Is there any hope to see hardware acceleration of at least VP9 and H264 in Intel NUC Hades Canyon?

[VCoba]

My brother recently bought an office Intel NUC 10 Performance Kit NUC10i5FNH (BXNUC10I5FNH). The nettop, although more modern than the Intel NUC Hades Canyon (HVK), is noticeably weaker in terms of performance. The funny thing is that this nettop has no problem playing 4K60P videos on YouTube. Such videos run as smoothly as possible and without a huge number of dropped frames (several frames are dropped only at the beginning of playback, and then everything is played stably). Why is the flagship and powerful Hades Canyon unable to decode such videos on YouTube? It seems that AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH does not support hardware acceleration at all for VP9, ​​H264 and other codecs. Such a shame!

You can open any 4K60P video on YouTube and check it out for yourself. Here's an example of one of those videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RsmsV2BYPY

Is there any hope to see hardware acceleration of at least VP9 and H264 in Intel NUC Hades Canyon?

[VCoba]

In another thread, I found a temporary solution to this problem, but, unfortunately, this does not always help: https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-NUCs/Why-is-the-flagship-Intel-NUC-Hades-Canyon-nettop-HVK-not-coping/m-p/1244972

Besides, it is in any case a "crutch", which should not be in such an expensive computer!

[powerarmour]

To be clear, this is a 'Windows' driver/application issue IMHO, it doesn't present itself on Linux.

Vega M hardware technically (as it's Polaris 22 based - UVD 6.3) supports partial (not full) VP9 acceleration and H.264/H.265, the Intel HD 630 IGP also supports full VP9 and H.264/H.265 also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#UVD_6

https://alax.info/blog/1901

[VCoba]

If this is a driver bug, then it can be fixed, right?

I look forward to hearing from Intel representatives on this matter.

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hello everyone,

I just got confirmation that VP9 is not supported by the AMD* Radeon RX Vega M GH on NUC8i7HV and there are no plans for this feature to be added to the next driver release.

H.264 is supported, refer to the TPS https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/mini-pcs/nuc-kits/NUC8i7HVK_TechProdSpec.pdf page #19

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Ronny G

[VCoba]

The problem is that the Radeon RX Vega M must support H.264 / AVC (this is stated in the "Technical Product Specification"), but in fact such videos also lose a lot of frames in Chrome. I wrote about this in the Chromium bug tracker: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1171617#c17

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi @VCoba 

My understanding is that Google* dropped support for H.264 some time ago. Chrome is using open-source lightweight codecs libvpx but the Radeon* RX Vega M does provide support for H.264* codec.
I would recommend using Firefox* browser and compare the results, I am not an expert in Graphic codes but if Firefox works fine then the issue is clearly related to the lack of H.264 support when running Chrome. There could be also a mismatch of codecs used by the browser and codecs supported by the NUC. 
There are multiple references to options and extensions you can customize in Chrome* to improve your Youtube* experience, I would recommend either searching the Internet* or that you check with Chrome support.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Ronny G

[AndrewG_Intel]

Hello VCoba

We have not heard back from you so we will proceed to close this thread now. If you need any additional information, please submit a new question as this thread will no longer be monitored.

Best regards,

Andrew G.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[VCoba]

What else can I add? Intel NUC Hades Canyon is a terrible computer that is not suitable for gaming or for normal, comfortable viewing of YouTube in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers. After this nettop I no longer want to have anything to do with Intel. I plan to buy a Mac mini in the future. Thanks Intel!

[BHarr8]

I love mine but I get what you are saying, the support is kind of craptacular. The issues with the Vega graphics and feud between AMD and Intel has been particularly annoying. If not for the ability to hack drivers I might have sold mine already.

Intel's support issues aren't getting any better either. I have the new NUC11PHKi7C and there are already several obnoxious problems. For example in the BIOS there is a memory section that does literally nothing. You can make any change and the system completely ignores them. I don't even know where there is a memory section at all since there is no XMP support. There is also no XTU support so if you want to make changes to power setting you have to do it from BIOS. There briefly was a new tool called Intel NUC Software Studio that allowed you to make changes to power setting and LED settings ........ aaaaaaand then an update broke it, says my NUC11PHKi7C is no longer supported. Intel and MS also did a terrible job communicating about this product and as a result Windows 10 and 11 do not allow any changes to be made to power setting from Windows power settings, even if you hack the registry to force them.

If you are looking at alternatives for mini PCs I am also checking this out -> EliteMini HX90. The specs and form factor are pretty great.

IMO Intel is all hands on deck for gen 12 and everything they have ever created (even this year) is simply legacy to them.

[powerarmour]

---

@BHarr8 wrote:

I love mine but I get what you are saying, the support is kind of craptacular. The issues with the Vega graphics and feud between AMD and Intel has been particularly annoying. If not for the ability to hack drivers I might have sold mine already.

---

Can't disagree with that, at least on the Windows side (which face facts the vast majority of people use, it's only nerds like me that prefer using Linux...)

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi @VCoba 

I am really sorry to hear that you are not happy with the Hades Canyon NUC, however, the issue that you describe about watching YouTube* using Chrome* is not really an issue with the NUC as I explained on a previous note. We are about to release a new graphics driver that will not address this particular issue as this is not hardware related but it may improve your gaming experience, I would recommend that you keep checking on Intel Download Center. 

I truly apologize for any inconvenience you may have had with this product.

Regards,

Ronny G

[VCoba]

The problem with hardware decoding of video encoded with VP9 and H264 codecs is directly related to Hades Canyon's hardware! To be more precise, the problem is in the AMD Radeon RX Vega M video card, which does not support hardware decoding of codecs popular on YouTube. The fact that Firefox does not have such problems is only because this browser has better optimization, plus a different implementation of the code. If you hadn't put an AMD graphics card in Hades Canyon, leaving only the graphics integrated in the processor (Intel HD Graphics 630), everything would have worked fine. But as a result, we have what we have.

[powerarmour]

It's not 'directly' hardware related @VCoba , and I've already proved the hardware can be leveraged correctly with the right drivers/applications: https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-NUCs/Why-is-the-flagship-Intel-NUC-Hades-Canyon-nettop-HVK-not-coping/m-p/1246922/highlight/true#M80097

Even without functional VP9 decoding on Windows (due the reliance on the Vega M GPU, rather than the IGP), this shouldn't stop you from viewing 4K60 Youtube content totally, there are workarounds such as forcing H264 decoding or switching to another browser etc. 

[VCoba]

Do not write nonsense! Switching to H264 limits the resolution, so I won't get 4K output. As for switching to another web browser, the only option for Windows is Firefox. Everything else is Chromium-based web browsers with the same problems as in Chrome. But what if I don't want to switch to Firefox?

[powerarmour]

It's not nonsense @VCoba, it's still fundamentally a driver/application issue.

Try running a dedicated media player app such as Kodi (or LibreELEC) etc, you'll find the Hades Canyon hardware performs fine with VP9 4K60 files (even if it's partially software decoded), and high bitrate 4K60 H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC run fine too, it even supports HDR10.