Playback MKV 4K60 on Radeon7790 was worse than AMD IGD

Hello all,
I'm a bit puzzled with my system performance regarding MKV 4K60 playback, I hope to find some explanation or solution here. My PC specifications are :

Hardware
- AMD Athlon 200GE (https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-athlon-200ge)
- RAM 8 GB (2x 4 GB)
- MSI Radeon 7790 1 GB (https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/R77901GD5OC/Specification)
Software
- Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 1903
- AMD Adrenalin 19.6.3
- K-lite Mega Codec Pack 15.0.0
- VLC 3.0.7.1
- Microsoft Films & TV 10.19031.11411.0


The short story is my Athlon200GE's IGP could play the same MKV 4K60 perfectly smooth, but not on the dedicated Radeon7790 with K-lite 15.0.0 in same setting.


Here's in detail. In the LAV Video Properties I checked all the Resolutions (SD, HD, UHD (4K)) and Codecs for HW Decoding (H.264, HEVC, HEVC10, MPEG-2, DVD, VP9, VC-1, H.264MVC) options. The Hardware Decoder to use was still in DXVA2 (native), and showed OK status.

When I used the Radeon7790 the playback was in very low fps, thus I tried to use VLC and it was about the same. So I opened Windows Task Manager and saw the CPU utilisation was almost 100% while the GPU one was only 10-20% with MediaPlayerClassic64bit and 8-15% with VLC.

Then I tried to use Films&TV, and to my surprise it played almost perfectly smooth. The GPU utilisation was higher, around 30-40%. The problem was sometimes the video quality became bad for a short time (like digital TV lost a bit of signal) especially when I time-skipped.

In the frustation I plugged out the Radeon7790 and used the Athlon200GE's IGP (same AMD driver, no reinstallation). Voila, it played smoothly with all players. MediaPlayerClassic64bit and VLC utilised 10-20% of the CPU and 70+% of the GPU, while the Films&TV used a bit lower utilisation 9-15% and 60+% respectively.

Can anyone explain the cause and the setting that can fix this problem? I'd like to use the dedicated Radeon7790 so that my RAM isn't used by the IGP.

Thank you in advance.

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OOT question (I'd like to avoid creating multiple threads in the same time) :
If I have multiple monitors connected to a PC can K-lite (Media Player Classic) playback in fullscreen a video to all the monitors (not duplicating/mirroring)? If not is there any player that can do that?

The Radeon 7790 does not support hardware acceleration for the video format that your are playing. So it uses software decoding which gives high CPU usage.

If your want to mirror the screen you must do it using the graphics driver. The player has not control over that.

Thank you for the quick response, for my OOT question too.

The only thing that confused me is that there was GPU utilisation with the Radeon 7790 (even though it was small : 8-20% using MPC & VLC, and 30-40% using Films&TV), but nothing (0%) when I chose None Hardware Decoder to use (worst performance). Not disbelieving you, it's just too weird.

Windows 10 can show GPU usage split as "3D" and "video". The latter one is for hardware decoding, and 3D is for everything else.

Is your video perhaps H.264? The you may get some partial acceleration. I initially assumed it was HEVC/H.265.

The IGP is simply newer and better when it comes to video playback.

You could try D3D11 hardware decoding in LAV in combination with madVR as the video renderer in MPC-HC. That might give a small reduction in CPU usage.

It's been busy this last few days so I just had the chance to try again. This time I didn't disable the IGP (Radeon Vega 3) in the BIOS.

As your input I set the LAV's Hardware Decoder to D3D11. After some trials I found the the performance I want was with the settings :

- Hardware Device : AMD Radeon Vega 3 Graphics
- DirectShow Video : Enhanced Video Renderer (both custom presenter and non-custom presenter)

CPU utilisation was 15-22%, GPU 0 (Radeon7790) was 20-32%, and GPU 1 (Vega3) 60+% (mostly for the Video Decode). The Radeon7790's memory usage was 0.9GB and Vega3's one was 0.2GB. Playback was nice and smooth.

* When I tried the MadVR as DirectShow Video my Radeon7790's utilisation was 100% and the playback was far from smooth.

And yes, the 4K60 video i used fo test was x264 :

Video
ID                             : 1
Format                         : AVC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                 : High@L5.2
Format settings                : CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC         : Yes
Format settings, Reference fra : 5 frames
Codec ID                       : avc1
Codec ID/Info                  : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                       :
Bit rate                       : 26.5 Mb/s
Width                          : 4 096 pixels
Height                         : 2 048 pixels
Display aspect ratio           : 2.000
Frame rate mode                : Variable
Frame rate                     : 59.940 FPS
Minimum frame rate             : 59.920 FPS
Maximum frame rate             : 59.960 FPS
Color space                    : YUV
Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0
Bit depth                      : 8 bits
Scan type                      : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)             : 0.053
Stream size                    :
Writing library                : x264 core 155 r2917 0a84d98
Encoding settings              : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=8 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=121 / scenecut=0 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=32000 / vbv_bufsize=32000 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.41 / aq=1:1.00
Color range                    : Limited
Color primaries                : BT.709
Transfer characteristics       : BT.709
Matrix coefficients            : BT.709
Codec configuration box        : avcC

Then I tried to play 4K24 HEVC video and I noticed something weird: the GPU1 (Vega3)'s utilisation was 0%, even though the setting was the same (Hardware Device : AMD Radeon Vega 3 Graphics). I don't know why, but since the playback was still smooth I don't complain. If I have 4K60 HEVC I'll try it again.

Thank you very much to Admin, you've been such a great help. Keep up the good work.



PS. When I open Films&TV I saw the button "Play as 360° video" and I think MPC should have one too. For the 3D stereo video maybe it's better to have an option to choose only one channel to show in the 2D monitor.

360° video (virtual reality) and normal 3D video (as found on some Bluray) are different things. 3D is already played as 2D, unless the playback chain is 3D capable. 360° video is not supported by MPC.

I'm sorry, I forgot about the normal 3D video is not a 360° VR. I don't know either wheter K-lite team is involved in the MPC development, it just would be very nice if MPC can play the 360° video with mouse control to change the viewing angle. Here's a nice sample of it from Youtube :

VR 360 Video for Kids - Adorable Bunny Family in Virtual Reality 360 for Oculus Quest VR Box
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caooJknsZGs


And about the 4K60 video playback before I forgot to mention that in the BIOS setting the Primary Video Adapter is Internal Graphic (IGD), so the Windows can detect 2 GPUs in the system. If I change the setting into External Graphic (PEG) I can't use the IGP for video processing at all.

Thanks again to Admin.

There are no developers available for MPC who are interested in 360° stuff. There are specialized players available for such content.