Onboard Video Acceleration: ATi Vs. Intel Vs. nVidia

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Max Slowik
Kurtis
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Apr. 12, 2007

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Introduction

Video cards aren't just for playing games. Graphics acceleration is great for fragging, but for watching videos you need good video acceleration.

Such is the case with the increasingly popular Home Theater PC (HTPC). How stymied would you be if you spent over $1,000 on a computer to find that your previous $40 DVD player did a better job playing movies?

Dedicated video cards can be expensive while also introducing power and heat concerns, so having onboard hardware video acceleration is very appealing to the HTPC crowd. Just like set-top boxes, HTPCs are usually on 24/7, so any saved kilowatt hours are always welcome. The real improvement, though, is having less heat and therefore less noise-producing fans to manage that heat.

In the world of laptops, onboard video is often the only video option, so a chipset without good video playback might be a deal-breaker. While I'm looking at desktop motherboards here, the chipsets are common to both desktops and laptops so my findings will really be applicable across the board.

This review will compare the video playback performance of AMD's 690V, NVIDIA's MCP61, and Intel's G965 chipsets using CyberLink's StarCinema DVD player and codec. To rate the video as objectively as possible, I'll be using the HQV benchmark DVD, a collection of clips that highlight the many processes that video playback involves, and then rating them based on my findings.

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

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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?

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