Entry-Level Graphics Cards

Coping with DVD format easily, the ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT acts up with MPEG2 1080i format, having a much higher result in comparison with its opponents.

Interestingly, the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT, which doesn’t play 1080i MPEG2 in the jerky manner typical of the senior models of the series, has roughly the same results as the GeForce 8500 GT notwithstanding the differences in their video engines.

The diverse video clips do not fit well together into a definite overall picture, yet we can see that entry-level graphics cards, including ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, have a high CPU load when playing VC-1 HD clips.

As opposed to VC-1, the graphics cards perform much better when decoding H.264. The CPU load is low here.

The current version of DivX doesn’t suit well for storing full-HD content, which is confirmed by the high CPU load for inexpensive graphics cards. On the other hand, this is largely the drivers’ fault.

The graphics cards have almost the same level of CPU load, which is not very high.