Brad and HD playback, the ultimate question

[EvaUnit02]

Why not ATi?

I'm comfortable with Forceware and all the people that I know (in real life) have had nothing but problems with Catalyst drivers.

With all of nVidia cockups and inconsistencies over video along with breaking aspect ratio scaling

Which is an issue that has been blown way out of proportion, in the last 1.5 years I've only encountered one driver with completely broken fixed aspect ratio scaling (and one other with broken 680x480 support, a beta driver, but every other relevant resolution was hunky dory).

and the ridiculous 9xxx range I'm going to be having a long look at ATi's new offerings.

So they overclocked one model of card and falsely advertised it as the next generation, what does it matter? Morality is a silly excuse to boycott their hardware.

The quality of their hardware speaks for themselves, the 9600GT and 8800GT are still the best low and mid range cards on the market.

Over here the HD3870 and 8800GT are the same price, the 8800GT blows the ATI card out of the water so the decision is an easy one.

The only negative there is that with the Haali renderer upscaling is broken with ATi, but on the other hand ATi is the only way to get DXVA in MPC-HC. ATi are also better with regards to audio via HDMI, for the next cards I don't think there will be HDMI 1.3 but it looks like they'll add the the small ranks of 7.1ch LPCM which is all that matters. Combined with a new version of their video platform it should be rather good.

Ah, now that's a good argument. I'll have a look at the HD4850/70 when it's released in June then, cheers.

Clock speeds used to go up non-stop at one time.

I remember reading in a PC mag that at one point (2002) Intel had planned a 8GHz CPU, but it never materialised because it was literally beyond the realms of physics.

[bradavon]

I remember reading in a PC mag that at one point (2002) Intel had planned a 8GHz CPU, but it never materialised because it was literally beyond the realms of physics.

Really .

[EvaUnit02]

Sorry, I meant that Intel had boasted bout working on 8GHz CPUs in 2002, the mag itself was from 2007.

[Lourdes]

Ah, now that's a good argument. I'll have a look at the HD4850/70 when it's released in June then, cheers.

Oh I'm all about practicality, I wouldn't have given ATi a second glance otherwise. I've always used nVidia cards and they're generally consistent if unimaginative whereas ATi seem quite random and I don't much like their software/drivers.