Onboard Video Acceleration: ATi Vs. Intel Vs. nVidia - Articles / Reviews

Articles

Event Coverage | Editorials | Guides

Onboard Video Acceleration: ATi Vs. Intel Vs. nVidia

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Max Slowik
Kurtis
N/A
Apr. 12, 2007

Specifications

<< Previous

Next >>

Methodology

In order to make rating video playback more universal, HQV includes a checklist along with their videos. Most of the clips are scored pass or fail, and the number of points each clip is worth varies depending on the importance. For example, jaggies can be severe and are easily noticeable, so getting a pass there is worth more than getting a pass on noise reduction.

The actual importance of each category varies from person to person, and screenshots really don't do justice to the quality of video acceleration. The performance notes provide insight beyond the total scores alone, and the included screenshots are examples of good and bad video acceleration.

Benchmark Results

HQV Score

HQV scores video playback from 0 to 130 points.

HQV

Total Score

ATi 690V

Intel G965

nVidia MCP61

Score

130

Jaggies

Jaggies are staircase-looking artifacts that show up on the edges of surfaces that contrast each other. A good video accelerator should smooth them out most of the way without diminishing the details nearby. No matter how good the processing is, completely getting rid of jaggies isn't likely.

No chipset succeeded at perfectly camouflaging pixelation around contrasting lines and object edges, but the AMD 690V did the best of the three. The NVIDIA MCP61 was the worst here, with lines cutting through the jaggies making it seem like bad interlacing.

While the Intel G965 technically had the smoothest lines, the locations of the smoothed lines varied or shifted position and made edges ripple and bounce.

Moire

Moire is a product of bad video correction where the accelerator finds patterns in the video and enhances it. This makes rings of light or dark show up looking like optical illusions.

All the chipsets demonstrated moire to some degree. The AMD 690V handled it best; moire appeared for less than a second and only at the very beginning of playback before it was adapted to and corrected for.

Detail and Noise Reduction

Details can often be erased or nullified when video acceleration attempts to enhance or correct grainy or blurry video. Noise is where spots of the video look to be darker, brighter, or different colored, like when broadcast television doesn't come through clearly.

The AMD 690V showed the best detail in all circumstances, although when correcting for noise where motion was high it did produce some weak halos around the edges. There were no halos around any of the objects handled by the Intel G965, but the amounts of noise were always excessive. Both chipsets handled noisy video well enough to improve detail, even if the Intel G965 did not succeed with reducing the noise.

The Intel G965 added some grain to all video, even very clear video.

The NVIDIA MCP61 seemed to both worsen film grain and remove object detail.

Film Cadence

In order to show smooth video on a television, a DVD player converts various formats that operate at different frame rates to the television's frame rate. For example, most American films are played at 24 frames per second, where as American televisions operate at about 30 frames per second. In order to stretch a movie's FPS to run on television, one frame out of every few will be repeated. When there is an error in this process, the video and sound play at different speeds and often the video appears jerky.

Different formats should have specific frames repeated in specific patterns; this is the cadence of the video.

The AMD 690V did the best, but none of the chipsets were able to reproduce all of the film cadences faithfully, universally faulting on anime, cartoon, and other less common cadences. The fault was similar with all chipsets: the video staggered. It looked like it was running at 10-15 FPS.

Scrolling Text

Scrolling text, like weather bulletins, is generally the hardest for video accelerators to reproduce well. It combines high contrast with motion and eyes are especially well-trained to recognize text.

The Intel G965's text was the clearest one frame at a time, but the rippling/bouncing jaggies were severely distracting.

The halo artifacts produced by the AMD 690V were most noticeable around scrolling text, but the video was otherwise smooth.

Here the NVIDIA MCP61 proves that it shouldn't be used for any kind of video acceleration, with the text looking shattered and the video tearing quite visibly.

Tearing

Tearing is the phenomena of only a partial frame being rendered. This means that the top or bottom half of the screen changes without the rest following. Because it only lasts for a single frame it is usually ignorable, but it can be quite distracting if it persists.

The NVIDIA MCP61 showed tearing constantly, followed distantly by the AMD 690V when there was a lot of motion in the video, and the Intel G965 tore almost no frames.

<< Previous

Page 2 of 3

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction to Video Acceleration
Page 2: Methodology & Benchmark Results
Page 3: Conclusion

Subscribe to Editorials [more info]

Add Comment

4 User Comments

1 - Posted by Kurtis on April 12, 2007 - 9:20 pm

http://digg.com/hardware/HTPC_Onboard_Video_Qualit...
If you liked the article, please Digg it!

2 - Posted by jenny22 on April 22, 2008 - 3:34 pm

i have been trying to play the desperate housewives game...but it always says fail on video acceleration....so i downoaded the direct x 9.0 c....i kept trying to play it after the download but it keeps saying fail on the video acceleration....what do i have to do to play this game?....please give me an accurate answer for my question....i am desperate to play this game....

3 - Posted by Kurtis on April 22, 2008 - 6:17 pm

Can you tell us your computer specs?

4 - Posted by Max Slowik on April 24, 2008 - 4:32 pm

You might not have a 3D card, and most integrated video systems won't be able to run the game. If you don't know if you have a 3D card, do you have problems playing any other games? Like, can you play the Sims or whatever?

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.