10. The HQV Benchmark

Here, HQV stands for "Hollywood Quality Video". HQV consists of a regular DVD that includes numerous scenes that present potential visual problems to a DVD decoder. Points are awarded if the decoder handles the problems so that viewers don't see them; points are not awarded if it doesn't do the job. In looking over our benchmark results, we immediately observed that the Intel and AMD processors scored the same, irrespective of their model numbers (and in fact, the results from both processors are pretty similar).

Rather than stepping you through the entire sequence of tests and explaining them in detail, we refer you to Don Woligroski's January 9, 2007, article for Tom's Hardware entitled Avivo vs. Purevideo, Round 1 wherein he walks readers through the whole shebang.

Here, we provide a brief table that summarizes results for our AMD 6000+ equipped system with an explanation and remarks for each one. We need only observe here that each test (or sub-test, when a particular test involves multiple versions or iterations) produces a maximum score, where a lower score indicates the degree to which the decoder was able to handle things perfectly.

Yesterday's 4600+ scored 76. The four systems in our HDMI DIY article scored: 93 (AMD) and 88 (Intel).

Video quality from the 8800 is sharp and clear on small displays (our 1280x1024 Viewsonic VX724 looked good, and our 1980x1200 Dell 2407WFP looked like a champ.