Avivo vs PureVideo @ Driverheaven

quite interesting. its almost enough to make me reconsider ATI. Why they did not adjust the colors is beyond me, any videophile should be able to correct that. what was interesting to me was that the detail level increased somewhat when Nvidia enhancement program was used. it It may be that ATI still has the prettier cards (they had better sense they are usually left in the starting gate for everyone to look at)
 
Thanks for the comments guys. We put a lot of work into getting the High Def images and making them available for everyone to download. I dont think anyone has done that before, glad you liked them... hopefully it helps a lot of people when deciding which type of card suits them best.
 
that would be interesting from a media PC cooling/noise perspective. I would personally be interested in see you guy play with the colors on the cards. To be honest I wasn't happy with ether and I think you guys hit it on the head when you said they need something in between. if the ATI 3870 could be tweaked to where it looked better I would seriously consider it for several options. That was the only thing lacking in the review is how much you could fix of the colors. I do understand the reasons for using the default settings though
 
Ok, your comments have been noted. We will look to fit in some testing on colour changes in the next article as well as the power consumption. The current plan is to let ATI/NV do a little work on their drivers and then retest (NV are already making changes based on the article content). As soon as there is something new to say we will get it published :)
 
Interesting. I'll agree 100% with the review... in a nutshell, ATI has the edge with detail, but nVidia has more realistic skin/warmer tones. But this is purely nitpicking, as I don't think that either will disappoint when used for playing HD content on a larger TV.
 
I would like to see what it looks like when decoded by the CPU, instead of a graphics card.
 
The constant and, I believe, purposeful softening of the image when viewing HD material using PureVideo while enhancing colors is one of the main reasons that I switched back to ATI from Nvidia. I've posted about this before after trying an 8600GT and an 8800GTS (non-G2) in my main HTPC/gaming computer. I was using a 1900XTX and an 1950pro prior to that and I enjoyed the HD image on those much better than either Nvidia card.

The PureVideo effects that actually made standard DVDs look a bit better on the Nvidia cards (I had a 7800GT prior to my 1900 cards), mainly due to smoothing out of low res artifacts and color saturation enhancements, completely lost all appeal to me once HD material (whether from HD DVD/Blu-Ray material or hi-res MKV or WMVHD files) was introduced and my viewing focused on that. I was shocked at how much less detail I was seeing in the same material with my Nvidia cards than I had with my earlier ATI cards that I thought I was upgrading from. I willingly downgraded in gaming performance on my main computer to drop down to a Radeon 3850 when the 3870s were still impossible to get just to get that detail and picture sharpness back that I was missing with my GeForce cards.

Again, I tried to explain this in several prior postings both here and on the AVS Forum, but people kept bashing me saying that I was pro-ATI and that they were all now the same in image quality. I'm sure some people like the more vibrant color saturation in HD material that NV brings to the table, but I like HD for the detail that it brings out in images and I've always felt that ATI has just done a better job of keeping that detail intact and presenting it better. You can always dial up the color saturation but--since my main HTPC is connected to a (now aging) Darkchip2 based DLP rather than one of the older LCDs projectors--I've never really felt the need to. Truth be told, the same differences were even well visible on my LCD monitors. I'll likely be upgrading my old Optoma DLP to a Panasonic AX200u LCD soon with a high contrast screen. I'm hoping to continue the success with the ATI cards. I've never been a fanboy of either company (though people seem to want to peg me as one no matter which hardware I choose). I'll always choose the hardware that gives me better performance for my dollar. Period. Sometimes that performance measurement is more subjective than others and, now that my focus has moved from 100% hardcore gaming as I've gotten older, I value image quality much more and I'm willing to sacrifice a few more frames per second to take the time to enjoy the images I'm looking at even more than I did before...

Last note is that I'm well aware that ATI has had some issues lately with their high end AF and AA rendering picture quality on the gaming front but, as Nvidia has finally caught up in gaming image quality, I'm sure they will get back on the ball eventually. Again, multimedia performance is now much more of my focus and I'm glad that both Nvidia and ATI are putting so much more time and energy into their products on this front than ever before. The competition can only be a good thing for all of us consumers in the long run.

Good information here.
 
Veridian3 said:
Do you mean how much power the 3870 and 9600 draw when decoding HD content?
Click to expand...

That and TOTAL system power consumption.


Ok, your comments have been noted. We will look to fit in some testing on colour changes in the next article as well as the power consumption. The current plan is to let ATI/NV do a little work on their drivers and then retest (NV are already making changes based on the article content). As soon as there is something new to say we will get it published :)
Click to expand...

Thanks I want to see what kind of power envelope there is going from all CPU to GPU decoding.
 
I own both nVidia and AMD (ATi) graphics. This isn't a recent thing either. I've owned products from both companies going back some years.

I've got three computers; one has an 8800GTX, one has an 8800GT and one has dual overclocked HD 3850s.

I have a slight preference for ATi in multimedia applications and nVidia has more consistent gaming performance across a wider variety of titles with filtering active. I'm happy with all the cards I currently own.

Again, it was a good article and I look forward to seeing DH expand more fully in this direction.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top