is Nvidia Purevideo and ATI AVIVO H.264 the same ?

Paul11 · 30 Jan 2006 at 16:24

is Nvidia Purevideo and ATI AVIVO H.264 the same ?

for a HTPC displaying to a 50" screen

Robert · 30 Jan 2006 at 17:36

No. Purevideo has been around for a while, whilst H.264 is HD based.

Dave2150 · 30 Jan 2006 at 17:36

No, its not. NVIDIA cards cannot decode H.264 media at all im afraid.

Paul11 · 30 Jan 2006 at 17:52

is one better than the other ?

if im building a HTPC box, which would be the best option ?

D.P. · 30 Jan 2006 at 17:53

Dave2150 said:
No, its not. NVIDIA cards cannot decode H.264 media at all im afraid.

yes they can, there just isn't a driver around at the moment that supports it officially. Wait for the 85 series.

To the OP; basicly there is no difference, except at the moment ATI drivers support H.264 decoding while we are still waiting for Nvidia drivers to come out that support this. There are some IQ differences between AVIVO and PUREVIDEO: purevideo has much better deinterlacing quality being the main difference. Better drivers may fix that.

mmj_uk · 30 Jan 2006 at 18:30

Put simply, PureVideo > Avivo.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/01/07/nvidia_decode_h264/

Paul11 · 30 Jan 2006 at 18:44

so if i were looking for good video and HD video playback and gaming, which would you go for ?

i would have liked to go for a x1800 for the gaming aspect

D.P. · 30 Jan 2006 at 19:25

Paulus said:
so if i were looking for good video and HD video playback and gaming, which would you go for ?

i would have liked to go for a x1800 for the gaming aspect

Depends on budget etc. With Purevideo you can get full H.264 from a 6600GT, with Avivo this is only possible with a X1800XT or above.

If H.264 is important I would stick Nvidia cards for the time being. They have better deinterlacing IQ:

The subjective numbers add up to pretty much summarize our experience with ATI's Avivo at this point. While neither ATI nor NVIDIA produced a perfect solution, at this point, Avivo is definitely a step behind NVIDIA's PureVideo in terms of de-interlacing quality.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2551&p=1

A 7800GTX 256Mb with usual clock speeds (like 460-490) is as fast as an X1800xt. Overclocking the cards the X1800 will win. A 7800GTX 512 is as fast as the X1900, sometimes a lot faster, soemtimes a little slower.

But then the ATI cards are good value for money at the moment, or at least the high end cards are. the Low end stuff is pretty poor still.

Dave2150 · 30 Jan 2006 at 19:41

D.P. said:
yes they can, there just isn't a driver around at the moment that supports it officially. Wait for the 85 series.

To the OP; basicly there is no difference, except at the moment ATI drivers support H.264 decoding while we are still waiting for Nvidia drivers to come out that support this. There are some IQ differences between AVIVO and PUREVIDEO: purevideo has much better deinterlacing quality being the main difference. Better drivers may fix that.

So as I posted, NVIDIA cannot decode H.264. Doesnt matter if it may be able to do it in the future, its now we talking about, the present.....

D.P. · 30 Jan 2006 at 20:42

Dave2150 said:
So as I posted, NVIDIA cannot decode H.264. Doesnt matter if it may be able to do it in the future, its now we talking about, the present.....

No, Nvidia cards can decode H.264, and they can do it better than ATI cards.

If the user is buying a card he doesn't car what the situation is like in the next couple of weeks. He will be paying a lot of money for a card he will keep some time. It is that time period that he cares about.

Infact, most ATI cards can't do H.264 coding, only X1xx cards and really only the X1800 and up otherwise you are frced to lower the resolution or framrate- neither is particualrly good solution when one specificly wants a card to do H.264 decoding.

Dave2150 · 30 Jan 2006 at 21:14

D.P. said:
No, Nvidia cards can decode H.264, and they can do it better than ATI cards.

If the user is buying a card he doesn't car what the situation is like in the next couple of weeks. He will be paying a lot of money for a card he will keep some time. It is that time period that he cares about.

Infact, most ATI cards can't do H.264 coding, only X1xx cards and really only the X1800 and up otherwise you are frced to lower the resolution or framrate- neither is particualrly good solution when one specificly wants a card to do H.264 decoding.

The point im making is there is no driver, as you said, available today to decode with. So how are you supposed to decode exactly?

Cyber-Mav · 30 Jan 2006 at 21:33

i know that wmv9 HD acceleration is busted on my agp 6800nu. but will will x264 decode acceleration work on my 6800nu?
as shown on this nvidia page the table of whats working and whats not: http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

the 6800nu, GT and ultra on agp are shown as not having wmv9 hardware acceleration. but was wondering if x264 will be working since all the other features are available.

Seft · 30 Jan 2006 at 21:40

Dave2150 said:
The point im making is there is no driver, as you said, available today to decode with. So how are you supposed to decode exactly?

The leaked 80.40 drivers support it

D.P. · 30 Jan 2006 at 21:47

Seft said:
The leaked 80.40 drivers support it

exactly. Its in all the 80 drivers if you searh for it...

feriso · 30 Jan 2006 at 23:04

Sorry to butt in but how is this used - does it require a tick in a settings box or is it set on automatically?

Using 81.95 driver so that should support it right?

BrynS · 31 Jan 2006 at 04:29

I would recommend reading some of Alan Dang's articles over at Firingsquad. He really knows his video and HTPC stuff and is also an advisor to Silicon Optix on the successor to their industry-standard HQV benchmark. You will note that HQV is utilised in most of the reviews of display processing technologies, such as PureVideo and AVIVO, so he can provide some detailed observation and analysis.

The following articles should be of relevance:

Catalyst 5.13: ATI's Video Domination?

Mainstream Video Quality Shootout: ATI vs NVIDIA vs XGI

NVIDIA PureVideo Interview

ATI AVIVO/Video Quality & Features Interview

Video Quality Analysis Part 1 with NVIDIA GeForce

Cheers,

BrynS

Paul11 · 31 Jan 2006 at 08:52

excellent, thank you for those links.

ill have a read in a bit...

D.P. · 31 Jan 2006 at 10:03

is Nvidia Purevideo and ATI AVIVO H.264 the same ?

There is a fundamental difference. Nvidia cards have dedicated hardware to do video decoding and H.264 decoding making it more efficient. ATI uses the pixle shaders as a kind of fun and effective hack- but it is less efficent becuase the shaders are totally not designed for that kind of stuff, hence only the highest end ATI cards can do H.264 decoding but lower end Nvidia cards can still do it.

D.P. · 31 Jan 2006 at 10:10

BrynS said:
I would recommend reading some of Alan Dang's articles over at Firingsquad. He really knows his video and HTPC stuff and is also an advisor to Silicon Optix on the successor to their industry-standard HQV benchmark. You will note that HQV is utilised in most of the reviews of display processing technologies, such as PureVideo and AVIVO, so he can provide some detailed observation and analysis.

The following articles should be of relevance:

Catalyst 5.13: ATI's Video Domination?

Mainstream Video Quality Shootout: ATI vs NVIDIA vs XGI

NVIDIA PureVideo Interview

ATI AVIVO/Video Quality & Features Interview

Video Quality Analysis Part 1 with NVIDIA GeForce

Cheers,

BrynS

Thanks for those links.

I guess ATI really need to get those drivers cracking:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_xgi_mainstream_video_quality_comparison/page8.asp

t's ATI who has fallen behind the video performance curve. When a $270 Radeon X800 XL fails to keep up with a $50 value card from XGI, you know something is wrong.