# HW3 and Infotainment



## cnsf01 (Aug 13, 2019)

I am considering purchasing FSD. I already have EAP on my 2018 Model 3 LR AWD with HW2.5 and acceleration boost. 

Will upgrading to HW3 improve my infotainment experience at all? I read something about better backup camera performance, but nothing on Infotainment.

It’s a big investment with no justifiable benefit given EAP, otherwise.


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## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

It won’t affect your infotainment as the FSD computer upgrade is a separate thing. Model 3 has 2 main computers: one that drives the screen which includes nav, media, hvac and the other is the FSD system which is purely responsible for object detection and classifications. It passes along data to the main computer to help display the autopilot graphics on the main screen.
Hope that helps clear up any misconceptions


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Truly I don't believe you'll see any difference with the infotainment performance. Thousands of us have had the HW upgrade and I don't recall anyone commenting on better or different performance for the infotainment parts. Most issues with infotainment in the 3 and Y all seem to be SW related as they get better and then worse then better again with software over time. The backup camera has also changed over time with software. There might have been a little more clarity with the new hardware, but not enough you'd want to pay for FSD to get it. Your only real reason to pay that much money is if you want FSD.


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## EpsilonKore (Aug 16, 2018)

Other than performance of the EAP/FSD and camera/sentry performance, there is no impact to the tablet screen infotainment aspect (games, streaming audio/video) as it is a completely separate computer.


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## cnsf01 (Aug 13, 2019)

The comment on Sentry mode is interesting. I find Sentry to sometimes have limited resolution and is sometimes glitchy. I got a U3/Class 10 High Endurance Micro SD card, so I can’t imagine that is the problem. Does HW3 improve Sentry resolution and frame rate?


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## EpsilonKore (Aug 16, 2018)

HW3, like 2.5 manages the compression efficiency bia hardware acceleration. Unlike 2.5 it has a next level H.265 mpeg (vs older 264) compression for slightly enhanced frame rates, quality, and file compression all at lower CPU usage. This should have no effect on your storage device, if anything it may slightly decrease the need for top shelf transfer rates as the video file size is smaller. It can now handle more cameras at once more efficiently, so they can bring all of those online at once now without bogging down HW3s other duties.


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## cnsf01 (Aug 13, 2019)

Quite interesting. Couldn’t 2.5 video compression be upgraded to H.265 via a codec update? I would think the only limitation could be a lack of video ram to compress quickly, but my guess would be H.265 is more efficient and needs less computing power.


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

As someone who upgraded to FSD from EAP when it was on “sale” for $2k, my best advice is to wait. What you get right now isn’t worth the price of admission, so you might as well hold out longer.


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## cnsf01 (Aug 13, 2019)

Yeah, I kind of think that too. I can’t justify $5K more for software that may take another year or two before it is useful, without additional real benefits. I rarely use NOA. They need to reduce the price for me to consider it. The acceleration boost was a no-brainer where I immediately noticed the difference.


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

cnsf01 said:


> Yeah, I kind of think that too. I can't justify $5K more for software that may take another year or two before it is useful, without additional real benefits. I rarely use NOA. They need to reduce the price for me to consider it. The acceleration boost was a no-brainer where I immediately noticed the difference.


But Elon's intent is that as FSD becomes functional, the price will continue to go up. So you may actually comparing $5k vs $10k.

After having FSD for about 3 years, I have no issues with the money that I spent. Life is so much easier driving down the road with FSD.


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## SoFlaModel3 (Apr 15, 2017)

Ed Woodrick said:


> But Elon's intent is that as FSD becomes functional, the price will continue to go up. So you may actually comparing $5k vs $10k.
> 
> After having FSD for about 3 years, I have no issues with the money that I spent. Life is so much easier driving down the road with FSD.


Each price increase has come with notice before the increase, so it won't happen overnight.


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## cnsf01 (Aug 13, 2019)

I agree, but with the EAP I have, it has every function of FSD except for stop sign and traffic light recognition and turns in the city. Not sure I can justify the extra expense for something that doesn’t get me more. I would send my vote of confidence for 2-3k, not 5 unfortunately.


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## blackhawkdriver (Dec 23, 2018)

cnsf01 said:


> I am considering purchasing FSD. I already have EAP on my 2018 Model 3 LR AWD with HW2.5 and acceleration boost.
> 
> Will upgrading to HW3 improve my infotainment experience at all? I read something about better backup camera performance, but nothing on Infotainment.
> 
> It's a big investment with no justifiable benefit given EAP, otherwise.


No, there is no infotainment benefit. Actually, the backup camera is worse with HW3... much worse. Personally, if I hadn't purchased FSD at the time I bought my car, I would not have wasted the money on it, because that's exactly what it is, a waste of money.


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

blackhawkdriver said:


> Actually, the backup camera is worse with HW3... much worse.


How do you figure?


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## M3OC Rules (Nov 18, 2016)

I would definitely look at what you get today and decide if that's worth it. I would also assume they eventually give the FSD Beta to everyone with FSD but there is no guarantee they ever achieve level 4/5. Future pricing and performance are highly speculative.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

Ed Woodrick said:


> But Elon's intent is that as FSD becomes functional, the price will continue to go up. So you may actually comparing $5k vs $10k.
> 
> After having FSD for about 3 years, I have no issues with the money that I spent. Life is so much easier driving down the road with FSD.


It's not quite a pyramid scheme, but at times it feels adjacent to it.

For years now, FSD has not given much in features to the people who have it. Sometimes EAP has vanished as an option, and then it was a way of getting EAP. But whenever EAP was an option, the additional features from FSD were few if any. The incentive to buy before there were useful features was that the price would go up. The development of useful features was in part financed by people buying in, at a price that has generally increased over time (although with some flash sales along the way), even though that price increase is artificial--it doesn't reflect additional costs for Tesla or much in the way of additional benefits for the buyer.

In addition, features keep leaking from the more advanced packages to the less advanced ones. Remember the visualization of cones? Wasn't that supposed to be one of the first FSD features? But now AP has it. Smart Summon seemed like a natural for FSD...but EAP got it. It used to be that I couldn't set TACC below 18 mph with just AP...but then AP got that too, even though I'm not really supposed to be using AP in situations where setting TACC below 18 mph makes sense.

The one concrete, potentially useful thing that people have gotten for FSD is the upgrade to HW3, but that only applies to people who bought cars before HW3 became standard on all models! So that's a special case. It's not like cars with HW3 already get a discount of purchasing FSD.

I like a lot of the things that Tesla does, but these FSD shenanigans are a problem. Even if Tesla succeeds in getting L4 autonomy in the next few months, their past history of getting people to buy vaporware on the prospect that the vaporware would get more expensive before finally becoming real is shifty. Yes, it's pretty common to be able to get a discount on software that's not yet developed by purchasing in advance, but this has been much more extreme than is typical.


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## EpsilonKore (Aug 16, 2018)

cnsf01 said:


> Quite interesting. Couldn't 2.5 video compression be upgraded to H.265 via a codec update? I would think the only limitation could be a lack of video ram to compress quickly, but my guess would be H.265 is more efficient and needs less computing power.


Yes 2.5 probably could do H.265 in software, but it lacks hardware acceleration, so the cpu would have to handle it, not the video accelrator/gpu that is far more efficient . The cpu on 2.5 is already maxed out with its current duties so this will more than likely never happen, nor should it as its a bad use of cpu cycles.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

Ed Woodrick said:


> But Elon's intent is that as FSD becomes functional, the price will continue to go up. So you may actually comparing $5k vs $10k.
> 
> After having FSD for about 3 years, I have no issues with the money that I spent. Life is so much easier driving down the road with FSD.


Except he already has EAP. Which means he has 95% of the same features you do. The only thing you have is stop sign and stop light stopping.

He would literally spend $5k and have almost zero additional functionality (not counting visualizations as functionality) beyond the stop light and sign recognition.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

cnsf01 said:


> I am considering purchasing FSD. I already have EAP on my 2018 Model 3 LR AWD with HW2.5 and acceleration boost.
> 
> Will upgrading to HW3 improve my infotainment experience at all? I read something about better backup camera performance, but nothing on Infotainment.
> 
> It's a big investment with no justifiable benefit given EAP, otherwise.


I've had HW 2.5 and HW 3.

There is Zero difference in infotainment.


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