Lucid Virtu now available for select Intel motherboards
Our friends at LucidLogix just sent me an e-mail letting me know a full version of Virtu is now available to download from Intel for select boards.
While Sandy Bridge graphics handles most HTPC duties perfectly well there are some cases for a discrete GPU such as “proper” 24p support. What Virtu does is let you utilize discrete GPUs and Intel Quick Sync for transcoding. Normally QuickSync would be disabled unless the on-board graphics card was active. At CES we had a demo and were impressed.
This is also pretty slick for consciences gamers who want the power of a discrete GPU when they are gaming but otherwise would prefer to use the on-board, low power GPU. I have a NIDIA GTX 570HD that I’m eager to test with.
Virtu allows systems to simultaneously take full advantage of both the low-power best-in-class media processing features of the 2nd generation Intel® CoreTM processor graphics and the 3D gaming performance of add-in cards with graphics processing units (GPU).
With Lucid’s Virtu it is now possible to run one or two discrete GPUs and still utilize the transcoding performance and lower power of the 2nd generation Intel® CoreTM processor.
For more information, refer to the LucidLogix website.
Important: Virtu requires certain BIOS versions to be installed prior to use.
– For DZ68DB: download and install BIOS version 0014 or later
– For DH67BL, DH67GD or DH67CL: download and install BIOS 0110 or later
Nice. I use a Nvidia 460 and
Nice. I use a Nvidia 460 and I’m not worried about saving power with this system but being able to use QuickSync without having to hook a 2nd monitor to the onboard outs will be nice. So far of all the programs that support QuickSync, I’ve found Badaboom2 to be the most useful (allows for adjustments of video quality, bit rate, size). I’m still waiting for one of the better know projects like x264 (or another) to implement it. I’m not on the ‘tested list’ for Virtu, but I’ll give a spin.
Well I just tested with an
Well I just tested with an Intel DH67BL + Intel Core i5-2400S + NVIDIA GT 430 and it worked perfectly. If anyone is interested I can provide benchmarks but in a quick test the difference between “native” QuickSync and Virtu QuickSync was ~1 second. It took 18.3 seconds with Virtu QuickSync and 19.4 seconds with QuickSync alone.
mikinho wrote:
Well I just
[quote=mikinho]
Well I just tested with an Intel DH67BL + Intel Core i5-2400S + NVIDIA GT 430 and it worked perfectly. If anyone is interested I can provide benchmarks but in a quick test the difference between “native” QuickSync and Virtu QuickSync was ~1 second. It took 18.3 seconds with Virtu QuickSync and 19.4 seconds with QuickSync alone.
[/quote]
And how about power consumption? Is it lower when using virtu??
baek wrote: And how about
[quote=baek]
And how about power consumption? Is it lower when using virtu??
[/quote]
I’ll follow up when I can shut my system down, I’m running some tests right now on a program I’m developing so I can’t shutdown to plug-in the Kill A Watt.
I don’t imagine a big difference here since the GT 430 is fairly low power. When I test with the GTX 570HD I bet there will be a much bigger difference difference 🙂
I’m curious if you’d had a
I’m curious if you’d had a chance to try out your Kill A Watt with it yet and if so, what the results were.
On a Biostar TH67+ mainboard
On a Biostar TH67+ mainboard / i5-2500k / Nvidia 460, I didn’t benchmark QuickSync, but using the Discrete video card for output (nothing hooked to onboard), Portal 2, LOTRO, and PassMark all ran without any noticeable difference with Virtu installed and toggled on.
The GUI’s add function for adding new programs was greyed out. I tried to manually edit the INI and XML files to add in Badaboom to the allowed list for QuickSync (when using discrete video) but couldn’t get it to show up correctly. I’m assuming this will be addressed in a future build but pretty good for an early release and fixing what Intel should’ve allowed in the first place. (I wonder if Intel will eventually release a graphics driver update that allows QuickSync to work without needing Virtu for discrete graphics)