nVidia GTX 960 vs GTX 970

[andrewds 93]

Hello:

I just wanted to share an experience I had today in case anyone runs into the same thing. I've been using a GTX 960 for hardware acceleration on my Windows-based Emby server for a couple of years now. It has worked great. Recently I had the opportunity to get a GTX 970 for free from a friend who replaced his GPU, and based on the ~50% performance improvement in benchmarks I jumped at it.

I installed the GTX 970 a couple of weeks ago and it appeared to worked great. I could see some load in transcoding and thought it was good to go. However, today I noticed that the load was really pretty trivial when I was queueing some conversion tasks. So, I started digging in. And found this:

>>>>>>  Hardware Decoders for hevc
        [X] DX11VA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)
        [X] DX11VA Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 [1] - H.265 (HEVC)

>>>>>>  Hardware Encoders for hevc
        [X] NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)

>>>>>>  Selected Codecs
Decoder Automatic software decoder


Encoder NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)
        Adapter #0: 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970' ComputeCapability: 5.2
        Max Bitrate: 234 Mbit/s - Frame Sizes: max 4096x4096 - Width Alignment: 2 - Height Alignment: 2
        Color Formats: NV12, P010, P016 - Bit Depths: 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
        Profiles: Main Profile (Level 6.2), Main 10 Profile (Level 6.2), Range Extension (REXT) (Level 6.2)


>>>>>>  FindVideoEncoder - MediaType: hevc, UseHardwareCodecs: True, HWA-Mode: Automatic
Info    Checking: 'NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)'
Info    Check successful - selecting 'NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)'

>>>>>>  FindVideoDecoder - MediaType: hevc, UseHardwareCodecs: True, HWA-Mode: Automatic
Info    Checking: 'DX11VA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 - H.265 (HEVC)'
NoMatch Encoder is not compatible with 'D3d11va' decoders
Info    Checking: 'DX11VA Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 [1] - H.265 (HEVC)'
NoMatch Encoder is not compatible with 'D3d11va' decoders
Info    Checking: 'Automatic software decoder'
Info    Check successful - selecting 'Automatic software decoder'

Which lead me to a thread that links this:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

Where I discovered that there are some important differences between these GPUs:

Board

Family

Chip

NDEC Generation

Desktop/Mobile

# of Chips

# of NVDEC/Chip

Total # of NVDEC

MPEG-1

MPEG-2

VC-1

VP8

VP9 8-bit

VP9 10-bit

VP9 12-bit

H.264 (AVCHD)

H.265 4:2:0 8-bit

H.265 4:2:0 10-bit

H.265 4:2:0 12-bit

H.265 4:4:4 8-bit

H.265 4:4:4 10-bit

H.265 4:4:4 12-bit

AV1 8-bit

AV1 10-bit

GeForce GTX 750 / GTX 950 > 960

Maxwell (2nd Gen)

GM206

2nd Gen

D

1

1

1

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

GeForce GTX 960 Ti / 970 / 980

Maxwell (2nd Gen)

GM204

1st Gen

D/M

1

1

1

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

YES

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

So, even though on the face it appeared that the 970 was the obvious choice, I want these transcoding/conversion operations offloaded to the GPU. So, I've elected to reinstall the GTX 960 and stick with that. With the 960 everything is working as expected:

>>>>>>  Hardware Decoders for hevc
        [X] NVDEC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)
        [X] DX11VA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)
        [X] DX11VA Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 [1] - H.265 (HEVC)

>>>>>>  Hardware Encoders for hevc
        [X] NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)

>>>>>>  Selected Codecs
Decoder NVDEC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)
        Adapter #0: 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960' ComputeCapability: 5.2
        Max Bitrate: 59 Mbit/s - Frame Sizes: 144x144...4096x4096 - Width Alignment: 2 - Height Alignment: 2
        Color Formats: NV12, P010 - Bit Depths: 8, 10
        Profiles: Main Profile (Level 6), Main 10 Profile (Level 6)

Encoder NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)
        Adapter #0: 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960' ComputeCapability: 5.2
        Max Bitrate: 234 Mbit/s - Frame Sizes: max 4096x4096 - Width Alignment: 2 - Height Alignment: 2
        Color Formats: NV12, P010, P016 - Bit Depths: 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
        Profiles: Main Profile (Level 6.2), Main 10 Profile (Level 6.2), Range Extension (REXT) (Level 6.2)


>>>>>>  FindVideoEncoder - MediaType: hevc, UseHardwareCodecs: True, HWA-Mode: Automatic
Info    Checking: 'NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)'
Info    Check successful - selecting 'NVENC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)'

>>>>>>  FindVideoDecoder - MediaType: hevc, UseHardwareCodecs: True, HWA-Mode: Automatic
Info    Checking: 'NVDEC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)'
Info    Check successful - selecting 'NVDEC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 - H.265 (HEVC)'

Just sharing in case anyone else runs into it.

 

[Luke 37020]

Thanks for sharing.

[rbjtech 4223]

Interesting - so the 970 doesn't support h265 in hardware while the 960 does.  I guess the 960 is a 'newer' card (?) thus has the 2nd Gen ASICs.

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by rbjtech