The Look of Perfect: Analysis of Graphics Accelerators Performance During Media Playback
NVIDIA vs ATi, you will not guess the results on outcome of this battle...

Today, a PC cannot be imagined without capabilities for playing multimedia content. Even cheapest entry-level PCs are equipped with an audio adapter, let alone a graphics core. The leading developers of computer chips are trying to endow the modern PC with a still broader range of multimedia capabilities to entice users into upgrading their hardware.

Products with rich multimedia functionality are not necessarily, by the way. For example, a few years ago Intel introduced its integrated 7.1 audio controller called Azalia that could output audio to progressive speaker systems and supported a number of innovative technologies. ATI, the graphics division of Advanced Micro Devices, has introduced an ATI Radeon X1250 graphics core integrated into AMD 690 chipsets which allows to connect modern TV-sets to the PC via the new HDMI interface.

Having a lot of multimedia features is good, but the quality of implementation is no less important. The sheer support for 7.1 audio doesn’t guarantee that modern games and movies will have a high-quality sound – you need an expensive sound card for that. As for HDMI support, you shouldn’t expect a PC with an entry-level CPU and an integrated graphics core to transform into a home theater after you add a HDMI connector to it. More likely, you’ll have to buy a standalone graphics card and a more advanced CPU.

It is about the quality of implementation that we are going to talk in this review.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Xbitlabs.com

Eric