Has nVidia caught up with ATI for DVD playback?

[StormRider]

I've been playing around with a GeforceFX 5200 and I'm really impressed with the quality of DVD playback. Low CPU utilization and excellent quality. I heard that the FX series features nVidia's VPE (Video Processing Engine) that offers even more hardware DVD acceleration than ATI cards.

I have had graphic cards based on RagePro, Rage128, Radeon, and Radeon 8500 and I think nVidia might have finally caught up with ATI in terms of DVD playback. Anyways, I'm wondering what you guys think.

 

[gururu]

Some guys might see an old wrinkled dried up grape, but I see a delicious raisin.

I hope you are not talking about the opposite sex!

ok, ati has had an excellent dvd player for years. They've employed techniques such as adaptive deinterlacing before anyone else had. BUT, as I understand, most of these features are now part of nvidias dvd software. the difference I suppose is that ati has had longer to tweak and optimize these features. I've never noticed a difference in dvd playback between my ati and my friends nvidia systems though.

gururu

 

[Rogozhin]

Well

I had a few geforce 4s to compare playback quality to my 8500 and using powerDVD with hardware enabled the 8500 looked much better-but i believe it is probably a different story with the 5200 since it is newer and probably has a better decoder built onto the board than the old geforce 4s.

rogo

 

[mcveigh]

the new nvdvd player is supposed to be good but that's all I heard on avs forums

 

[Fant]

Where can we download NVDVD?

 

[T9D]

..

 

[T9D]

..

 

[Eagle17]

does your 5200 include 10bit DACs? that has been one of the big reasons people use the ati cards to out put DVD and HDTV to Large HD displays. all of the GF4s and gf3s and earlier had 8 bit DACs and you could see a big difference.

I will have to go grab a 5200 and check it out... the big differenses are generaly in color depth and banding when you display the image on 30" display or larger... in fact the larger the more noticable. If you are using your 5200 with a 21" monitor and can't see a difference that would not be that big of a deal but at 80" (a common HD size) you are going to see night and day.. in fact you would probably throw your card away! (well that is a bit dramatic)

 

[ZimZum]

Originally posted by: Eagle17
does your 5200 include 10bit DACs? that has been one of the big reasons people use the ati cards to out put DVD and HDTV to Large HD displays. all of the GF4s and gf3s and earlier had 8 bit DACs and you could see a big difference.

I will have to go grab a 5200 and check it out... the big differenses are generaly in color depth and banding when you display the image on 30" display or larger... in fact the larger the more noticable. If you are using your 5200 with a 21" monitor and can't see a difference that would not be that big of a deal but at 80" (a common HD size) you are going to see night and day.. in fact you would probably throw your card away! (well that is a bit dramatic)

Yep, this is primarily the reason ATI remains the choice for HTPCs.

 

[StormRider]

Originally posted by: Eagle17
does your 5200 include 10bit DACs? that has been one of the big reasons people use the ati cards to out put DVD and HDTV to Large HD displays. all of the GF4s and gf3s and earlier had 8 bit DACs and you could see a big difference.

I will have to go grab a 5200 and check it out... the big differenses are generaly in color depth and banding when you display the image on 30" display or larger... in fact the larger the more noticable. If you are using your 5200 with a 21" monitor and can't see a difference that would not be that big of a deal but at 80" (a common HD size) you are going to see night and day.. in fact you would probably throw your card away! (well that is a bit dramatic)

Hmm, I don't know. I view DVDs on my PC monitor. Are you talking about the 12-bit Video DAC on the Rage Theater 200 that outputs to the TV? Does the Radeon also have 12-bit Video DACs to the PC monitor?

I have to do a more thorough comparison between my GeforceFX and Radeon 8500 but so far I'm very impressed with the GeforceFX.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: Rogozhin
Well

I had a few geforce 4s to compare playback quality to my 8500 and using powerDVD with hardware enabled the 8500 looked much better-but i believe it is probably a different story with the 5200 since it is newer and probably has a better decoder built onto the board than the old geforce 4s.

rogo

I agree - My Radeon 8500LE image quality is superior to my GF4 Ti4200 in DVD playback.

The GF4 is not bad by any stretch of the imagination - it is just not quite as sharp as the Radeon. Nvidia cards have a more "grainy" look to the playback of the movie from what I have observed.