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
the X700 Pro does with 2D quality. 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 |
ATi Radeon 9800XT |
HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo |
Intel 915G IGP |
Albatron FX5750 |
| Black Text / White Back: |
5 |
7.5 |
7 |
7 |
4.5 |
5.5 |
| White Text / Black Back: |
5 |
8 |
7.25 |
7.5 |
5 |
7 |
| Bitmap Test: |
5 |
9 |
8.5 |
8 |
6 |
6.5 |
| Overall Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
7.5 |
7.5 |
5.25 |
6.25 |
We can see that this ATi based
card does pretty well in our subjective test. Compared
to the Matrox Parhelia it was somewhat brighter in all three
tests, with this washing out the color slightly in the image
test, but still making it better than most of the rest of the
cards we have tested. Text was still good but the higher
brightness, which most likely could be changed somewhat, caused
the text to be a bit harder to read. Overall however this
card has very good 2D quality.
Now for the video in tests,
this test is a standard one that I have been using for awhile,
with the video being output by a Matrox Parhelia. The
video is a short scene from the claymation movie Chicken Run,
with both text and rich video colors. So lets see the
results with some cards that we have tested.
Reference Image
|
HIS X700 Pro Test Image
|
MSI GeForce 4MX Test Image
|
MSI GeForce FX Test Image
|
ATi AiW 9000 Pro Test Image
|
Compro VideoMate TV Ultra Test Image
|
The images of the cards
are quite a bit different. The test image on the TV
Ultra is fairly smooth, close to that of the GF4MX but staying
closer to the actual test image which has no anti-aliasing
occurring. The best card for displaying text on this
test is the ATi AiW 9000 Pro with its clear lettering.
The HIS X700 didn't do that great here with the text being
fairly blurry and slightly washed out. The image colors
were out as well, as the whole picture seemed quite washed
out, especially in comparison to the AiW 9000 Pro and the
reference image. Not the greatest showing in the way
of video-in quality, it was more like we have seen from
some nVidia based cards.
TV Out is becoming a major
piece that video card manufacturers are putting into their video
cards, as people are using their computer for displaying their
movies and games onto their 'big' screen TV's. Our test
uses two computers, one that contains a TV Tuner in this case
the 5750 uses the AiW 9600 while the rest are using the ATi
AiW 9000 though I haven't really noticed much, if any difference
between the two cards. However we also have a reference
image from the DVD that we used to test, that of the movie "Chicken
Run", a claymation movie with plenty of vibrant colors
and contrasts. All tests were output using a SVHS cable,
so lets see the results.
Reference Image
|
HIS X700 Pro Test Image
|
Matrox Parhelia
|
ATi Radeon 9800XT
|
MSI FX5900U
|
Albatron PCX5750
|
So what does this picture
show? The X700 provides a blurry text here, only slightly
better than some of the other cards. Both the image
and text of this card are much like that of the 9800XT, which
isn't a great thing as for some reason ATi doesn't have great
TV-Out quality. The Albatron card 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
which isn't really desirable in this case. The overall
picture is cut slightly on the horizontal, but not enough
to distort the image greatly. The text for the 9800XT
is sharper and has very little of the checkered pattern that
the AiW 9000Pro had. For the rest of the image it is
blurry but is smoother than that of the AiW 9000Pro.
The TV out of the FX5900 Ultra suffers from a distorted image,
that has a border on either side of the picture, and a fuzzy
picture. There also seems to be a pronounced checker
pattern on solid colors and also on the text, something we
don't see with some of the other cards notably the Parhelia.
While the text on the reference image is sharp and aliased,
the Parhelia does a good job of antialiasing the text, while
not overdoing it.
Unfortunately none of my tuners
can support component in, but this connection does offer quite
a bit of difference from the SVHS connection that most people
still use.
3D quality is the last quality
test we will look at. All video cards offer some form
of antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering, from the 16X Ansio
of the ATi cards, to the 8X AA of the nVidia based cards and
even the 16X FAA of the Matrox video card. So lets see
how each video card looks in our testing.
Looking first at the AA test
we see that there is very little difference between the three
cards without AA enabled. With the various levels of
AA enabled (16,8,4) we see that the Parhelia comes out on
top but only by a slim margin. If you look at the landscape
in the background on the 5900 Ultra and PCX5750 and the Parhelia,
you can notice that the Parhelia has just a smoother image.
The Radeon 9000 is in last place in this test with its maximum
of 4X AA. The 6X AA is pretty nice, looking better on
more horizontal lines (horizon) than the 8X of the 5900U but
worse with a more vertical line (rooftop).
Moving to the ansiotropic filtering
of the cards, with it disabled the Parhelia has better filtering.
You can notice that the ground seems 'bumpier' on the Parhelia
without ansiotropic filtering even enabled, otherwise all of
the other cards look very similar. With ansiotropic filtering
enabled, we see that in this part of the image the Radeon 9000
doesn't really do much if any filtering, due to its adaptive
design. The Parhelia's 2X ansio looks slightly better
than its trilinear filtering. The Radeon 9800XT has extremely
good ansiotropic filtering as at 16X it is much better than
any of the others we have tested so far. I am also impressed
by the 8X ansiotropic filtering of the Albatron card, though
it is still not quite the same quality as the ATi cards with
16X.
