AMD RDNA2 GPUS also will support AV1 Decode Hardware-Acceleration

Microsoft mentioned in a blog that 11th Gen Intel Core processors with Intel Iris Xe Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, but also AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics will support AV1 Hardware Accelerated Video.

AV1, which is developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), can reach 50% better compression than H.264 and 20% better than VP9 for the same video content. Enabling hardware support for AV1 allows users to get the benefits of this improved video codec, and shifting decode work from software to hardware typically reduces power consumption and increases battery life on mobile devices. mehmetkucukgoz_0-1602265445894.png Microsoft co-founded AOM with the goal of creating transformative, , open-source video codecs together with other leading technology companies. Here are the components required to experience hardware accelerated AV1 video on Windows 10:

• One of these new GPUs or CPUs:
  • 11th Gen Intel Core processors with Intel Iris Xe Graphics 
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs
  • AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Graphics (coming soon)
• Windows 10 build 1909 or later
• The AV1 Video Extension
• A web browser or other application with hardware acceleration support for AV1, including apps built on top of Media Foundation
• As is common with new features like this, you may need to update your graphics driver from time to time to get the latest features and improvements.

Once you have those pieces in place, you will see the benefits of hardware accelerated AV1 video as streaming services roll out more video content encoded with AV1.

AV1 is a royalty-free video coding format with a lot of potential in quality and saving bandwidth. AV1 offers improved compression compared to vp9 or hevc, the video bandwidth reduction can run upwards to 30 to 40 percent, without you seeing a difference.

AV1 is developed based on an Alliance that includes parties like Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. It could be the next big royalty-free codec for the future as an alternative for HEVC and VP9.