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Image Quality
Test Picture (reduced quality)
Image quality has always been a subjective thing, but for the sake of at least giving my opinion, we loaded up a 1600x1200 image David used in his last couple of 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 1600x1200 @ 85Hz on a Dell rebranded 21" Trinitron.
I've actually gathered a few cards here since I originally wanted to expand my ATi Radeon 9700 Pro review with these test. The scores will be out of 10. Here are my results...
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ATi Radeon 9700
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AiW VE
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Asus Ti4400
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MSI MX440-T8x
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Black Text (12Pt)
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9
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8
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7
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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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6
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6
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White Text (12Pt)
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9
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9
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7
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7
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White Text (6Pt)
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8
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8
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6
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4
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Bitmap Quality
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9
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9
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8
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7
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You're going to have to be aware that these tests are subjective, but I did have my cousin over to help me debate the scores, and the numbers you see above is the average score between two people.
Both ATi cards looked pretty much the same to me, but there is an obvious quality drop when moving to the nVidia solutions. The Ti4400 is passable, but it was eye-straining to work on the PC at extended periods of time at 1600x1200. The MX440 rendered white text on a dark background horribly, and in order not to lose my eyesight, I had to use the mouse to select blocks of text I wanted to read.
TV-Out Quality
I grabbed an AVI file of Futurerama (captured from a cable feed), and outputted it to TV on both the AiW 8500DV, as well as on the AiW VE. I don't have a S-Video input on the television I used, so this was done via a composite cable. This should also test the quality of the AiW VE and the reputed improvements made with the Cobra Engine.
First, the 8500DV...
... and the VE...
The AiW VE has a noticably clearer picture, with a bit less grain in the image. I should note that the in order to acquire the image, I recorded the episode with the AiW VE. I then burned it to disc as a VCD, then recaptured it with the 8500 and the VE. What this test is supposed to illustrate then is the video capture quality of each card, and the resulting video output quality when using the same card to display the video. It would appear that the Rage Theater 200 and the Cobra Engine do improve upon the video quality.
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