Mainstream Graphics Cards

DVD format is not anything new, and all modern graphics cards cope with it easily. Unfortunately, it’s not the same for MPEG2 content in 1080i format: the GeForce 7900 series yields a jerky picture, while the new-generation products have a high CPU load.

If the CPU is fast enough, its load is far from critical, but we should note that GeForce 7 series cards have higher CPU requirements than the new-generation solutions while the difference between the Radeon HD 2600 XT and GeForce 8600 GTS is very small. Note that the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro performs well enough, too.

Like with VC-1 codec, the mainstream graphics cards, except for the GeForce 7 series, do not load the CPU much thanks to their rather advanced video processors. However, we can see that decoding of H.264 is currently better implemented in the GeForce 8600 GTS.

The ATI Radeon HD 2600 and X1950 cards easily cope with decoding DivX streams. Nvidia’s GeForce cards are inferior, yet this is not a problem if you’ve got a fast enough CPU.

There’s nothing extraordinary about the results of the test of decoding WMV HD content. The CPU load being low and identical between the different graphics cards, there is no way you can single out a leader or a loser.