ATI and nVidia crush high-end DVD players

Which graphics card?

ATI’s Avivo technology is incorporated into the X1xx series of Radeon cards, and as our tests show that purely for playing video it does not matter which one of these you choose. A cheap X1300 will perform exactly the same as a more expensive X1800 or X1900. ATI themselves however state that the X1300 will not be fast enough to accelerate H.264 in the highest HD resolutions, a statement we will put to the test in the future.

PureVideo is found in all GeForce cards in the 7xxx-series, the GeForce 6600 however does offer most of the PureVideo functions as well.

Picking a slower graphics card for a media centre PC offers more advantages than just the price; the X1300 and X1600 some in a passively cooled variety, the X1800 and X1900 cards do not. This is the same for the nVidia 7300 and 7600, both are available as a fan less card.