DVD Quality Enhancement Summary
Graphs speak louder than words, so here is a chart with the HQV benchmark results:
| HQV benchmark | PowerDVD 6No Hardware Acceleration | 7600GTWith Hardware Acceleration and features enabled in driver | X1900XTX with Hardware acceleration and features enabled in driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| De-Interlacing | 10 | 30 | 30 |
| Detail | 0 | 10 | 5 |
| Noise Reduction | 0 | 20 | 20 |
| Pulldown | 13 | 45 | 45 |
| Scrolling Text | 0 | 15 | 15 |
| Total | 23 | 120 | 115 |
Purevideo has a 5-point lead over Avivo here, thanks entirely to a slightly sharper detail enhancement feature. This difference is hardly worth mentioning, and in a real world scenario you probably wouldn't notice.
I have to say that I personally think that HQV's benchmark assigns far too many points to the obscure pulldown types, but the final scores accurately show how close these competitors are to one another.
CPU Usage With DVD Playback
We wanted a thorough review of the DVD side of things, so we did a CPU usage test. The results were a little surprising when we ran a test clip and recorded the results:
Without hardware acceleration, CPU utilization hovered between about 16% to 30%. But when Avivo's hardware acceleration was enabled, it dropped to about 2% to 8%. That's a notable decrease.
Conversely, when Purevideo's hardware acceleration was activated, the CPU utilization rate did not change much. I suspect the culprit is the Detail Enhancement and Noise Reduction we enabled in the driver panel; when we enabled these features, there was a warning that it would tax the system.
Frankly, this doesn't make much of a difference to me personally. But if you're miserly with the power, or if you have a laptop and play a lot of DVDs, maybe a Radeon is a better choice.
