[Mr Alien]

My poor old HTPC motherboard just gasped it's last breath.
Looking at a cheap replacement and the A6-7400K and M/B looks interesting.
Reading around the net, some people say it can do HEVC hardware decode in DXVA2, others say it doesn't have support?
I'd be interested to find out if it does work with the hardware DXVA2 supports added for HEVC in Isengard Beta? Anyone got one?

[RockerC]

There is not yet a GPU / APU hardware released or announced from AMD that supports HEVC (H.265) is there?

Even if Kodi 15 will support HEVC hardware decode via DXVA you still need hardware and drivers that have supports it too.

I believe that only the very latest Nvidia GPUs and Intel IGPs released supports HEVC hardware decoding?

[noggin]

I believe that only the very latest Nvidia GPUs and Intel IGPs released supports HEVC hardware decoding?

In the case of Intel, they have released H265/HEVC CPU+GPU decode driver support for Haswell as well as Broadwell Core i-3/5/7 CPUs, so it isn't just the very latest. This uses the GPU for the elements of HEVC/H265 decoding which are similar to H264, and then just the CPU for the stuff that can't be done on the GPU - so you get some hardware acceleration but not full hardware acceleration.

Haswell is 8 bit only, Broadwell also supports 10 bit HEVC/H265.

[RockerC]

So which are the exact Nvidia GPUs that support some HEVC hardware decoding now then?

Haswell is conly, Broadwell also supports 10 bit HEVC/H265.

Yeah that looks to be the case, but won't most if not all commercial HEVC encoding be in 10-bit?

https://communities.intel.com/thread/59216

Guessing that only home-made encodings like Blu-ray Discs rips are likley to be in 8-bit?

[galadriel]

So which are the exact Nvidia GPUs that support some HEVC hardware decoding now then?

As of now, only GTX 960 supports HEVC hardware decoding. I have one, and it works fine.

[wrxtasy]

Intel Skylake microarchitecture with full HEVC hardware decoding should be released in less than two months if leaked reports are to be believed.

[noggin]

Looks like HEVC could be significant in Germany. They are apparently going to switch from DVB-T MPEG2 SDTV to DVB-T2 HEVC/H265 SD and some HDTV on their OTA Digital Terrestrial TV system over the next couple of years, to allow them to reduce the amount of RF spectrum used (as other EU countries will also if they decide to continue with OTA terrestrial and not just use cable and satellite)

[Mr Alien]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I've managed to kludge together a temporary HTPC for now. It should be good enough to last until either Skylake comes out or Nvidia release a lower specification card with hardware decode.