Jason Dunn
01-11-2007, 10:20 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/' target='_blank'>http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"On the Nvidia site, Purevideo is defined as "the combination of a dedicated video processing core and software that delivers ultra-smooth, high-definition H.264, WMV, and MPEG-2 movies with minimal CPU utilization and low power consumption." That's probably a better way to describe it in a single sentence. To simplify the definition even more, let's cut to the chase: Avivo and Purevideo are marketing terms that represent any technology offered by ATI and Nvidia (respectively) that improves the video viewing experience. These blanket technologies cover anything that makes video look better or play smoother. Even though the Avivo vs. Purevideo competition has been discussed time and again, there are still a few things to be learned on the video front, a few points that should be stressed and even a surprise or two. The areas we'll look at are DVD playback quality, CPU utilization and even video encoding acceleration. But more importantly, we focus on how to get everything to work - because if you don't know how to enable these great enhancements, all the comparisons in the world aren't worth a bag of beans."</i><br /><br />Want to cut through all the marketing crap and get down to the heart of how these technologies actually work? Give this article a read - I'm going through it now (and thinking that 14 pages is a bit much) because I've never seen anyone do a comparison like this.