Will This Pentium Processor Handle HEVC?

[Hiimstring3]

I'm building a HTPC/NAS, on a budget of ~$500AUD, and I've picked out the Intel Pentium G3260 for it's price and clockspeed. It's only a dual core and since we're dealing with pretty heavy decompression, a quad core would be very beneficial, but not practical given the budget constraints. 

 

My main concern is that a fair bit of my media right now is encoded with H.265 (a number I see growing in the coming years), and I want to get an idea of how the Pentium will handle it. Does anyone have experience with dual cores and HEVC? Any help would be great.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Cpu doesn't matter, it matters if the gpu supports decoding, which it should with your cpu. Try playing video. If your cpu usage is high, get a new gpu, if its low your fine

[Hiimstring3]

Well the GPU I'm planning on using is the Gigabyte GeForce 9600- a pretty old card, but it's all I've got right now. You think it'll handle H.265?

[don_svetlio]

3 hours ago, Hiimstring3 said:

Well the GPU I'm planning on using is the Gigabyte GeForce 9600- a pretty old card, but it's all I've got right now. You think it'll handle H.265?

no

[LAwLz]

The GeForce 9600 can't do HEVC decoding, but that CPU might. Don't have time right now, but I will look into what codecs it supports on the iGPU, and if it doesn't support it I will create a HEVC file and try playing it on my laptop (~2.2GHz core 2 Duo) to see how well that works (decoding on the CPU instead of GPU). 

 

Performance will vary depending on the video file (one video file might require significantly more resources to decode than another) as well as the video player.

[BrightCandle]

As far as I know only Skylake iGPUs support HEVC in the Intel lineup.

[Hiimstring3]

Yeah, from what I've looked at, only some of the latest gen hardware natively supports it. I was however able to get my hands on an older system running a 2.3GHz Intel Dual core, among other pretty terrible specs. Running Windows 7, I got great playback on VLC with a range of high to low bitrate HEVC media.

 

Considering this, I'd say it's safe to assume the Pentium will handle it just fine.

 

When I get the system up, I'll post results.

[LAwLz]

55 minutes ago, BrightCandle said:

As far as I know only Skylake iGPUs support HEVC in the Intel lineup.

Broadwell supports hybrid decoding (as in, some is done in hardware, some in software) of 8-bit HEVC.

Skylake supports it fully in hardware.

 

Seems like Haswell (which OP uses) will not support it in hardware. Gonna try out some videos on my laptop to see how that handles it in software.

 

 

My laptop is a Core 2 Duo (P8600) at 2.4GHz.

It could play a 1280x720p, 1500Kbps 10bit HEVC file just fine in software.

I also tried a 1100Kbps 8bit HEVC file (alsop 1280x720) and that worked fine as well.

 

Don't have a 1920x1080 file ready but I am making one right now. Will post results later.

 

Edit:

Tried a 2300KBps 1920x1036 video (8 bit HEVC) and it plays perfectly in mpv (default settings). Was completely unwatchable in MPC-HC with madVR though.

 

If my Core 2 Duo can do it, then your Haswell CPU should be able to do it too. Just don't expect 4K to work.