AMD and NVIDIA has both been pushing for its support for the new high-res video formats with its latest graphics circuits. But the graphics cards’ task isn’t just about relieving the processor at video playback but also to deliver the best possible image quality. Silicon Optix is the company behind the well known video benchmark HQV and it has now released the first version of HD HQV which investigate graphics circuits’ effect on high-res video formats. At Anandtech they’ve taken a closer look at the new software and tested both AMD’s and NVIDIA’s latest circuits. The result was anything but satisfying as both manufacturers scored 0 points throughout all tests.
Even if some tests (deinterlacing) has no direct effect on most HD DVD and Blu-ray movies available today there are a lot of other HD material which is interlaced. Other important functions for HD video is noise reduction, which both circuits fail completely.
“We certainly hope AMD and NVIDIA will pay some much needed attention to their HD video processing and address the issues we’ve seen here. As many of the techniques used in standard definition video processing can be extended to HD processing, we hope that future driver updates will make things more interesting.”
There is still a lot to do here and the only positive about this is that rather few actually play high-res material on their PCs, but this will most likely change quite soon.
