Most computers sold today are still ones that
have an integrated video card. This is a step to lower the
cost of the entire system, as integrated video cards are much
cheaper to produce than a discreet video card. Where I work
(retail store) about 80% of all computers we sell have integrated
graphics cards. This is either in the form of Intel chipsets
or for AMD systems SIS/VIA chipsets.
When we think about nVidia we don't really
think about low end video cards. Rather we see the high
end video cards such as the GeForce 6800GT or 6600GT, which create
the buzz in the online community. However no company can
really do well unless they diversify their product line, which
is why nVidia has had lower end video cards, such as the MX series
and more recently the FX5200's.
Albatron is a completely nVidia based card
company. All their video cards are based on nVidia chipsets,
from the 6200 series to their version of the 6800 Ultra.
They among others should have a very good grasp at what it takes
to make a solid nVidia based video card. So lets look at
one of their lower end video card choices for PCI-Express.
Albatron TC6200Q
Albatron sent us their entry level TurboCache
product, that 'supports' 256MB of memory, though has 64MB of local
memory. For a quick look at their specifications for this
card
please go to their website. We will take a look at most
of the specifications as we go through the review, but lets take
a quick look at the card, its box and contents.
What are the contents of the
box? Lets list it:
- The video card
- Manual
- SVHS to RCA converter
- Driver CD
- Game Demo CD
- Ars Fatalis Game CD
As we can see this card didn't come with much
in the way of extras, though the converter cable was nice to include
for those who still have older TV's/VCR's with only RCA inputs.
The manual itself was the standard Albatron fare, pretty thorough
and long, but in multiple languages. One thing that I missed
was a DVI-VGA connector, to allow for dual displays to be used
on this card with two analog monitors.
As for the software that was included, one
word describes it, laughable. The bundle consisted of the
drivers, which are standard and useful, game demos for games that
cost about as much as the CD itself, and Ars Fatalis, an RPG game.
This game is very badly designed, as it doesn't work properly
with the included video card, even after applying the latest patch
to it. The drivers of this card are the same in design as
has been looked at previously, thus one of the bright spots of
this software bundle. One thing that was glaring in its
omission was DVD player software which would have been a better
choice than the two game CD's by a large margin.
The card itself is a rather simple design,
with actually on the card, thus helping to cut costs in one way.
This is much cleaner than most cards, with two empty spots for
a possible video capture chip. The heatsink is a very simple
aluminum heatsink with few fins and no fan, as this GPU runs fairly
cool, thus making the package silent. The outputs of the
card are basically the same as most cards today, with a DVI port,
VGA port and SVHS port providing connectivity. Lets now
take a look and see if this card can provide a quality experience
in displaying images on your screen or on your TV.
Quality Tests
First we will look at the 2D
quality of the video card. This is one of if not the most
important aspect of the video card, though many people do not
take the time to look closely at the quality of display that they
are constantly looking at. So lets take a look at how well
this budget video card does with 2D applications. The test
is the same as we've been using for a while, with the reference
display being a Matrox G400 video card attached to a 21"
Dell badged Trinitron monitor. The screen resolution was
1600*1200, with a color depth of 32bpp and a refresh rate of 85Hz.
So lets see how it did in comparison.
| Test |
Matrox G400 |
Matrox Parhelia |
Albatron TC6200Q |
HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo |
Intel 915G IGP |
Albatron FX5750 |
| Black Text / White Back: |
5 |
7.5 |
6 |
7 |
4.5 |
5.5 |
| White Text / Black Back: |
5 |
8 |
7.25 |
7.5 |
5 |
7 |
| Bitmap Test: |
5 |
9 |
7.25 |
8 |
6 |
6.5 |
| Overall Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
6.75 |
7.5 |
5.25 |
6.25 |
The 2D quality of this card
is actually better than that of the PCX5750, with better results
all the way around. The 2D quality is quite a bit better
than the 915G, but isn't nearly as good as either the ATi video
card and the Parhelia. The black text on white background
is somewhat blurry but otherwise a solid image.
Next lets take a look at the
video out quality of this card, as one of the uses people may
have for this card is as a device for displaying either a movie
on the TV, or other images. Our test uses two computers,
to provide a actual test image result via uncompressed (HuffYUV)
video captures. Our capture card for these various video
cards is the ATi Radeon AiW 9600Pro which will give use some
of ATi's best TV-In quality, except for the newer Theater 550
chip based cards. The reference video was from a claymation
video called "Chicken Run" which provides real colors
but also a good variety of bright colors. Lets see how
this budget card works here.
Reference Image
|
Albatron TC6200Q
|
Matrox Parhelia
|
Asus AX800XL Image
|
HIS X700 Pro Test Image
|
Albatron PCX5750
|
The image of the 6200 isn't
very good, as its fairly blurry in the way of the actual image,
with the text being very blurry. The image is cut off
slightly more than the Parhelia, which in turn is also slightly
cut off the reference image. The PCX5750 does antialias
the text quite a bit. Otherwise the card slightly squishes
the text horizontally by a small amount. As for the
image quality of the output we see that there are points where
there is a slight bit of blur and a higher brightness on the
picture, but is still nicer than the image of the 6200.
However the nVidia cards do provide a better image quality
than the ATi cards, though in this case it isn't much.
We will forgo our Anti-Aliasing
and ansiotropic filtering tests in this case as really most
people will not be too worried about these settings and in reality
the quality is the same as all of the rest of the cards in its
series.
NEXT
