After I solved the BIOS problem of A9-9430 soc board, it’s running with windows 10 and make it as my AMD powered HTPC.

You may wonder why I choose Excavator Family APU for this, since it not even powerful as sandy bridge or ivy bridge cpu. Short answer is: because it’s a cheapest way to have both Fluid Motion and 4K HEVC supported.

Time goes back to a few years ago.  When it was th first time I saw video with 60fps, which was amazing.

The video was convert from 30fps or 24fps, the technology was provided by AMD Fluid Motion, i.e. AFM.

AFM was released with GCN GPU and integrated APU (GCN ), there was just a ON/OFF switch by default, powerDVD might be a 3rd party video player software support to AFM at the first place. it’s  not user friendly at the begin, until we have Bluesky Frame Rate Converter.

For how to use and the tutorial, you can easily find instruction from the internet. What I would like to findout is the buttom line hardware for 1080P 60Hz fluid motion capablility.

Probably by the limitation of only 3CU of GPU (Unified shader processors (USPs): Texture mapping units (TMUs): Render output units (ROPs). 1 CU (Compute Unit) = 64 USPs: 4 TMUs : 1 ROPs), A9-9430 works fine with AFM when the video is just 720P, the usage of GPU is about less than 70%, but when you try with 1080P video, it just won’t reach 60FPS, the result was from 45FPS to 55FPS.

Since A9-9430 is Stoney Ridge APU with GCN 3rd GPU, maybe with same generation APU contain more than 4CU like A6-9500E, GX-420GI or maybe 3CU with next gen APU, actually when I started with the article writing it was 2019, and now I’ve already upgrade the HTPC with Althon 200GE APU, which is 3CU of  GCN 5th APU, the test result turns out Althon 200GE can cover 1080P video 60Hz fluid motion, surely the video should be GPU decoding.

About A6-9500E or GX-420GI can cover 1080P video 60Hz fluid motion or not, I don’t have answer now. Please looking forward to the encoter of cheap HP T630 thinclient machine.

And for 4K video 60Hz fluid motion, the answer from internet says buttom line hardware are 3400G with slightly overclock and HD7770 .

It’s a shame that AMD removed Fluid Motion ASIC from Navi GPU, the function will not work with newer GPU to RX5000 series or Ryzen APU 6000 series.

继解决了惠普APU主板的BIOS问题之后,它装上了win10,作为下载和媒体播放机在家里服役,你可能会好奇为什么选择这个性能比较渣的推土机APU来干这个事?简短的回答就是为了AMD的插帧功能。

第一次看到AFM输出的60帧的插帧成品视频的时候,效果真是比较震撼,所以搞一台带插帧的HTPC一直是一个想做的事情。

实现AFM插帧的相关教程网上非常多,这里就不赘述了。需要注意的是只有集成了GCN的APU或者GCN GPU显卡是硬件要求。那么我比较想要知道的就是实现1080P插帧的硬件需求底线是什么(主要是APU方面)

由于A9-9430集成了3CU的3代GCN显示核心,并且经过测试,720P插帧没有问题,但是1080P插帧就稍显不足,帧数从45帧到55帧浮动,所以我想可能同代核显的4CU(像A6-9500E, GX-420GI)或者下一代核显的3CU(200GE)就能搞定1080P插帧。

由于开始这篇文章的草稿是2019年,现如今我的下载播放机早已升级至速龙200GE,作为相对A9-9430下一代3CU核显,事实证明它也是刚刚好覆盖1080P插帧,GPU占用率在插帧时还是比较高的。但是同代的4CU能不能搞定,大概只有等我遇到便宜的惠普T630瘦客户机才能知道了。

4K的视频插帧最低需求从网上看到的结果是3400G轻微超频或者HD7770独显。

一个比较让人遗憾的事是AMD从Navi GPU开始不再支持AFM技术,所以这个功能只能停留在部分老硬件上了。且用且珍惜吧