Mastiff
11-18-07, 12:10 PM
I promised to post what I got out of my private duel but can't find which thread I promised it in, so I'm starting a new one.
The task was to see what card had the best HD image with VGA output to my projector. I first set up the beast as good as I'm able to (which is probably far from optimal, but then I'm not a wizard, and my resident wizard is busy this side of New Year's Eve) on 1920x1080i, and the next test showed me that I probably wasn't that far off from where it should be. I used the Nokia Monitor Test both to check the setup and to look for a difference in image quality there. I wasn't able to discern the cards. Period. I'm not saying that they were exactly alike, but they were so much alike that I could not say which one was better than the other. That should mean that the comparishment would be pretty fair, right?
So I used the Blu-Ray of Spider-Man 3, ripped to hard disk, and played it back with the two computers (I used a KVM switch that was activated with two presses of control on the keyboard and went back a few times so I should loose track of what computer I was watching (half blind test?)): My old two and a half year old HTPC with a single core 3.2 P4 CPU @ 3.75, and my new HDPC (quad core overclocked). The old one had the Radeon HD2600, the new one had the GeForce 8500. Of course this isn't scientific since the Barco isn't color calibratet and fully set up for the ATI (it's actually professionally set up for my old GeForce 6600), so I won't comment on colors. And movement wasn't compared since the old computer has problems keeping up, so movements are slightly jerky (judder, I guess).
So what's left? Well, the two things I wanted to check: Detail and sharpness. And I was not able to see any difference in detail worth noticing. The decision came on sharpness. When I first started up my new HDPC I was a bit disappointed with my GeForce 8500 since the image seemed too soft. And hooray: The ATI has a very noticeably sharper image in movies. Period. Which means that the 8500 goes into the old HTPC, which is on it's way to become my son's new WoW PC. So there you have it. One of one users choose ATI Radeon HD2600 in a very unscientific test! Which should probably change the market totally for graphics cards... :D
The task was to see what card had the best HD image with VGA output to my projector. I first set up the beast as good as I'm able to (which is probably far from optimal, but then I'm not a wizard, and my resident wizard is busy this side of New Year's Eve) on 1920x1080i, and the next test showed me that I probably wasn't that far off from where it should be. I used the Nokia Monitor Test both to check the setup and to look for a difference in image quality there. I wasn't able to discern the cards. Period. I'm not saying that they were exactly alike, but they were so much alike that I could not say which one was better than the other. That should mean that the comparishment would be pretty fair, right?
So I used the Blu-Ray of Spider-Man 3, ripped to hard disk, and played it back with the two computers (I used a KVM switch that was activated with two presses of control on the keyboard and went back a few times so I should loose track of what computer I was watching (half blind test?)): My old two and a half year old HTPC with a single core 3.2 P4 CPU @ 3.75, and my new HDPC (quad core overclocked). The old one had the Radeon HD2600, the new one had the GeForce 8500. Of course this isn't scientific since the Barco isn't color calibratet and fully set up for the ATI (it's actually professionally set up for my old GeForce 6600), so I won't comment on colors. And movement wasn't compared since the old computer has problems keeping up, so movements are slightly jerky (judder, I guess).
So what's left? Well, the two things I wanted to check: Detail and sharpness. And I was not able to see any difference in detail worth noticing. The decision came on sharpness. When I first started up my new HDPC I was a bit disappointed with my GeForce 8500 since the image seemed too soft. And hooray: The ATI has a very noticeably sharper image in movies. Period. Which means that the 8500 goes into the old HTPC, which is on it's way to become my son's new WoW PC. So there you have it. One of one users choose ATI Radeon HD2600 in a very unscientific test! Which should probably change the market totally for graphics cards... :D