Does ATI Avivo really make a Difference?

[HMatuza]

Hello,

My question is, I have a Media Center PC and its got an old
GeForce 5700 Ultra AGP card in it and a ATI Theater 650 HDTV Tuner
card. If I upgrade to say a ATI X1550 card with Avivo will it make the
HDTV playback better (better picture, ect...)? Or am I just wasting
money?

Thanks for all your help,

Dan

 

[Ken Maltby]

Hello,

My question is, I have a Media Center PC and its got an old
GeForce 5700 Ultra AGP card in it and a ATI Theater 650 HDTV Tuner
card. If I upgrade to say a ATI X1550 card with Avivo will it make the
HDTV playback better (better picture, ect...)? Or am I just wasting
money?

Thanks for all your help,

Dan

The Avivo and PureVideo HD accelerations are primarily
to move the high complexity decoding from the CPU to
circuits running within the GPU. (and using some of the GPUs
excess capability, available when not running complex 3D
gaming graphics).

If you system is powerful enough and you don't mind
running it that hard, the CPU can do almost as well in
software. ( The Core AVC/H.264 Codec, is a good
example, it has even beaten some early hardware
approaches.)

But you might want to consider a HD 2600 Pro for
around $100, now that the R600s are out. That should
be a much better choice for a Media playback/HTPC.

Luck;
Ken

 

[First of One]

What do you mean by "HDTV playback"? You mean displaying the over-the-air
HDTV broadcast on your PC? HDTV tuning and display is all handled by the
Theater 650 card. The X1550 won't make much of a difference.