ATI or nVidia? (1 Viewer)

[Paranoid Delusion]

I am with mpod on this one, had read the same reviews when getting my nvidia card.
Avivo sounds great, until you read that ATI are still trying to write drivers that fully support its possible functions.
Yes one day they may get everything right, so might Nvidia, for now my vote goes to Nvidia connected to LCD TV by DVI.

 

[Efros]

I'll throw my hat in with nvidia too, have had nightmares in the past with ATI drivers and software.

 

[gwood]

I have an ATI and have many headaches

I recommended a nvidia to a friend and it looks great, straight out of the box with the purevideo codecs

 

[Tech Geek]

Either ATi or NVidia should offer excellent quality if you stick to the latest generation and latest drivers.

I have an ATi X1300 based card and the drivers have given me no problems since the first update. The drivers that shipped with it had some bugs.

Also, the review link posted above favoring NVidia is an article from October... before the final ATi drivers were released. Later reviews you can find links for in other threads show the ATi Avivo to be better than NVidia Pure Video. Lower cpu use to playback video and better quality. Do a search... you should be able to find the links.

I had difficulty with ATSC recording/playback. My passively cooled Sapphire X1300 didn't support the 10GB/sec required for Microsoft's code at the stock clock speed. It's the slowest clocked X1300 so I guess it's not surprising. Other HDTV software worked flawlessly in all ATSC formats.

I found I could safely overclock the card to supply sufficient bandwidth but had returned the HDTV card because a defective part that came with it and haven't had a chance to replace the tuner card. I didn't get to test the system after adding overclocking so I don't know if that fixed the problem.

 

[Tech Geek]

I have an ATI and have many headaches

I recommended a nvidia to a friend and it looks great, straight out of the box with the purevideo codecs

Your sig says it's a 9550 which is pretty low end and doesn't support Avivo.
What problems are you having? I don't think that card supports 10GB/sec which can cause issues.

 

[gwood]

Firstly was it supposed to be 10MB/sec or GB??

The problems im having are/were non fluid movements in pan's on screen, and trying to decipher the best interlacing mode.

I now run it at 1125i (i think this is the same as 1080i) and it is bearable to watch. I have set the interlacing mode to none. I was trying best but couldnt really see any difference.

Do you suggest getting a better video card? I have mostly been watching High Definition TV in Australia.

 

[Tech Geek]

Firstly was it supposed to be 10MB/sec or GB??

The problems im having are/were non fluid movements in pan's on screen, and trying to decipher the best interlacing mode.

I now run it at 1125i (i think this is the same as 1080i) and it is bearable to watch. I have set the interlacing mode to none. I was trying best but couldnt really see any difference.

Do you suggest getting a better video card? I have mostly been watching High Definition TV in Australia.

HDTV on a low end card and you are having problems. Where have I heard this before? (see the ATSC related thread)

The AGP 8X slot only handles about 2.1 GB/sec so if you want HDTV resolutions I'm guessing that's one potential problem due to the way playback is handled by the mode MediaPortal uses for video (VMR9). It seems to need a lot of buss bandwidth.

However, the requirement itself is related to just memory bandwidth. The card has to deinterlace/scale the image and that's where the problem lies. Video in 19xx by 1080 24 bit color requires quit a bit of bandwidth just to display let alone do any processing on it. Width x height x color depth adds up in a hurry in HDTV plus deinterlacing or scaling.

If you use standard DVD resolution you shouldn't have problems on a low end card. But when you double the resolution vertically and horizontally you increase the bandwidth usage by at least 4 times. Then add deinterlacing and scaling without hardware support on many low end cards and your CPU is trying to squeeze that back and forth over a 2.1 GB/sec buss.

If you want HDTV resolution you're going to need a pretty serious graphics card. Notice, my PCIx X1300 will beat a 9550 but I still had difficulties with HDTV resolution and VMR9. My X1300 had just under 10GB/sec memory bandwidth at the standard clock speed but I had problems with live HDTV from MediaPortal.

 

[Tech Geek]

FYI, that means it's GB not MB and YES you should get a better card if not a motherboard that supports PCI express graphics cards.

 

[Judaz]

Much more impressive than purevideo is.

Sure? Reviews say the opposite... http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2551&p=10

:-P

Look at the date of the review. Driversupport has improved A LOT since then, and I have seen reviews where the new ATi cards gets score 123 of 130 points in the HQV benchmark which is really good. I have a Radeon X1300 and the de-interlacing and picture quality is superior to anything eles I have ever seen. I work at a computer hardware store so I have easy access to new grapihcs cards etc. for comparison and the new ATi cards are currently in a leauge of their own when it comes to video quality.

- Judaz

 

[Elf]

Well, to round off this topic let me say that I went for nVidia in the end - a 6200 in fact and I'm more than pleased with the results. TV quality is now immensely improved, even using the s-vhs connection. No more "looking through cotton wool" or digital smearing, tearing, juddering or combing. I can barely tell the difference between MP and my Sky STB any more!
While I'm sure the ATI/nVidia discussions will long continue as they have always done, I'm very happy with my setup and thanks for all the advice