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
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.
We recently took a look at budget video acceleration as part of our GeForce 8400/Radeon HD2400 review and found that even these relatively cheap cards performed video acceleration exceptionally well. As expected this great performance continues on the midrange parts and there are considerable drops in CPU usage with PureVideo or Avivo acceleration enabled. In Blu-Ray playback the AMD HD2600 XT is ahead in performance by a few percent and this gap extends further on HD-DVD, a media that Radeon’s excel on. It is also worth considering the practical advantages which the Radeon offers should the card be purchased for a media system. Like the 2900 series the 2600 series allows a user to output video and audio from the DVI port through a small convertor to a HDMI cable. As a result, the 2600 is easier to connect to a HDTV than the Geforce based system which would require one cable for video and another, connected to the soundcard, for audio.
