HQV Benchmark 2.0 Analysis – ATi, nVidia and Intel

Overview:
The first section is based around Video Conversion tests, followed up by a long series of Cadence related tests and lastly we get to examine colour upscaling errors.

Notes:
These tests stress the video processors ability to process data accurately, and is based around both stationary and moving elements within specific scenes. If the processing is successful and high quality the images will be rendered crisply and in a very clear manner. On the other hand, if the processing is poor then jaggies and artifacting will appear on the edges of moving objects.

Text that is overlaid onto film can have a cadence that is very different to that of the underlying film. In these cases the video processor must correctly identify the two cadences and adjust the local video processing to account for the different cadences.

If the video processor locks onto the cadence of the background movie but not the overlaid text then it can appear to shred. On the other hand if the video processor locks onto the cadence of the foreground text and not the movie then the background can artifact by appearing to shred also.

Scoring:
We have to pay attention to the point when the text enters the screen which will be lower edge of the screen for vertical testing and lower right corner for horizontal testing. Shredding which does not appear at all, gets a score of 5. A brief appearance caused by delay in processing gets 3 and remains throughout the clip, scores 0.

Horizontal Text Scroll (Score either 5, 3 or 0)
No shredding artifacts can be observed in the text or the background. – Scores 5
Observable Artifacts in the text or background when subtitle first appears but quickly corrected. – Scores 3
Shredding observed on the text or background throughout the majority of the sequence – Scores 0

We found that the ATI solutions gave the best result and were quite surprised to see even the HD4200 effectively dealing with all forms of shredding on screen. The nVidia solutions seemed slower to react which is sure to be fixed in a driver update.

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