HD Video Playback
Video playback testing was performed on the following system:
Abit AN-M2HD
AMD Athlon FX-62
Asetek Vapochill LS
2 x 1 GB Patriot PC2-8500 @ DDR2-800 4-4-4-12
WD Raptor 74 GB
Samsung 80Gb SATA Drive
Benq 16x DVD Writer
LG Blu-Ray Writer
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player
Viewsonic VP2330wb
Enermax Galaxy 850w PSU
Windows Vista Ultimate
Forceware 158.45 (Vista)
Catalyst 8.39 (Vista)
Nforce 14.10
Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1
PowerDVD 7.3
Test 1: Blu-Ray: Casino Royale Chapter 2 (Chase through the construction site). Casino Royale is encoded in High Definition 1080p format using MPEG4 AVC compression (rather than Mpeg 2 which is used on older Blu-Rays) and comes on a dual layer (50 GB) disc. The aspect ratio of 2.40:1 is used with letterbox bars at the top and bottom of the 16:9 image.
Test 2: HD-DVD: Planet Earth: Fresh Water Chapter 1. Planet Earth is encoded in High Definition 1080p format (VC-1) using a dual layer 30 GB disc. The aspect ratio used by this disc is 1.78:1.
For a few months now the Nvidia 8600 series has been powering our media centre PC’s Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback. It's advanced HD video acceleration technology really took the system to a new level and allowed us to experience flawless playback on a mid-range CPU for the first time. The only down side was the cost which when combined with the other PC components made it more economical to buy a standalone player, especially if the system is not being used for gaming. With the launch of the 8400 and 2400 series that could all change as they bring full HD video acceleration to a new price point. This combined with their lower power consumption and reduced size makes them even more attractive to the movie/music lover.
As our results show the playback of each media type without acceleration is very demanding. We are using one of the fastest AMD CPU’s available, a dual core 2.8 GHz FX-62, and CPU usage regularly reaches 90% in Blu-Ray playback without acceleration. However enabling PureVideo or Avivo within PowerDVD changes the experience completely and the CPU usage drops considerably. There isn’t a lot to separate either card and on every measured statistic performance is within 1-3%, with a slight advantage for the Radeon.
HD-DVD is not as demanding to play back as Blu-Ray however we still see well over 60% CPU usage when viewing the Planet Earth disc. As noted above, video acceleration results on Blu-Ray were very close; the same cannot be said of HD-DVD playback where the Radeon takes a huge lead in CPU usage. The 8400 results are still very impressive and open up the possibility of performing a few other tasks whilst watching a disc but they pale in comparison to the 2400 XT which at times has near zero CPU usage. Not only this, the average CPU usage also remains in single figures and is a third of that being experienced on the GeForce based system.
Before we move on to the conclusion of the review we wanted to make one further observation regarding the playback of each disc. Both cards produced an excellent, crisp, HD image however there was a more vibrant palette apparent on the Radeon at default settings which made it slightly nicer to watch on than the 8400. With Nvidia's forceware vibrancy option this could be adjusted easily enough however.
Thankfully all cards remained inaudible when watching high definition video content on our media pc system.
