Radeon Pro WX2100 YouTube Decode Issues

[Mr Technician]

I recently bought a Radeon Pro WX2100 for my media PC, which is mostly used for YouTube. I installed drivers etc. and was pleased to see that even 2160p60 was smooth with only a tiny percentage of frames dropped. However, I noticed the CPU was being used to decode instead of the video card, and doing some research suggests that some codecs are not supported by the decode engine. Can anyone confirm this is the case for this card? If so I will likely need to resell it and pick up a GT 1030 or similar instead.

[Elijah Kamski]

Hey there,

Could you confirm which codec you are using?

According to the AMD website, the WX 2100 only has these types of encoders/decoders.



It uses UVD, looking into it more, we get this.



As the GPU architecture is Polaris, we'd be looking at UVD 6.3.

You should be able to find the required information from the table above to see if your device can decode the codec.

AMD WX2100 GPU Info
Techpowerup
UVD

Thanks,
Eli

[Elijah Kamski]

I believe you are asking as to why the stats look like this?



Here I am playing a 4K video from YT. Firefox's hardware acceleration has been disabled as it causes instability usually from what I've experienced. Therefore, the GPU is not doing much when playing this back, however, it is all put on the CPU.

Try making sure that the browser you are using has hardware acceleration turned on, this will make it so that the GPU does most of the work

Thanks,
Eli

[Elijah Kamski]

Here is my system with hardware acceleration turned on.

 

There is noticeably less CPU usage and more GPU usage, although it's on the 3D instead of the video decode.

Don't mind the spikes, that's just from opening apps, and don't mind the first lower part of the GPU graph, before the dip, that was just me watching another 4K LTT video.

[Elijah Kamski]

Here is an example of the video decoder being used, application is VLC.



Here it is playing a 1080p 60FPS video, but you get the general idea I think, essentially, different apps use different parts of the GPU differently. Why don't you try playing a video using VLC and see if your video decoder is being used, which it should

Thanks,
Eli

[Mr Technician]

The encoding in question is VP9. I will check with VLC when I am able.

 

Edit: Looking at the chart you sent above, VP9 is not supported by the WX2100.  Might need to resell it and get a GT 1030 instead.