Radeon 5870 vs. 5770 (Or 5850?)

kopyrite

I'm trying to setup a fast system for Video Encoding. (Converting approximately 400 Video Tapes to DVD).

Everything I've read suggests that a 5870 card will greatly improve the speed of encoding. But as I'm sure most of you know... it would be easier to find the Holy Grail than to find a 5870 card.

I've tried to find comparisions of 5870 vs. 5770 vs. 5850, hoping to get some idea of what I'd lose by buying the lesser cards, which are more available.

Even the ATI/AMD sites offer little insight.

Any suggestions on where to look?

Thanks!

==> Mike.


The rest of the system, incidentally:

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P
i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz
Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
G.Skill DDR3 2133
VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM
Antec EarthWatts 750W

lordbean

The 5870 and the 5850 both use Cypress cores, and the 5770 uses a Juniper core. The breakdown is as follows:

Core Clock: 850MHz (5870), 725MHz (5850), 850MHz (5770)
Mem Clock: 1200MHz (5870), 1000MHz (5850), 1200MHz (5770)
Mem interface: 256bit (5870), 256bit (5850), 128bit (5770)
Shader units: 1600 (5870), 1440 (5850), 800 (5770)

The shader count and core clock are going to be the two largest factors in video transcoding. The HD5850 will probably give you the best bang for your buck, but the 5770 is no slouch either.

Cliff_Forster

The problem you are going to have is that your converting from video tape. Bottom line is, nothing can be any faster than real time when your doing video tape. I think your biggest issue is going to be the quality of capture devise that you choose (I assume this is old analog tape?) and if that devise software enables you to convert to the formats you want on the fly. I imagine most will allow you to convert to .avi and allow you to adjust for resolution and bit rate. Plus, you might want to consider buying a dedicated hard drive for this, as inexpensive as they are, probably no reason to clutter up your system drive. You have allot of video, getting a big 1TB+ 7200 RPM drive might be a really solid investment for you.

lordbean

Cliff makes a good point. Video tape read speed is limited to, well, real-time. It doesn't really go faster than that.

A graphics card may be able to convert a 2-hour video in 12 minutes, but only if the source video can be completely read in 12 minutes.

Thrax

Hi, Mike, welcome to Icrontic.

Using the 5870 as a baseline, the 5850 is 10-15% slower, and the 5770 is about 40% slower.

So, if you got 112 FPS in a game with the 5870, you'd pull about 99-101 with the 5850, and about 60 with the 5770. This is fairly true across all titles.

If all you care about is video, however, then the 5770 + quad core is probably going to be the most economical choice. As Cliff points out, you can't go any faster than real time with tape.

kopyrite

I have the Canopus ADVC-300... and have been very impressed with the capture. It has lived up to everything I've read about it.

Cliff_Forster

Kopyrite,

That is a very good conversion tool. Just so I understand, are you converting, then re encoding after the conversion? Can you not convert directly to the format you desire?

kopyrite

Obviously the videotape capture is only going to happen at a 1:1 ratio. Using simple encoding tools, going from AVI to DVD was happening at only slightely faster speeds.

I know I cannot improve the speed of the capture, but I can certainly improve the speed of the encoding.

I read about the 5870, and they were talking about encoding speeds that were 6 to 10 times faster.

If the 5850 is only SLIGHTLY slower... and it decreases encoding time by 4 to 8 (15% - 20% less), then that's still better than what I've got now.

The project is underway, and I don't want to wait weeks for a 5870.

Cliff_Forster

If you can obtain a 5850 for re encoding I would say go for it. The newest CCC improves the drop and drag interface for encoding. Make sure you download the separate AVIVO video converter on the AMD driver website.

kopyrite

The Canopus ADVC-300 makes connects via 1394, and looks like a DV camera.

It captures as AVI.

There are then a variety of tools to convert from AVI to DVD, that reportedly take advantage of the CrossFire technology.

Media Expresso seems to be a favorite of many writers.

Cliff_Forster

I use the stock AVIVO converter from AMD, I don't have any experience with Media Expresso personally. The one thing about AVIVO is the set up is not as intuitive as it should be, litteraly, on AMD's site I think you have to download in IE, Chrome did not work the last time I tried, and when you set it up, its not immediately apparent what tab to go in on the CCC, you have to reboot your system after install and convert your CCC to basic mode to see the new AVIVO conversion tool, but once you get past the set up its really intuitive and fast. Best of all, its free with your graphics card purchase.

kopyrite

Thanks Cliff.

People have complained about Media Expresso, and lack of settings.

But most of the complains seem to be from those who are converting HD Video to DVD.

Capturing from Video tape goes back to that old axiom... garbage in, garbage out.

It's low resolution to begin with, so there's not much to get too picky. (The Canopus unit seems to capture much better than the best-buy, VHS to DVD converters, so I think we're doing as much as we can already).

Free sure sounds good! :-) I'll definately check out the stock AVIVO from AMD.

primesuspect

The 5850 + Mediashow Espresso should work great for you.

Espresso is a major workflow improvement over the spartan drag-n-drop transcoder in Catalyst Control Center. For doing batches like you're doing, I'd recommend going with Espresso. It definitely supports ATI Stream (meaning it will use the 5850 to accelerate encodes).

kopyrite

A Diamond 5850 just popped up on a site, so I snatched it. $319... certainly overpriced, but I needed to get something going.

==> Mike.