Finally it works! After years of broken promises and voluntary omissions, we can now peacefully watch high definition videos on our PCs. This affirmation is not only true for new machines equipped with dual core processors, but also for the majority of PCs sold in the last three years, given that a new generation graphics card is added. They took their time but ATI and Nvidia have finally cleared up the situation.

It is difficult to separate the ATI and Nvidia solutions. ATI has a net advantage on the performance level so it is recommendable for small configurations. When you switch to a dual core processor, the differences fade noticeably; the CPU charge becomes perfectly reasonable in all cases. Overall the qualities of ATI or Nvidia cards are identical. The two are neck and neck.

Knowing that they offer very close gaming performances, the choice will then be made on the bundle details, the cooling of the series (our reference 2600 XT was more quiet than our MSI 8600 GT OC) and of course the price. In this respect, the HD 2600 has a slight advantage.

You must also remember to include the price of the media-reading program itself. Like the beginning of the DVD, the Blu-ray or HD DVD developers demand royalties, so it’s not possible to read films via any old application like Windows Media Player.

Among these applications, we find Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra or Corel’s Windvd. The first costs €99 and the second €50. Unfortunately for ATI, only the first is compatible with the Avivo HD motor. The financial side is then in favour of Nvidia.

But for now the Canadian company still has a big advantage compared to its competitor: the Avivo of Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 is supported under Windows XP. Nvidia’s Purevideo HD is only accessible under Windows Vista (the Windows XP support is planned for the end of August). A good reason to prefer ATI if you’re using an old PC. This choice will be confirmed by the upcoming availability of the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 on AGP port. On the other hand Nvidia has decided to not release any news regarding the new Geforce 8 AGP. Be careful, the support of HDCP protection on the AGP port is apparently impossible. Let’s not forget that the results of these tests are susceptible to change with the release of new drivers and that the Radeon are the only cards disposing of an obligatory HDCP (even HDMI if the adapter is provided in the bundle), unlike a certain GeForce 8600. And you thought high definition was simple?