Quote:
Originally Posted by arfster
One key fact explains 99% of the differences observed in the article: by default, ATI 2xxx/3xxx series cards expand the colour space to PC levels (ie 0-255), presumably because they think most people will be viewing on a PC monitor. Note this doesn't apply to SD - ATI bizarrely expand HD but not SD, and you have to apply registry tweaks to get them to behave consistently (I've been complaining to their tech support for 9 months about this, but no resolution).
For a fairer comparison with Nvidia, I'd suggest reversing the expansion via brightness16/contrast86 (this uses the same bt709 method as the original expansion, so it's near lossless).
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We are actually aware of this, however this is a
real world article and we are detailing the relevant image quality with basic out of the box settings, or settings that either ATI or Nvidia have recommended we use. (there is a reason you have no resolution from your reports to ATI, they dont feel its a change people should be making).
Like everything, whether it is hardware or software there are always tweaks and (possibly subjective) improvements an educated enthusiast can make to have something run better (bios, registry etc). However for the majority of end users this will be irrelevant as they will never know a tweak like this, therefore it is pointless testing. The fact that ATI told us not to alter registry settings or panel settings beyond what we used is the only feasible way we can analyse the products. I mean we know some tweaks for Nvidia also, but we didn't use them either for exactly the same reasons.
If ATI feel the settings they provide are the ones that people should be using then this is the way we test it, the same with Nvidia. If we were to analyse something we had tweaked significantly to the point that only 1% or less of the populace would change then this becomes a totally irrelevant article.