LOSTCIRCUITS

Test Setup

In addition to the PC, the X1600 Pro HDMI was tested with a Hitachi 57F59 CRT rear projection TV, Dell 2407WFP LCD monitor, and an Onkyo TX-SR674 AV receiver. The 57F59 features a single HDMI input, and the TX-R674 has 2 switched HDMI inputs with a single HDMI output. The driver CD included with the X1600 Pro HDMI was ignored and the card was tested with Catalyst 6.9 drivers.

The focus here is not primarily on gaming performance, but on the performance of the X1600 Pro HDMI as a Home Theater PC (HTPC) card. The X1000 series GPUs support ATI’s AVIVO video processing and acceleration technology, which has been built into the Catalyst drivers since version 5.13. The Silicon Optix HQV Benchmark DVD played through PowerDVD 6 was used to evaluate the video performance of the X1600 Pro HDMI. HQV is a torture test for displays and DVD players that evaluates properties like detail, noise reduction, deinterlacing, and presentation of different film cadences. Information on the benchmark DVD can be found at HQV.com.

           

The results of the HQV benchmark will depend on both the source (in this case, a PC with the X1600 Pro HDMI) and the display. To account for the effect of the display, the X1600 Pro HDMI was tested with the Hitachi CRT rear projection set (an analog display) and the Dell 2407WFP (digital). There are some differences in the results arising from the different display technologies.

Gaming is not out of the question on an HTPC, so the card was tested in a few scenarios. When using a widescreen display with the X1600 GPU, the sweet spot for visuals and performance in newer games is 1280x720, which has slightly more pixels than the standard 1024x768 resolution. The goal of the gaming tests was to find out how high the image quality settings could be at 1280x720 while still keeping a playable framerate.

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