ATI and nVidia crush high-end DVD players

Infested Nexus

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koen Crijns

ATI and nVidia crush high-end DVD players
HQV benchmark shows the overwhelming quality of current graphics cards

Until recently the most important reasons for purchasing a certain graphics card was either image quality or speed in 3D games. Nowadays the PC finds its way to the lounge and is used more and more as a multimedia centre. Because of this change in usage the quality of playing movies and video files is becoming an important factor in choosing a graphics card to power your system. Both ATI and nVidia have invested a lot of time and money in developing their video technology, and both claim to be able to produce the best quality. We found this a perfect reason to compare not only ATI’s Avivo and nVidia’s PureVideo, but also 12 stand alone DVD players, varying in price between $ 200 and more than $ 2000. We try to answer the question which is best for your new LCD television, a top of the range DVD player or a PC?

More... (hardware.info)

Mad Cow · 09-02-2006, 05:31 | posts: 1,097 | Location: Canada

Pretty cool, but I noticed that in most of the tests where nvidia and ati scored the same, the ati picture looked noticably better.

MasterBash · 09-02-2006, 05:59 | posts: 395 | Location: Quebec

Nice article, but I have a question...

lets say I would plug my tv to my pc... and I got a x800xl, would it produce the same quality as the x1xxx series? or is there additional special features that the x8xx do not have? I'm not talking about avivo converter...

Mad Cow · 09-02-2006, 06:00 | posts: 1,097 | Location: Canada

Without the AVIVO acceleration it should look very similar, if not the same.

MasterBash · 09-02-2006, 06:02 | posts: 395 | Location: Quebec

So your saying that it doesn't look the same? avivo acceleration makes a difference or are you talking about the converter? Would it be better than dvd players? I don't know much about this sorry lol

I'm thinking of using vga to components cables.

Mad Cow · 09-02-2006, 06:04 | posts: 1,097 | Location: Canada

I makes a pretty big difference on high resolutions. The review says it looks better than any dvd player.

MasterBash · 09-02-2006, 06:09 | posts: 395 | Location: Quebec

What does avivo acceleration does exactly? only lower cpu usage? I'm just talking about picture quality, thats all.

It'll still work fine if I use a vga to component cables? lol I should try it sometimes.

Sorry if my posts don't make much sense it's a bit late here...

nforced4good · 09-02-2006, 12:30 | posts: 1,261 | Location: NSW

it provides advanced motion compensation, sharpening up motion blurs where there are supposed to be none. for example

SniperDaws · 09-02-2006, 18:51 | posts: 2,567 | Location: UK

I can tell a diffrence using my old 9700pro, the quality is sooooo much better than standalone DVD/Divx players.

Joshua · 09-22-2006, 03:15 | posts: 6,830 | Location: Seattle, WA

Quote:

Originally Posted by SniperDaws

I can tell a diffrence using my old 9700pro, the quality is sooooo much better than standalone DVD/Divx players.

Agreed. . . I always just contributed it to the higher resolution. I can hook my laptop up to my plasma, and it only has an xpress200m onboard card, and it still looks 5x better than my philips dvp-642.

MasterBash · 09-03-2006, 02:12 | posts: 395 | Location: Quebec

So avivo isn't a big of a difference compared to other cards, I would've never thought they could beat high-end dvd players, which are made just for that.

Keith Wing · 09-22-2006, 23:18 | posts: 676 | Location: Saint Joseph, MO

I just bought my first HD TV. Does this mean that instead of buying a progressive scan DVD player I should just play my DVDs on my computer and hook the HDMI output on my video card up to the TV?

Keith

QuadCannons · 09-25-2006, 22:20 | posts: 2,534 | Location: NYC

Plus the fact that usually DVDs are hooked up via s-video or component cables, but even simple VGA cables will have better quality.

weston · 09-25-2006, 22:52 | posts: 2,765 | Location: U.S.

componant video has pretty good quality for standard definition, but for anything higher than that, you need a vga/dvi/hdmi/hdcp/whatever. and computers look better than DVD players based partly on their image scaling to the correct resolution. much better circuitry than letting the TV do the scaling

ROBSCIX · 09-26-2006, 00:40 | posts: 16,094 | Location: Guru3D Audio Lab

It was mentioned in the article that Nvidia drivers contain a Sharpness control and ATI's don't this is not 100% accurate, if you look through the drivers NO you won't find the sharpness control...THERE IS ONE! if you know where to look...this could be like where's Waldo...does anybody know what I am talking about? SO if you consider they used the ATI sharpness slider in the test but not the ATI sharpness slider it may have gave better scores.
TO recap ATI cards HAVE a sharpness Slider...could just be on the VIVO models...not sure about that I know mine has one...