Broadcom Crystal HD (BCM70012)

[cagljevic]

Anyone know if this will work in the mini pci-e slots inside an x61? I have looked around and found lots of people putting this little card in other brands, but with the exceptions with thinkpad mini pci-e slots i'm not so sure...

Windows support is limited to an arcsoft player and also the latest beta flash plugin which is my main reason for asking. Linux support is moving along at a fast pace which is really good news.

Thanks.

[crashnburn]

Anyone know if this will work in the mini pci-e slots inside an x61? I have looked around and found lots of people putting this little card in other brands, but with the exceptions with thinkpad mini pci-e slots i'm not so sure...

Windows support is limited to an arcsoft player and also the latest beta flash plugin which is my main reason for asking. Linux support is moving along at a fast pace which is really good news.

Thanks.

Id love to know as well.

[skriefal]

I can verify that this card does work in the second mini-PCIe slot in an X61 tablet. I have a whitelist-modded BIOS installed, so not sure whether that's necessary. But the drivers are installed, they recognize the card, and the decoder is working with video playback using Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC).

(Had to remove the turbo memory card from the second slot, but no big loss there...)

[davekung]

I just bought one off ebay. I have flashed a whitelist removed BIOS image as well on my X61 Tablet. The card is not detected in both mini-pcie slots. I think it is DOA.
However, if I move my wifi card to the second slot, it is not detected either. Do I have a bad second pci-e slot?
Do you need to do anything to activate the second slot? ( usually the turbo memory or WWAN card goes there)

Thanks,

David

[rkan]

How does the Flash play with this card? YouTube HD etc?

[EOMtp]

... Do I have a bad second pci-e slot? ...

Not necessarily. The two mini-PCIe slots are not symmetric. The full mini-PCIe interface standard, i.e., including the mini-PCIe USB interface functionality, is not implemented identically on the two slots.

[davekung]

Thanks for the quick reply. I found on the web or here that I may have to turn on WWAN function in the BIOS in order to use the second mini pci-e slot. Did that. I'll try my Crystal HD card again tonight.

[davekung]

Re-installed the mini pci-e card last night. Under device manager, it is listed under sounds, video & games controllers.
Did not see any system massage saying driver for new hardware were installed. Played a DVD (ultrabase) using WMP 12 ( I have Win 7) and the CPU utilization is less than 5% on the X61 T throughout the session.

Did not pay attention before if the CPU utilization was a lot higher without the Crystal HD.

Anyone care to let me know your CPU utilization % during DVD play back (without Crystal HD)?

[sugo]

DVD is not HD. DVD playback is a piece of cake for modern Core 2 Duo cpus. You don't need the Broadcom card at all.

To really test the Broadcom HD card, I would suggest getting Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta 3 from:
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

then play an 1080p video on YouTube and observe your CPU utilization. Without the card, 1080p Flash will nearly max out CPU on X61T.

[davekung]

I installed Flash 10.1.3 Beta (Active X) last night and played a 720p clip on Hulu via IE8. CPU utilizaton was about 44%.
The driver from Broadcom is version 3.1.8. I believe it is the latest version.
what is your observed CPU utilization when playing 1080p with Crystal HD?

[ghlu]

With firefox and latest flash beta I get about 30% when playing a 1080p trailer (transformer) on youtube on my X61 w/ T7250 (c2d 2.0Ghz). For 720p/1080p mkv files I get 20% cpu utilization with Media Player Classic HC. So far so good. The only thing is the palm rest area gets a bit hot, so maybe it's time to get a 2nd fan..

[sugo]

With firefox and latest flash beta I get about 30% when playing a 1080p trailer (transformer) on youtube on my X61 w/ T7250 (c2d 2.0Ghz). For 720p/1080p mkv files I get 20% cpu utilization with Media Player Classic HC. So far so good. The only thing is the palm rest area gets a bit hot, so maybe it's time to get a 2nd fan..

Is this with or without Broadcom card?

[ghlu]

Is this with or without Broadcom card?

With broadcom card. Without broadcom card when playing mkv I get about 60~70% cpu usage when using ffdshow, and 30~40% when using CoreAVC.

[andykrej]

What is the power consumption of the Crystal HD? Can you check wattage playing back the same movie with acceleration and without?

[andykrej]

So I bought the famous BCM70012 to see if it could lower my power consumption when playing HD movies.

It installed with no problem in my X61s. Maybe because I have the modded bios for SXGA+.

I did the test by playing the same 2 minutes of the same movie with and without the card using Core AVC in Media Player Classic. I measured the Wh used and calculated how many minutes I would get on a full charged 8 cell battery.

Total Playtime (without/with bcm70012):

720p: 250min/288min = 15% increase
1080p: 180min/250min = 39% increase

Conclusion: In my case, the bcm70012 is not worth the hassle, as I only watch 720p (fits nicely on SXGA+) and they play without problems anyway. Also I think the drivers are not stable. Sometimes the picture just freezes, and viewing flash can cause Iexplorer to crash.
The good thing is that CPU load is around 5-10% for both 720p and 1080p.

[davekung]

Can you guys post your system config?

I have the X61 Tablet with XGA Screen.

I installed Flash 10.1 Beta 3 (Active X) on Win 7 Pro x64, & Broadcom driver 3.1.8 (only 32-bit is available for WIN)
Tried several 1080p clips on Youtube via IE8 32 bit. (64-bit IE8 will not pla at all). CPU utilization is still 90%+. Is this an issue with 32-bit Broadcom driver?

Broadcom Crystal HD showed up under Video,sound section of device manager, with no exclaimation mark. So I assume it is operational.

[sugo]

Watching this 1080p clip on my X61 2.4GHz C2D (no Broadcom card) consumes about 60-80% total cpu time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6E9QFUVBFo&fmt=37

[andykrej]

Watching this 1080p clip on my X61 2.4GHz C2D (no Broadcom card) consumes about 60-80% total cpu time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6E9QFUVBFo&fmt=37

Without the Broadcom, my X61s chops the playback noticably and consumes close to 100% CPU. With the card playback is much better (but still not completely flawless) and CPU is 40-50%. So in this case, the card actually helps.

I installed Flash 10.1 Beta 3 (Active X) on Win 7 Pro x64, & Broadcom driver 3.1.8 (only 32-bit is available for WIN)
Tried several 1080p clips on Youtube via IE8 32 bit. (64-bit IE8 will not pla at all). CPU utilization is still 90%+. Is this an issue with 32-bit Broadcom driver?

Broadcom Crystal HD showed up under Video,sound section of device manager, with no exclaimation mark. So I assume it is operational.

Those are the same drivers I'm using. The Broadcom driver from their homepage contains both x32 and x64 versions, so I'm sure you have the x64 installed. Flash is only 32-bit though.

[ghlu]

What is the power consumption of the Crystal HD? Can you check wattage playing back the same movie with acceleration and without?

Finally got time to hook up a kill-a-watt. From what I can see when using the card playing a 1080p mkv file the watt used jumps between 30~37w. Without card using ffdshow it jumps between 35~42w..

[bearmann]

Hi,
has anybody of you more info on the BCM70015 yet?
It looks more versatile than the BCM70012. For example, because of more supported formats: H.264/AVC, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV9, MPEG-4, DivX®, Xvid and AVS

Any news? (Press release)

regards.
bearmann

[cleanerdk]

Hello guys

I hope someone can help me:)

I bought this card and istalled it in my x61 loaded the driver and it doesnt work.

It shows up in the sounds drivers. I do not have a modded bios, and frankly dont know how to get one and install it, i made a usb key bootable but dont know how to go from here...

isnt there a step by step on flashing your bios without a ultrabase or usb cd-drive.

Best regards

[andykrej]

If it shows up in sound drivers and drivers installed correctly, you should be alright and don't need a modded BIOS.

Which player are you using? I think the players with built in codecs like VLC and SMPlayer won't take advantage of the card.

[cleanerdk]

Hi andy

I cannot see any difference from before, hd on youtube runs like sh...

And other graphic intensive stuff runs like before...

still dunno what to do

What setup do you have??

Hilsen cleanerdk

[davekung]

Have the same issue here. Do not see any CPU utlization % drop playing 1080p from youtube in IE8 (32-bit)

I'm running Win 7 64-bit, with 64-bit Broadcom driver. (32-bit driver will not install at all)
Since Flash 10.1 beta version 10.1.51.95 is 32-bit only, could the 32-bit flash/64-bit driver/OS mix causing the problem?

[andykrej]

Davekung and Cleanerdk:

I think the beta flash plug in is far from ready. The movies play somehow, but if you download the clips to your harddrive and play them in a stand alone player, they should play flawlessly. I used jDownloader for downloading them

I'm using MPC (Media Player Classic) for playing HD material. If you go to play->filters during HD playback, you should see Broadcom listed as a Codec. Otherwise, something is wrong with the driver installation.

BTW. I'm also running x64, so that is not a problem.

[davekung]

I'm using MPC Home Cinema Edition x64. It is also suppose to support Crystal HD. I'll check out the filter setting when I get home.

BTW, the 1080p clip you download from youtube. Is it a mp4 or in some other format? I use Flashget 3.3 to download. I DL one of the Lady Gaga clips but already deleted it.

[cleanerdk]

Andy: I'm using MPC (Media Player Classic) for playing HD material. If you go to play->filters during HD playback, you should see Broadcom listed as a Codec. Otherwise, something is wrong with the driver installation.


Andy, i havent got broadcom listet in filters

And i think my palm rest is warmer now then before i installed the card??

[davekung]

I did not see Broadcom as one of the listed filters either, under MPC Home cinema.
Downloaded a 1080p video from youtube. CPU utilization is less than 50% using MPC Home Cinema and WMP/WMC while playing.

the braodcom driver suppose to include a program called diagtool.exe based on release notes. Did not see that program at all under Program files(x86).

For some reason, the 64 bit driver instaled under that directory.

[crashnburn]

Which players can use this chip?

Windows Media Player
Media Player Classic
wmplayer
mplayer2

VLC Players (I prefer using this all the time).

Others?

[claimui]

I purchased the updated BCM970015 from LogicSupply. I am using it in my x61s running Windows XP SP3.

I don't have any BIOS mods, and the card installed fine in the second mini-PCIe slot. I'm pretty sure (supported by other threads) that the second slot does *not* have any whitelist or blacklist.

After installing the card, I downloaded the drivers from the Broadcom website. For Windows XP, this automatically registers a DirectShow filter called "Broadcom Video Decoder." Any DirectShow media player (if set up correctly) can access this filter and use the hardware acceleration.

My x61s is also my HTPC, and the results are impressive. I am now getting smooth playback of h.264 videos at 1080p. Previously I had been using ffdshow-MT and CoreAVC for h.264 playback. With those codecs I was basically limited to 720p (sometimes 1080p if you turn off deblocking, and maybe blink your eyes every other frame hehe).

I mostly use MediaPortal as my media center/player, but I have also used it in MPC-HC and KMPlayer. I think we all know that Intel graphics are really finicky, and you may need to play around with different renderer settings to make it work (the standard overlay mixer seems to work best).

Although the Broadcom card supports MPEG-2 acceleration, I have jerky playback using it to decode Xvid files, so for now I only use the Broadcom card for h.264 and decode MPEG-2 in software.