Ati vs nVidia :- Results beyond Gaming...

X-Caliber

Starter

Well, it all started when one of my IM and I were discussing on HD Movies and their capability of troubling Processor.

Soon we ended up into wild war, and then the search for Graphic cards ability beyond graphic performance began.

Graphics cards are all about 3D, right? Read most graphics card reviews, anywhere on the net or in print, and you'll see they focus almost entirely on 3D performance and features. But what else is there for the graphics cards to do?

One Word answer :- Video

Video on the PC is tremendously popular. Peer-to-peer networks / Torrents share large video files while web-based video (including the ever-popular movie trailers) expand rapidly thanks in large part to broadband connections.Now with the PC's emerging role as a media device for the living room, video becomes even more important.

Both ATI and Nvidia have been touting their video quality and performance lately, and both have chosen to market the video experience. Nvidia has PureVideo while ATI has Avivo. Both are catch-all marketing words that describe the companies video efforts, from hardware to software.

Today, we're going to take a look at the quality and performance of video with the latest generation of Nvidia and ATI cards. We'll look at CPU utilization with a variety of source material and describe some of our subjective and objective quality observations.


* All the Test machine and setup have been done from Extremetech

They had used,

Processor.....................................Athl on 64 3500+
Motherboard and chipset.................ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce 4 SLIX16)
Memory........................................2 x 512MB DDR400 (CAS 2-2-2-5)
Hard drive.....................................Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA Drive
Optical drive..................................ATAPI DVD-ROM Drive
Audio...........................................So und Blaster Audigy 2
Operating system...........................Windows XP Professional with SP2
DVD PlayBack................................PowerDVD, Windows Media Player.

ATI X1800XT with 6.1 Catalyst and Nvidia 7800 GT with 81.89 Forceware

First test :- Visual Quality and HQV

Both Nvidia and ATI gave mind blowing visual quality.
So the first results were out which consisted of The HQV DVD

The HQV DVD includes a series of tests that are meant to duplicate common challenges in broadcast video (and some DVDs), including de-interlacing quality, detail and sharpening, noise reduction, combined scrolling text and video, and various film cadence patterns.

A scoring guide helps you assign a specific number of points in each test, based on how well your video system handles the scene.



Theres a clear notation, the numbers speak for the respective cards. The winner in the HQV DVD is only one...and by miles ahead.

Nvidia performs much better in the HQV test with PureVideo decoder installed. Mind you, you need to purchase the DVD Coder. And still, ATI wipes the floor with them, scoring about twice as high. ATI's DVD playback is more flexible, too; any decoder that can enable hardware acceleration (practically all the popular ones can) enjoy the same playback quality.


2nd Test :- DVD performance

To judge video performance in DVD playback, they ran scene 15 from The Matrix Reloaded, where Neo fights a hundred Agent Smiths (starting at 55:07 and ending at 57:40). This scene uses a high bit rate and alternates between very fast action and slow motion, and is a pretty good test of the extremes of DVD playback. They recorded the total CPU utilization each second.

Have a look at the scene.



And then the Results....



Lesser the CPU utilization, Better the Card. Again theres only one clear winner. So is there any need to tell it..... aahh ?

3rd Test :- WMV9 Performance

They used a couple of hi-def (720p) clips from Microsoft's WMV HD showcase to measure performance. The two clips are movie trailers, one for Alexander and the other for the IMAX film Stormchasers. Both ATI and Nvidia have offered WMV9 acceleration ever since Microsoft added the hooks to make it possible.

Here are the Results:-





Clearly, neither graphics manufacturer has a substantial advantage in WMV9 acceleration. It's probably possible to find a specific clip in which one outperforms the other, but on the whole, looking not at a simple average but performance over time, ATI and Nvidia perform quite similarly.

4th Test :- Time for the most Important test :- H.264 Performance

Both ATI and Nvidia have promised H.264 acceleration for their graphics cards, but only ATI has released a public driver that enables it.

To enable H.264 acceleration on ATI cards, you have to use a special $15 Cyberlink Decorder



Result :-



This graph is the performance of the Radeon X1800 XT without the CyberLink hardware accelerated decoder

Tada ....Again we got a winner from these cards.

5th test:- The most widely used codec, no guessing, its DivX
DivX Performance

Codec used was 6.1



Results :-




No doubts the winner is still the same, but bit confusion.. ???

Geforce 7800GTX with Divx Player used hell lot of CPU...worrying
So nVidia users make sure you use other softwares instead of Divx Player.

Phew,,,.. ( ^_^)!

Final Thoughts

ATI Clearly dominated in almost all the sections, making nVidia to work really hard on it.

So for those who needs a card to perform beyond Gaming, only one simple Solution...ATI.

All thanks to Extremetech.com

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Dark Star

First of all Awesome Find I have 2 words for ya Well Done

The point u posted that ATI is clear winner in Video Plzyback test its right as it would be unfair to compare nVIDIA with ATI who excels in making TV Tuner card for quite a long time.

Hmm.. beyond gaming .. I don't think so nVIDIA plays game fast but several results stated that the Graphics are more prettier when played with ATI... and if u want all in one graphics card ATI has one big boss in it i.e. the
ATI Radeon X1800XL AIW[All in Wonder] which is now in budget segment and provide good frame rates even at max. setting in game ad has inbuilt FM Tuner,Tv Tuner blah blah blah.....

And as far as nVIDIA goes it also provide best gaming experience as SC's by Pratim prove's that they are also prettier and when it comes to price to performance ration ATI emerges as the clear winner as Sapphire/Powercolour card hardly reach 40k mark with the highest end as u can still find lots of nVIDIA card at 40k mark even some 79 series. SO if u are without a GPU and not much to spare to vendor then look no further then ATI or AMI[AMD+ATI]
X1800XL or if u had much to burn then look no further than 8800 GTS/GTX

X-Caliber

theres one more boss... ATI X1900 AIW ....actually i had aimed for this card but that was not available in bangkok that time, so i settled with X1900 GT....

TheGamer

Though i've been an ardent nvidia user and have used only one ATI card (9200SE) , I whole heartedly support this fact . ATI provides much better image quality with lesser performance drops .... I got to agree Oblivion looks much better in Sankhadeeps machine than mine even though i get equal or greater framerates ....

deathvirus_me

u owned a 9200SE ?? Hmm anyway . except the drivers , i'ma die hard fan of ATi .. the cards are simply awesome .. but they need to make more produsts with varied price range .. also .. support here is so low .. i'll feel a bit so so to get one card , had my old 9200 rma'd , and was later replaced after 2 months with a 9200SE ..

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TheGamer

yes i had it for three-four months after which i bought my 5600xt .... played Halo on it ..

deep

in oblivion i get less framerates than you because of my only 1 gb ram if i had 2 gb it would have been a different story altogether. x 1950 xtx always stays ahead in oblivion. -)

X-Caliber

The things not about getting high frame rates...its all about, The Sharper, crystal clear image....and ATI gives that...So for the more thrilling envirorment for movies...its way ahead than nvidia.....

God-o-God ...wished i had a sound card.....my Pc wuld had turned into excellent entertainment Center !!!