Sim(ply Not Ready)HD
In writing this article, I prepared a series of images showcasing ArcSoft’s $19.95 SimHD application and exactly what a train wreck it is. To make this point, I used a 720x480 MPEG-2 file—an ATI Avivo demo clip, ironically—and had SimHD upscale it to 1920x1080. That’s what the plug-in is for. It’s an add-on to the TotalMedia Theatre 3 player app. TMT3 plays your movies, and SimHD is supposed to make them look better on HD displays. As ArcSoft puts it, SimHD leverages CUDA (and presumably ATI Stream once the company updates its product pages) and “not only offers large performance benefits but also saves CPU power for other usages.” This is sort of silly because I’m not sure how you could get more “performance” in this application (unless you wanted upscaling maintained at greater than 1.0X playback speed) and I’m not terribly worried about leaving CPU overhead for other applications since HD movies are obviously meant to consume the entire display space and the user’s attention.
In fact, the only thing I want SimHD to do is make SD video look better, and I don’t care what it takes to make that happen. The problem is that it doesn’t happen. In my opinion, the output actually looks worse than the original. Let’s take only one of the examples.
SimHD features a split-screen cloning function so you can see the original image on the left and the upscaled version on the right. Please ignore the vertical banding. That’s an artifact of having to photograph the monitor since there was no other way to capture movie playback. TMT3 has a capture button, but it was grayed out during this operation. Handy. The two green ovals show areas where I think SimHD improved the image. If you look at this image on a decent monitor, the larger green oval will show a bit more detail brought out of the shadowy background. You can also see more definite detail in the flower’s stamen. It is the stamen, right? Those bumpy purple formations in the middle? I should have paid more attention in outdoor school.
The red ovals show areas in which I think image quality is visibly degraded. Edges look more jagged. You see more banding and noise in flat toned areas. And very light areas tend to have detail washed out. The contrast boosting helps with shadows but doesn’t do you many favors at the high end.
As mentioned above, I was all prepared to lambast SimHD, and to really make the point I obtained a copy of PowerDVD 9 from CyberLink, which features TrueTheater HD, a very similar upscaling technology to SimHD. Wouldn’t you know it? The color enhancements in TrueTheater are clearly better than in SimHD, but there’s still rampant edge jagginess and compression noise in the upscaled version when running at default settings.
Dialing down the TTHD effect does improve the image, and my contact at CyberLink sent the image shown here to prove the point. With the right media at the right settings, you can get better results. With both the Avivo MPEG-2 file as well as the Matrix Revolutions DVD I tested, I still walked away thinking that software-based upscaling hurt more than it helped. This could be a place for GPGPU to help people in the future—and maybe even very near future—but I think it still needs another generation or two of improvement
So..... TBH they both work pretty well, I hope that we don't start a whole competition over this.
Did someone necro an old topic? I think ATI has been talking about ATI Stream for a while. I know atleast a year since FireStream.
arcsoft simhd plugin is currently only enabled for n- cuda graphic cards.
They're good but hopefully they will manage to improve them more. Competition is good for business.
... why just now talk about? I use it sins Catalyst 8.12...
Stream is old but not nearly as old and compatible as CUDA I'd get it a year or two more when more capable cards circulate the market and trickle down to the people before i would call it competition.
Well it's good to see more then just 1 app that supports it.
Just for the sake of it, and the fact that many pros would like to know the result, it would be nice to see comparisons like this using nVidia's Quadro cards vs. ATI's FirePro cards.
why use 185.85 since those drivers are a total wreck
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php [...] =0&start=0
13 pages with ppl having different problems with that driver
I think the second graph on the "Mixed Messages" page isn't the right graph.
It's the same graph from the following "Heavier Lifting" page instead of a graph for the 298MB VOB file that should be shown?
Stream and CUDA are likely to go the way of the dodo soon though. OpenCL's where its at. Unfortunately its a tad hard to get programming with it right now since you need to be a registered developer on nVidia's Early Access Program or you have to be a registered developer with Apple's developer program with access to pre-release copies of Snow Leopard.
Virtually no one will bother using CUDA or Steam after OpenCL's out - why limit yourself to one hardware base after all? It'd be like writing Windows software that only ran on AMD processors and not Intel. Developers will not bother writing for both when they can just use one language that can run on both hardware platforms.
How come Folding is not something you guys ever cover in your CUDA comparisons. The main reason I left an ati card and bought an nvidia was the huge increase in my ppd.
How come Folding is not something you guys ever cover in your CUDA comparisons. The main reason I left an ati card and bought an nvidia was the huge increase in my ppd.
Yeah...that's just what i want from a GPU : Folding@Home. I find video transcoding to be a more 'useful' way of using you GPU.
Nice article. Haven't seen one in a long time.
why did i feel the expresso "overview" page was an embedded advertisement?
How come Folding is not something you guys ever cover in your CUDA comparisons. The main reason I left an ati card and bought an nvidia was the huge increase in my ppd.
I agree. The last three cards that I bought were Nvidia cards, based solely on their folding performance. When gaming, I prefer an ATI card. Oh yeah, I have four computers, three using Nvidia cards for folding and one with an ATI card for gaming. I think it would be great if the reviews included Folding@Home performance. It might also encourage ATI to make cards that did better for folding.
Anandtech was saying that the output quality from ATI wasn't very good, but I didn't see any mention of it here. Can anyone confirm or deny, I have a 4870 but I'd like to know how the output quality is before I buy Expresso.
I have used newer cards from both Nvidia and ATI, I also love my Mac. I would really like to see OpenCL take off. It's cross platform with Nvidia and ATI on both Mac and PC. That to me would end the CUDA / Stream war and bring it back to simply who builds the better GPU.
"Final score: AMD 3, Nvidia 4. However, I’m going to call this a tie..."
It actually IS a tie. You awarded NVidia a point for not offering an option for WMV encoding,
even though performance showed a very slight, but measurable, increase with Stream enabled.
You didn't give credit where credit was due. Do it right the next time.
the gpu looks a bit weak on the ati side. when was the gtx 280 ever ment to go head to head with a hd4870. i would like to suggest a hd4890 for da job bit more even. that is if we are going on who drivers are better which seems to be more of the focus considering the lack of hardware evenness.
There is no mention of how good the output quality is. How does it compare to the source? How does it compare to nVidia?