Best video card for DVD playback?

[DeepBlueJH]

Ok... I'm an occasional light gamer, but I do play DVDs on my computer quite often. I'm looking for a card that offers good gaming with top quality DVD playback.

I'm leaning in the direction of the Radeon 8500 or the new Radeon 9000.

I know the Nvidea GeForce 4 series is superior for gaming, but I've read their DVD playback isnt nearly as good as the Radeon's.



Any suggestions/comments you guys have would be appreciated... thanks

 

[DeepBlueJH]

umm.. anybody?

 

[HannibalL]

Same type of computer user as yourself and ATI are the only way to go for DVD. Quite simply outstanding DVD and now with the new catalyst drivers they have released excellent for gaming too.
You might hold off though because the Radeon 9700 is coming out. It will be signifcantly faster than the GF4 and you still get the excellent DVD. Unfortunately as with all new products you will be paying a premium (~$300) until the price drops. Its up to you, if you've got the money go for the 9700, if not the 128mb DDR Radeon 8500 is an excellent buy.

 

[DeepBlueJH]

the 9700 will definitely be out of my price range...

I'll probably go with the successor to the 8500, the 9000... I'tll be cheap to @ less than $150

 

[Mingon]

The geforce cards give excellent DVD quality, the cpu usage is just a little bit higher than with ati

 

[DeepBlueJH]

If I got a Geforce card, it would be a TI4200 64MB...

The Radeon 8500 isnt quite as fast in games, but should be better at DVDs, right?

 

[Cydewayz]

Word Mingon, ATI is no better than NVIDIA now when it comes to dvd playback--the geforce4 changed everything. Id personally go with a ti4200 becuase of it's cost/performance margin.

 

[DeepBlueJH]

any personal experiences, or are you just repeating what yovue read?

 

[Rand]

ATi, ATi, and more ATi.
If you want the absolute best DVD playback possible then ATi is the obvious choice.

nVidia is decent, though processor utilization will be a fair bit higher. Image quality is also good but alpha blending, and scaling just won't come near matching up to the ATi player. And overall image crispness and accuracy will be a bit better with ATi.

Ironically the best DVD playback on an nVidia board in available in the GeForce4 MX (Not GF4 Ti4X00), it can actually match ATi in terms of processor utilization and comes quite close in image quality though it's marginally behind.

Matrox will have higher processor utilization then nVidia, and therefore considerably higher then ATi. Image quality in DVD's tends to be a bit better then nVidia though, with the exception then it tends to cope poorly with scaling.
The Parhelia may be considerably better then previous Matrox cards in DVD playback, as it's GigaColor would be an almost perfect match for the color palette of DVD's.


nVidia will be pretty good, but if DVD playback quality is the single primary factor then ATi is the obvious solution. They've been the king of DVD playback for a long time, and deservedly so.

 

[Peter]

In CPU load during DVD play, it's ATi or SiS. These are the only ones that have motion compensation _and_ IDCT math inside the graphics unit.

Regarding TV-out quality, ATi's is superior to everyone else's, they have the best filters to make stuff look good on interlaced displays like TVs are. Haven't seen how the SiS 301 TV-out chip does in that area though.

regards, Peter

 

[DeepBlueJH]

after seeing how poorly the Radeon 9000 did on the benchmarks... I'm leaning more towards the Radeon 8500 now:\