ATI Video Processing Upgrade

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has a hands-on look at ATI Catalyst 5.13 drivers for the Radeon X1800XL, with a focus on video quality. They say it's the greatest leap in video quality technology for ATI since the original Mach64-VT. They triple their HQV Benchmark DVD scores by adding diagonal filtering, unusual cadence detection, and even noise reduction. On top of the video quality improvements, the new drivers enable ATI's hardware H.264 support as well as hardware transcoding. Best of all, Catalyst 5.13 will be a free upgrade scheduled to be released to the public next week."

V 5.13

[matr0x_x]

Is actually a fairly minor change... the next version should be a FULL update.

Re:huh?

[Dster76]

From TFA:

In comparison, PureVideo has never been free. It starts off at $20 for the "bronze" edition with basic SPDIF out support or 2 channel audio, $30 for the gold version with 5.1 analog out, and $50 for the platinum version with DTS support. When price shopping for a new GPU, if you're going with NVIDIA you need to factor in the extra $20 that you wouldn't have to with a built-by-ATI card.

Here's a link to nVidia's PureVideo [nvidia.com] that seems to confirm that it

• isn't free
• does much the same things as the new free ATI software described in TFA

Re:Best of all, Catalyst 5.13 will be a free upgra

[Anonymous Coward]

nVidia's PureVideo costs between $20 and $50. Admittedly it includes a DVD player application, but ATI's drivers will be used by any standard DVD application anyway.

This rare '13th month of the year, the month of strange sorrows, the month of Grimuary' release includes the standard free drivers, and free stuff to activate what you pay a reasonable amount for with PureVideo.

Re:Scoring system odd

[hattig]

Blame the benchmark. You get full scores for cadence detection if the card has detected it before the car gets to a certain point in the video. Being faster doesn't matter if the other card is still fast enough.

The site hasn't assigned arbitrary scores.

The benchmark is an industry standard one, btw. It's probably not perfect, but a couple of frames here and there wouldn't alter the scores significantly in the end if the scoring was finer grained.

Re:Best of all...

[hawkbug]

I believe the point of that original statement was concerning the H.264 and DVD codec improvements compared to their main competitor, Nvidia. As you may or may not know, Nvidia charges money for their DVD codec:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html [nvidia.com]

I will never buy another ATI product again because I've been burned so badly by drivers in the past - however, I'll give ATI credit for not following in the greedy footsteps of their competitor, Nvidia. Charging for a DVD codec that's optimized for their hardware is just stupid. It's not bad enough they charge hundreds of dollars for the hardware? I applaud ATI for this move.

Re:free drivers? What a country!

[hattig]

Err, the equivalent nVidia software is $20 to $50, if you had read the article or other comments here. The base drivers are free, yes. The extra features are free on ATI's side, but not free on nVidia's side. Expect nVidia to fight back within a couple of months with better algorithms and free/cheaper software.

The same site gave nVidia the lead just earlier in the month, prior to these new drivers. Doesn't sound like they're paid off to me. The benchmark scores are how the benchmark defines them, and the site didn't make the benchmark. Your post is just a typical hysterical (and probably fanboy) overreaction that slanders a website that has put a lot of effort into showing what the latest drivers can provide for a user. Pretty sad, really.

Re:V 5.13

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really.

Ati's naming scheme is this: major version number is the last years number (2004=4, 2005=5, 2006=6 etc) and the minor version number is the month. On special occasions the realese special versions, like this 5.13 at the end of the year.

So, no, the version number says absolutely nothing about the amount of changes. The driver also have a 'real' version number displayed deep down somehwere in the control panel for real version number diehards.

Re:Best of all...

[Jerry Coffin]

I'll give ATI credit for not following in the greedy footsteps of their competitor, Nvidia. Charging for a DVD codec that's optimized for their hardware is just stupid.

There is a fundamental difference between the two though: ATI is providing this in the form of a driver that only works with ATI graphics cards. nVidia PureVideo, by contrast, is standard-based (admittedly not what you'd call an open standard, but a standard nonetheless) so it works with any video card that implements the standard.

IOW, ATIs offering is "free", but tied directly to their hardware. nVidia's offering isn't tied to any particular hardware and is paid for directly instead.

In most cases, "free" means you pay for it whether you want it or not.

Re:My main beef with the comparison..

[Anonymous Coward]

From Nvidia's site:

"NVIDIA PureVideo technology is available in the following NVIDIA graphics solutions:

* GeForce 7800 GPUs
* GeForce 6800 GPUs
* GeForce 6600 GPUs
* GeForce 6200 GPUs
* GeForce Go 7800 GPUs
* GeForce Go 7300 GPUs
* GeForce Go 6800 GPUs
* GeForce Go 6600 GPUs
* GeForce Go 6400 GPUs
* GeForce Go 6200 GPUs
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 540
* NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1400
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400G
* NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000 SDI"

And as far as I know the 7800 series hasn't added any more power to their H.264 decoding