ATI behind in TV image quality

[Quitch]

I've recently been researching building an HTPC. Looking over articles at FiringSquad and Anandtech it would seem that ATI rank behind nVidia (with their PureVideo codec) for TV image quality. In the FiringSquad article they were actually beaten by XGI too!!

The more recent article from FS mentioned that ATI had some improvements for their TV quality in the pipeworks. Does anyone know anything about them, and how real those might be, or are we on the road to "3x faster!!!!" magical driver land?

Right now, I'm on the verge of buying up a nice, passively cooled, nVidia GeForce 6600.

[satein]

That was the test for R4xx series only... and you may need to read anothre updated review on Avivo at FiringSquad too because Avivo turns the result up-side-down from the last test.

[Quitch]

Are you certain? I could have sworn the review was dated December 2005.

Do you have a link? I can't seem to dig up this review.

[Hector]

I think this is the link you were looking for

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_catalyst_5.13_video_quality/

[Quitch]

Ta muchly.

I guess this now begs the question, what's the lowest end passively cooled ATI solution I can use that benefits from these changes? :)

[Mariner]

Ta muchly.

I guess this now begs the question, what's the lowest end passively cooled ATI solution I can use that benefits from these changes? :)

I assume the standard X1300 provides the same output quality as X1800?

Sapphire X1300 cards (http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/products/graphics_specifications.php?gpid=124)

The 256MB version of this card costs about 70 quid in the UK including VAT.

[Quitch]

I assume the standard cards provide the same codec featues as the AIW range??

[satein]

You may try searching for this ATi AIW 2006 PCIe edition (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2651). It's based on X1300. The link is to a review on Anandtech.