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The Home Theatre Solution
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| Sapphire RADEON X1600 Pro HDMI The Home Theatre Solution | ||
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(Review by Joe Freund, Dec 3, 2006) |
Usage
HDMI on the X1600 Pro HDMI functioned flawlessly. Video transferred properly via HDMI to the Hitachi 57F59, video AND audio were properly output to the Onkyo TX-SR674 receiver, and video worked correctly using the included HDMI-to-DVI adapter to connect to the Dell 2407WFP.
Advanced features of the Catalyst 6.9 drivers are accessed through the Catalyst Control Panel. When connected to the 57F59 projection TV, the standard HDTV resolutions of 1280x720 and 1920x1080 produced significant overscan, meaning the edges of the picture were not shown onscreen. Overscan occurs with almost all direct view CRT and rear projection TVs. Within the catalyst Control Center there are options to use resolutions of 1152x648 and 1776x1000, which correct the overscan and show the entire image onscreen.
The fan on the X1600 Pro HDMI is silent at idle. During gaming the fan was indistinguishable from the rest of the system in an open case.
DVD Performance
The results of the HQV Benchmark using AVIVO on both the CRT rear projection set and the flat panel LDC monitor were excellent, but not perfect. The difference between the scores demonstrates the effect each display technology has on the final picture. Where the CRT rear projection TV does not show quite as much detail as the LCD monitor, the LCD pays the price by allowing more video noise in the picture. This is a tradeoff that is commonly seen in home theater displays; the “detail enhancement” technologies used by many manufacturers often add noise, while high levels of noise reduction will cut into detail.
HQV Benchmark Results
| Test | CRT RPTV | LCD |
| Color Bar/Vertical Detail | 5/10 | 10/10 |
| Jaggies Pattern 1 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| Jaggies Pattern 2 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Flag | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Picture Detail | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Noise Reduction | 10/10 | 5/10 |
| Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction | 10/10 | 5/10 |
| 3:2 Detection | 5/10 | 5/10 |
| Film Cadence | ||
| 2:2 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| 2:2:2:4 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| 2:3:3:2 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| 3:2:3:2:2 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| 5:5 | 5/5* | 5/5* |
| 6:4 | 5/5* | 5/5* |
| 8:7 | 5/5* | 5/5* |
| 3:2 | 5/5* | 5/5* |
| Horizontal Text Crawl | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Vertical Text Crawl | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Total | 118/130 | 113/130 |
The asterisk (*) in the film cadence tests indicates that while the X1600Pro HDMI with AVIVO met the test criteria for smoothing the edges and the newspaper text in the film clip, there was ghosting in the image along the boundaries between light and dark colors. The cadences affected by this artifact are meant to simulate animation. The film and video cadences were unaffected. This defect appeared on BOTH the CRT and LCD technologies, so it obviously was not due to any issues with response time on the LCD panel.
It is relevant to note that we have observed this artifact with a different X1600 card in multiple systems (also on both CRT and LCD displays), and that the defect affected real playback of DVD and television programming when used in conjunction with nVidia’s PureVideo software MPEG decoder. This issue seems to be inherent in the current implementation of AVIVO, and is exacerbated by combining AVIVO with PureVideo.
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