ATI Avivo and Nvidia's Purevideo Dissected

[erikhtpc]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...deo-dissected/


Conclusion: Avivo slaughters Nvidia

"But frankly, when it comes to DVD playback with these cards, Avivo is vastly superior. It's not perfect, but even with its quirks it stands head and shoulders above Purevideo for the following two simple reasons:
Pulldown Detection. Purevideo requires the user to pay extra for the Purevideo decoder in order to enable pulldown detection, while Avivo comes with this ability for no extra charge. 3:2 pulldown detection is a pretty darned important feature when watching DVDs, you're definitely going to notice a quality loss without it.
Noise Reduction. Purevideo offers absolutely no noise reduction. Avivo offers excellent noise reduction. Noise reduction is another quality feature that will make a big impact on the visual quality you experience when watching DVDs on a PC."

What do you all think. Looks like a switch to ATI may be next for us...

[HomeyFour]

Well its not quite a fair comparison. They say "vastly superior", but only because you have to pay extra for the PureVideo decoder. Nvidia has marketed it this way, so its not quite fair to call Avivo so much better, since the comparo is apples to oranges. Second, in my PureVideo decoder settings, I see DNR options. ??

[samundsen]

There is something not right with that article from Toms. Take a look at the following comparison between nVidia and ATI:

http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/artic...0_DVD_players/

Their conclusion is vastly different, but the tests seem almost identical. In fact, many of the screen shots are identical, but they come to totally different conclusions.

For instance, compare the two sections on sharpening, and look at the screen shots.....

http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/artic...DVD_players/10

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...ted/page6.html

And noise reduction:

http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/artic...DVD_players/11

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/12/...ted/page7.html

The hardware.info article appears to be the oldest of the two, and they have much better screen shots, but they obviously are the same images.

The hardware.info article gives both a 10 score for noise reduction, while Toms give ATI 10 and nVidia 0.

[samundsen]

In fact, looking a bit closer at the images, Toms hardware just cropped out the watermark from the hardware.info images.....

[merrypig]

This is one of Tom's hardwares' most unconvincing reports IMHO.

[fmharr]

I have to say that back in the days that I had my ATI AIW-9800 Pro that my video was a little better then what I have now.

The big difference that I have seen with switching from the ATI to nVidia is CPU utilization.

With the 9800 my cpu was 2 - 8 % on average.
With the 6800 my cpu is 30 - 45 % on average.

That's a MAJOR difference in my opinion.

Mike