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."

Best of all...

[daVinci1980]

...is that a hardware vendor is releasing drivers for free?

Welcome to 2005, I realize things must be strange for you considering you've been frozen since 1930...

"Free"

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really free, we don't get the source or even the freedom to distribute it. When will these changes make it into fglrx btw?

and by released we mean for windows

[Surt]

Not to lesser operating systems, nor to open source of course.

Scoring system odd

[ironwill96]

FTFA: The Radeon X800 XL with Catalyst 5.12 failed miserably on both of these tests. The Radeon X1800 XL with Catalyst 5.13 flies through these tests with flying colors. Both XGI and ATI require a little bit of extra time to detect the 3:2 cadence in comparison to NVIDIA, but it's still fast enough to score a perfect score.

Their verdict from this:
Score
Tied 3rd place: ATI, NVIDIA, XGI (10 points)

So apparently their scoring system favors ATI from the get-go (read the article and you will see they knock Nvidia and XGI back if they take longer than the other, but as shown above they ignore the same discrepancy when it applies to ATI). Also, why are they tied for third!? Wouldn't that be tied for first?
I think this article is poorly written and i'm not going to trust the results until I see something from some other sites once a final release driver is out.

Re:Support for Older Cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

this will only work with x1000 series

Free for the decoder upgrade

[Bullfish]

The reason it is pointed out that this upgrade is free is that nVidia charges for its Pure Video codec packs. nVidia does not charge for normal driver upgrades. Frankly, I agree with the article, if you shell out for one of nVidia's high end cards, this should be given as a free pack-in. It is just gouging otherwise.

That said, the ATI cards are generally more versatile out of the box (in my opinion) than nVidia, which tends to make pure gaming cards.

Re:What video card is good?

[Jarnis]

Sounds to me like a broken videocard.

Working ATI videocards work fine with latest ATI drivers. I've seen a lot of broken ones (9600, 9600XT, 9800pro series all common) that exhibit very odd problems with certain driver versions.

Swap in another copy of the card and the drivers all work flawlessly.

Stop blaming drivers when your hardware fails. Warranty is there for a reason. Naturally do check first if your windows is b0rked, but it's fairly common to see failing vidcards. People never clean their fans, dust builds up, heat does it's job and then we have truly bizzarre effects - which sometimes only show with specific driver versions.

(I work at PC repairs. I see these 'ati drivers stopped working' computers every week. 90% of the time if the usual 'reinstall windows + latest drivers' doesn't work, its a faulty videocard, and the other 10% of time time it's a faulty motherboard...)

Re:Best of all...

[xtal]

Charging for a DVD codec that's optimized for their hardware is just stupid

It's only stupid if nobody pays.

Of course the Catalyst drivers are free

[Zantetsuken]

If hardware companies didnt release their new drivers for free, its likely nobody would buy their hardware, since you wouldnt be able keep the product drivers up to date (you get artifacts from your card, so your mobo manufacturer tells you to upgrade your drivers, and you tell them, ya, but I went broke buying the card, how am I supposed to afford the drivers?)