Half-Life 2
Slight edge to the AIW X800XL here across all the settings. Again, the gameplay showed both cards were up to the task as neither felt faster than the other, though like our results, 1600 with 4xAA, 8xAF felt choppier on the 6800 GT.
2D Quality
We loaded up a 1600x1200 image (modified for 1680x1050) used in previous video card reviews. I also pulled up several word documents with various sized fonts to judge the text rendering. The documents used white text on a black background, and vice versa. The screen resolution for all tests was 1680x1050 @ 60Hz on a Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW LCD.
Scores are subjective, but having worked with many video cards the last few years, I got a pretty firm grasp on what card renders 2D better than the others. The scores will be out of 10, with 10 being excellent.
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All-in-Wonder X800XL
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MSI NX6800 GT
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XFX 6600
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ATI X850 PE
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Black Text (12Pt)
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9
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9
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9
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8
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Black Text (6Pt)
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8
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8
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8
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8
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White Text (12Pt)
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8
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8
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8
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8
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White Text (6Pt)
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6
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6
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6
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6
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Bitmap Quality
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8
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8
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7
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8
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All the cards were fairly close, with the only real problem being 6Pt white text on a black background.
TV Out Quality
(Thanks to the VL owner for letting me crash for 3 hours in front of his TV "working")
The TV output was something of a mixed bag. Movie playback was very good, but it did take a lot of driver adjusting to get the colours just right. This would be the case for any video card, so we won't knock ATI too much for that. 2D Windows was not very good though, but again, this will depend on the supported resolutions of the television. Out of the box, the AIW X800XL is stronger overall than the NX6800 GT, but I was more impressed with the 2D quality from the much older AIW 9600 Pro.
Unfortunently, I did not have Component cables to test the YPrPb output adapter, so I cannot comment on ATI's job on this. In theory, short of the newer HDMI specs, Component will provide the best visual quality, at least when compared to your traditional twisted cables.
Capture Quality
We hooked up a Fullscreen version of Cradle to the Grave (I don't care what anyone says, that movie rocked) to an Onyx DVD player and ran the video feed via a S-Video cable to the AIW X800XL, an AIW X600 Pro, and an ASUS TV Tuner (from the P5WD2 kit) and captured the plot defining conversation between the thespians DMX and Jet Li.
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AIW X800XL
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ASUS Tuner
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AIW X600
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All three tuners have similar image quality, with the slight edge for both ATI cards. The ASUS tuner had some colour issues and "patches", though nothing too terrible. Keep in mind that we used the same S-Video cable (from Monster) for all the feeds. Cable quality matters as we'll demonstrate in a moment.
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