41fps resulted in stuttering.
So at least for 60fps 4k HEVC at the same 20Mbps bitrate, you would only need at most 50% more CPU horsepower, though if it was 60fps 30Mbps then you might need 100% more CPU horsepower.
...however, even 100% more performance should be relatively easy to achieve when you consider the following: - Modern CPU architectures (Haswell and Zen1) are ~50% faster clock-for-clock than Nehalem (and Sky/Kaby/Coffee Lake has even faster IPC as will Zen2)
- Having 50% more CPU threads (6c/12t) is quite common nowadays and can now even be had in high-end laptops (not to mention that 8c/16t is also a thing)
- 50% higher clockspeed (4.4GHz) is right around the max turbo speed for modern higher-end desktop CPUs on both Intel and AMD (and ~5GHz overclocks are not at all uncommon anymore)
Combine all three aspects and you should not only be able to play 4k HEVC @ 60fps without issue, but you could probably even do it at 90fps if not 120fps. |
Good analysis. Thanks!
This suggests that common consumer system isn’t likely to be able to do SW 2160p60 decode for some time to come. It seems likely to me that the installed base of computers that can decode 2160p60 HEVC in HW is many times higher than that can do it in SW.
Also, 60p isn’t THAT common in professional content; it’s mainly seen with sports. Entertainment seems stubbornly stuck at 24p, which is a lot easier to decode.
Most PCs don’t have UHD displays, of course, and many of the devices that do have a pixel size so small that delivering UHD resolutions is kind of pointless (on a 15.4” 3840x2160 display, a well-encoded 1080p 24-60p isn’t going to be obviously degraded compared to a 2160p on the same screen).
But for cases where UHD playback, particularly at high frame rates, matters, HEVC is going to have a much bigger installed base beyond 2020.