NVIDIA Enables PureVideo on GeForce 6 GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 20, 2004 1:22 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Well, was it worth the wait? Considering that PureVideo came as a free feature on GeForce 6 cards, it's more like unwrapping an early Christmas present - one that we were promised eight months ago.
NVIDIA's image quality is pretty good for a PC DVD decoder, PureVideo delivered de-interlacing image quality that was equal to and in some cases better than what ATI brought to the table. And although we did not feature the comparison here, the NVIDIA PureVideo codec even offered better image quality than the latest DScaler 5 build.
Despite doing better than the competition, NVIDIA still is far from perfect with PureVideo. The Big Lebowski test was proof alone that there's still room for improvement.
The scaling quality and WMV9 playback were both quite competitive with ATI's offerings, although not strikingly better. With hardware acceleration enabled, WMV9 acceleration is promising and will greatly reduce the CPU requirements for high definition content playback.
Overall we're pleased with PureVideo, there's very little to complain about. We aren't as happy with it as we could have been, but we mostly have issue with the way NVIDIA handled the entire situation remaining quiet for far too long. Not to mention that there can't be too many happy 6800GT owners out there knowing that 6600GT owners will have lower CPU utilization when playing WMV9-HD files.
In the end, PureVideo is a positive feature for GeForce 6 owners, a verdict that we are glad we can finally give.
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phusg - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
Has anyone found a 6600GT card manufacturer that bundles nvDVD including the DVD decoder yet?akozak - Tuesday, January 4, 2005 - link
Hey Anand,Don't mean to poo-poo on your hardwork - but almost all of your images are using different frames.
a) Galaxy Quest - differences in star placements, planet alignment
b) Apollo 13 - head is shifted b/w images
c) Friends - characters shift - legs are different locations etc
In fact the only ones that look like they are the same frame show no differences.
Have you looked at the difference in frames? If you took one frame before or one frame after on one card, would it match up to the other card's image you already have?
b3roldan - Friday, December 31, 2004 - link
hi, I'm using a vanilla 6800 from inno3d w/ Forceware 66.93.I was just wonderin if you guys were also experiencing problems I've had with these games or if t'was just me.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
- Everything's black and white. Wondering if it has anything to do with nvidia's 0x32 Z stencil (shadowing technology).
MAFIA
- Walls are multi-colored, sometimes transparent
I've just upgraded from a 9800PRO 128mb, which worked pretty well with these games.
Just wonderin if there are others with the same prob... thx :)
Gatak - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
What nvidia or ATi ought to do is to prove a simplier interface and especially much better documentation on how to access the hardware directly.The GPU's are incredibly fast for lots of things. For example it would indeed be possible to do video encoding, photo manipulation effects (Apple core.image/video!) or even sound compression.
jago25 - Thursday, December 23, 2004 - link
Shame I'll never be able to use it..seeing as I don't use Windows.You can use a GPU to do anything. Might be a good idea to make it easier to do so rather than having to develop more codecs as that's a never ending job.
hellokeith - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
The article really needs to be corrected per the 6800 PCI Express vs 6800 AGP. People are talking about this on numerous HTPC/AVS forums and being mislead. Only the PCI Express 6800 has the new silicon.karlreading - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
ive jumped through the other pages from a comment on page one, so if this has already been answered, lynch me now:anand said he knows of no manufacturer that bundles nv DVD.
im pretty sure its on my bfg disc that came with me 6800GT OC ;)
thats me sorted then.
karlos
mikepers - Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - link
This should help:http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_purevideo_requir...
There's a link for the correct driver and the decoder and at the bottom a link which shows which cards support what. Sort of sucks that my AGP 6800 Ultra has less features then a 6600 card but it is what it is...
CrystalBay - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
Remember Buy.com ? Where are you Harvey!!!!tfranzese - Tuesday, December 21, 2004 - link
mcveigh, he provided the link to where you could find that for the ATi side of things. I'm curious about the S3 things, though it wouldn't surprise me if true.