Sharpening test

When it comes to detail enhancement, NVIDIA does not implement overlay-specific sharpening tools. XGI does. ATI seems to apply some level of sharpening to the image, but it does not allow users to customize the level of sharpening in the same way that XGI does. It's possible that the Multimedia Center is responsible for this. The XGI sharpening algorithm does not appear to be particularly advanced as it does create halos at the highest settings. Still, we like the fact that they have user configurable sharpening.

ATI

NVIDIA

XGI

None of the cards have noise reduction.

Score:
Tied for 2nd place – ATI and XGI (5 points)
3rd place: NVIDIA (0 points)

By the testing standards, NVIDIA gets 0 and ATI and XGI get 5. However, as I have said before, the numbers can be misinterpreted. A score of zero means that NVIDIA is faithfully reproducing the material on the DVD. While sharpening is a necessity, the problem occurs when you have sharpening applied at multiple stages. Some DVDs are already sharpened, meaning that you won't want any additional processing. Some televisions sharpen and so you won't want the video card to do any additional processing.


Interpretation
When outputting to a television, you will want to have the TV control the level of sharpening whenever possible because it takes into account your viewing distance and the screen size. You will want to send an unsharpened image and so NVIDIA and XGI are the best choices. Since XGI does not have component video out, NVIDIA actually takes the crown.

When outputting to a monitor, you will typically need some level of sharpening and so the XGI is the best option here. ATI doesn't actually benefit because DVDs that are already sharpened will look better on NVIDIA.

If you recall my proposed scoring mechanism of forced sharpening being worse than no sharpening, we have XGI > NVIDIA > ATI.