Videocard Image-Quality Shootout

Posted 01/28/2008 at 6:48pm | by Michael Brown

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In Their Own Words

Unvarnished opinions from our test subjects.

We went to great lengths to avoid influencing our test subjects one way or the other. We gave them minimal instructions, and we made it clear they shouldn’t feel pressured to choose A over B or vice versa.

Our first subject, a female art director, immediately pointed to monitor A, which happened to be the CrossFire rig (we randomly reversed the test setup between subjects) and said, “That one looks sharper. Monitor B looks a little fuzzy, and I think monitor A has better color quality.” Moving on to the HD DVD test, this same subject pointed to monitor B, the SLI rig, and said “The video on monitor B seems more saturated, but the color in monitor A looks more accurate.” This same subject voted for CrossFire in the portrait test, making a clean sweep for AMD.

Many of our other subjects had a more difficult time choosing a favorite. A male editor at one of our gaming magazines preferred Nvidia’s gaming visuals, saying, “The tank looked as though it had more detail, but the difference is very small.” He picked AMD, however, when it came to evaluating the digital photo: “The color temperature is very subtly higher,” he said, “and the highlights in the model’s hair look more golden on monitor B (the SLI rig).” When it came to the HD video test, he expressed no preference at all.

Although none of our subjects picked the SLI rig as their preference across the board (three did so for the CrossFire machine), that didn’t stop some individuals from expressing strong preferences for Nvidia in each of the three categories. “The colors on monitor B look richer,” said another male editor, referring to the digital photo displayed by the SLI rig, “and I feel like I’m seeing more texture because of that.”

While watching a segment on slash-and-burn farming practices on the HD DVD, many of our observers noticed that the flames on the SLI rig were deep red, while the CrossFire machine rendered the fire more orange. The majority of these subjects expressed a preference for the CrossFire rig, explaining that the orange fire looked more natural.
Despite all our assurances that expressing “no preference” was a valid opinion, nearly everyone in our control group insisted they could see differences in image quality, despite the fact that three of them were unknowingly comparing SLI to SLI, and three others were comparing CrossFire to CrossFire.

What We Learned

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so everyone's a winner!

We pride ourselves on making binary recommendations, but that’s impossible in this scenario unless we also take speed into account. While it’s true that our test subjects leaned slightly toward AMD’s image quality, awarding AMD 21 wins to Nvidia’s 15, the margin of victory in each category is just two votes. That gives AMD a slight edge at the $250 price point, but it leaves Nvidia unchallenged at every higher segment.

THE GAME TEST

Our subjects had the strongest opinions when it came to gaming performance, with eight expressing a preference for ATI CrossFire, six preferring Nvidia SLI, and only one citing no preference for either solution.

But does it really matter? The Radeon HD 3870 is the best GPU that AMD has to offer today, and Nvidia has three pricier SKUs capable of beating the 3870 to a bloody pulp: the revamped 8800 GTS, the 8800 GTX, and the 8800 Ultra. If you’re a hardcore gamer, would you be willing to take a major performance hit in order to render your game experience just a wee bit more shiny and colorful? We didn’t think so.

THE HD VIDEO TEST

Seven of our experts preferred AMD’s video performance, compared with five who fancied Nvidia’s; three expressed no preference for either solution. As odd as it sounds, many people had strong opinions about the color of the fire in the video sequence we showed them. But if you decide to go with one of Nvidia’s faster GPUs, be aware that the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra are incapable of offloading all the HD video-decoding chores from the host CPU. More importantly, neither of these cards is equipped with dual-link DVI connectors that have HDCP support on both links (the Radeon 3850, Radeon 3870, GeForce 8800 GT, and G92-based 8800 GTS all do), making HD DVD and Blu-ray a no-no.

THE DIGITAL PHOTO TEST

It’s a coincidence that the same margin of two opinions separates those who preferred AMD’s digital-photo performance (six favoring) over that of Nvidia’s (four favoring). We find it more interesting that five people expressed no preference in this category—more than the other two categories combined. We had predicted that having the subjects stare at a static image would result in nearly everyone judging one or the other solution to be superior.

MIXED OPINIONS

Only four of our 15 evaluators gave either AMD or Nvidia a win across the board; of the 11 with more mixed opinions, five leaned toward Nvidia (giving the 8800 GT the nod in two out of three categories) and four leaned toward AMD (all of whom favored its game-image quality). Three people’s opinions were truly mixed, expressing a preference for CrossFire in one category, SLI in another, and no preference in a third.

THE CONTROL GROUP

We were surprised that only three of the six people in our control group expressed no preference between display A and display B—and in only one category each at that. Since they were unknowingly comparing identical rigs, we thought nearly everyone would admit there was no difference between the two displays. Since most of our subjects are professional critics, we suspect that they felt an inherent obligation to discern some difference between the two displays they were staring at (despite our assurances to the contrary).

The control group did help eliminate the display itself as a variable: If the monitors had colored our evaluators’ opinions, the votes would have been lopsided in favor of one or the other. Of the control group’s 18 opinions, nine favored monitor A, six favored monitor B, and three expressed no preference.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The good news for anyone shopping for a new videocard is that you don’t need to sacrifice image quality for performance. Based on our blind tests, the GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia deliver similar visual quality with games, high-definition video, and digital photos.

That’s good news for AMD, too, because now the company need only worry about catching up on one performance metric: frame rate. Unfortunately, we don’t think CrossFireX is going to be a panacea in the interim. Running four moderately powerful videocards in one box will never be as cost effective as building a rig with one super-powerful GPU—especially if the CPU in that box is an Intel quad core. Sorry, Phenom.

That leaves Nvidia in the catbird seat—again. But it won’t have the perfect solution either until it replaces the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra with parts that support HDCP on both links of their dual-link connectors and that are capable offloading all HD video decoding from the host CPU.