[skeeterfood]

I'm seriously considering purchasing this new 50" DLP tv from Samsung (assuming it looks as good in real life as it looks on paper), which you'll notice has a DVI input. I know it's been proven that ATI has much better PQ than NVIDIA when using the analog VGA connector, but is there still a PQ difference when using the digital DVI connection?


I recently purchased a Refurbed Radeon LE with TV/S-Video out from newegg, but unfortunately it was DOA . They're now out of them, so I'm trying to decide what to replace it with...

 

[Namlemez]

I have no first-hand experience with this but:


The Radeon's advantages are not only in the output stage. It also has a superior hardware assist area and scaling engine, among other things.

 

[Michael Grant]

Yes, apparently the Radeon uses bicubic interpolation in its scaling engine versus linear scaling found in the GeForce, resulting in higher scaling quality, even with DVI out.

 

[gotapex]

ATI integrated all of the DVI on chip with the latest Radeons. It does not seem to be as high quality as the Silicon Image chip equipped nVidia cards. We've looked at the Radeon 7000, 7200, 7500, and 8500, as well as most of the major nVidia card manufacturers for the GF3, GF3ti200, GF3ti500, and GF4's. Your experiences, of course, could vary.

 

[da_nose]

Does anyone have experience hooking up any of these cards below to a DVI Monitor/TV for DVD playback? What cards yeild the best picture quality w/ DVI out? Activities I'd like to my HTPC for over time:

+ DVD Playback

+ Analog TV recording & PVR

+ (eventually) HDTV tuning and PVR (once hardware & drivers mature)

+ potentially web-browsing

+ 3D Games


I'm looking to buy one of these Monitor/TVs w/ DVI inputs:

+ JVC 48" I'Art AV-48WP30 (w/ DVI input)

+ Samsung HLM507W DLP


Display Cards I'm considering:

+ NVidia GeForce 4 4200 based card w/ DVI out

+ ATI Radeon 7500 w/ DVI out (perhaps All-In-Wonder)

+ ATI Radeon 8500 w/ DVI out (perhaps All-In-Wonder)


From reading this board, primarily w/ info on the GeForce 3 family, I'm led to believe that the ATI Picture Quality (PQ) is better, and the prior comment about ATI's scaling makes sense.


How does the PQ of DVI output of a GeForce 4 with Silicon Image chip compare to DVI output of a Radeon 7500 for DVD playback? Also how does text/internet browsing look w/ ClearType fonts under Win XP at high res?


Thoughts?

 

[Michael Grant]

There's really no reason to believe that the DVI circuitry itself will yield different picture quality between a Radeon and a GeForce.


If you're just displaying a simple Windows desktop, and the resolution and color settings are identical between the two cards, then the picture should be identical. Not close to each other, but identical. Any quality differences would manifest themselves as obvious pixel errors or inability for the monitor to sync, not as subtle quality differences; and would likely be corrected by using a higher-quality or shorter DVI cable.


If gotapex is trying to imply that the DVI quality is subtly different between the two cards---specifically when displaying, say, a 24-bit Windows desktop---then I would bet that somewhere in his tests there was some low-level difference in the software drivers or settings between the two cards, such as a software gamma correction. Gamma correction should be turned completely off in such a scenario.


Now with DVD playback, the situation is different. The DVI output stages will still produce identical results, but the hardware-based scaling algorithms that come before DVI will be different. That's where the Radeon-based scaling algorithms come into play.


For other video applications I would assume that the siutation is similar to DVD, but I don't know for sure.


For gaming, that's a matter of taste. Again, the DVI stage will be identical, and the video scaler will likely not be employed. So now we're left with the 3D engines. My understanding is that the GeForce wins for raw power, but the Radeon may be good enough, allowing you to enjoy its advantages in the DVD arena as well.