Comparison: G450 eTV v. All-in-Wonder Radeon

[ryoken]

Hey vidcappers,

I am thinking of purchasing either:

a) Matrox Marvel G450 eTV, or;
b) ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon

I haven't seen many, if any, comparisons of these two cards in magazines, or on the web.

I'm sure everyone has heard this a million times over, but I prefer the Matrox because of its high quality 2D output, and I like the Radeon because of its fast 3D capabilities. But this is just the icing on the cake. I want to do quite a bit of video editing, and have read up a bit, and it seems to me that people either love or hate the G450 eTV or the AIW Radeon. From what I read, this was because of driver instablities, capture problems such as jittering or frame dropping, or just poor output on screen and/or TV.

As you can see, I am left with no clear distinction between which is the 'superior' card. I have come to trust Matrox from their past reputation, but with the continual delayed releases of the Video Tools (on Windows 2000 I think), I am starting to ponder. I have only recently considered ATI. It came to a surprise (I know, I know...) that the All-in-Wonder series now comes with a Radeon chip - which means enhanced 3D. I mean 3D isn't all that important to me, but it is nice to do some fragging at the end of the day! It is a known fact that ATI drivers in the past have been quite buggy, so I have clearly veered away from their products. But apparently, it appears to be rectified (well it is almost July 2001 now, right? Which is well after its initial release!) according to some users running Windows 2000 even. So I now have a deliemma which I hope someone here can address.

Another thing I wanted to clear up about both the G450 eTV and AIW Radeon is its support for PAL. I live in Australia (yes, 'Down Under' ) which makes this comparison ever-more difficult, as everything (99% of the time) I read is NTSC

Here are some questions I have about PAL support under a G450 eTV AND All-in-Wonder Radeon:

1) Does the Video-In capture at full PAL resolution at full frame rate (ie. 704x576@25fps or 720x576@25fps)?

2) Does the TV tuner capture at full PAL resolution at full frame rate?

3) Does it output (both Composite and S-Video) on the TV at full PAL resolution at full frame rate?

In addition, a question which will MAKE OR BREAK my decision to choose a ATI AIW Radeon:

* Does the AIW Radeon 'finally' allow output of a single video to full-screen on TV, like Matrox's DVDMax feature?

In case you're confused about the way I have phrased this, here are some threads about what I hate to happen when I output my editing video back onto my VCR:

* http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003433.html
* http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003445.html

A few other questions which apply equally to both the G450 eTV and AIW Radeon:

* Will Windows Media Encoder see the video capture card, thus allowing live recording?

* Will RealProducer see the video capture card, thus allowing live recording?

* Will the video capture card appear as a video capture device under 'Sound, video and game controllers' in the Device Manager of Windows 98 and 2000?

* Will the card have support for WDM?

Whoa! This is a lengthy one... sorry about that ppl

Thank you for taking your time to read and respond to this,
ryoken

[rwierenga]

I've used both the G400 Max and the AIW Radeon for NTSC video, not PAL, but some of the issues I had are probably common to both formats.

I can't tell you if the Radeon's MPEG capture is better than the G450's, but I can tell you that the Radeon's MPEG capture isn't satisfactory for anything beyond casual viewing. This really isn't the fault of the Radeon per se; the bundled capture program uses realtime software encoding (as does the G450's), and even today's megaprocessors still struggle with that at full frame rates.

The Radeon does allow .AVI capture with its bundled software, but only at 1/2 screen resolution (at least, that limit was built into the software the last time I tried it; maybe ATI has fixed it). If you want full frame .AVI capture, you'll have to use a third-party utility.

Like others have said, the Radeon's video out isn't in the same league as any Matrox card with DVDMax capabilities. The Radeon is designed to send your desktop to a TV, not video. So if you want to use the Radeon to send video out to a VHS tape, you have to make sure that the video playing on your desktop is completely maximized on the TV display. That can be much harder than it sounds, and is a huge pain in the ***. Worse, when TV out is activated your monitor has to run at the same resolution and refresh as your TV -- usually an eye-gouging 640X480x60. DVDMax is an infinitely better solution for sending video out.

The AIW Radeon does show up as a device under "Sound, video . . ." in device manager -- several of them, in fact.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the AIW series has a reputation, deserved in my opinion, of being very intolerant of other video or capture cards being used in the same system. It tends to hog your entire video subsystem. So if you want to use another video or capture card, the AIW might not be the best bet.

Finally, a lot of people have had troubles with the AIW in some configurations. To be fair, you can say that about most video cards, and I never had any problems with mine. Rage3d.com is the big ATI fansite; you should check out their boards to see if peopl running your configuration have had problems. Good luck!

[arbymo]

hey ryoken; welcome abroad

[arbymo]

ryoken, check out my reply on the other thread, also i can't answer all your questions, i'll leave that to others as i'm a newbie concerning vid-in cards.

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

I can not speak for the 3D and video capture differences, but there is a divide in the TV-Out and DVD features between the Radeon and the G400-TV. From what I understand, the G450-eTV's TV-out is very similar to the G400-TV.

Comparing the Radeon's TV-out to the G400-TV with the 'eyeball' text, the Matrox DualHead solution is superior to the Radeon. The G400-TV is also easier to work with.

TV-out is a big part of the video card decision process. After capturing and editing video, many people still send their video back to tape as well as VCD/SVCD. I always master the video to Hi8 before making a dump to VHS. This is where the Matrox solution is hard to beat

DVDMax is a unique feature that does not get talked about much in reviews. It is a big reason I am keeping the G400-TV. The Matrox driver instantly knows to play the video back full screen in great quality. Other solutions require switching desktops, maximizing the window, tweaking the settings, then ensuring the mouse is off of the screen.

Now, DVD playback is a different story. The DVD playback to a monitor on the Radeon is great. The included player is not as good as PowerDVD or WinDVD, but works alright. Comparing DVD playback to the G400-TV, the Radeon wins easily. However, the TV-out quality comes into play again.

I know that is not a detailed answer, but figured you might be interested in that info.

As far as video capture, I think it would be hard to tell the difference between the two for YUY2. The big question there is how the MPEG2 captures are going to turn out.

From what I understand about 3D, the ATI is going to win that one. Howerver, there are better 3D solutions.

IMHO, there really is no silver bullet. I have taken a multi-card approach with a lot of success.

Also, don't forget about NVidia. I have a machine with a GeForce2 MX in it (no TVOut). Personally, the quality of their card beats ATI. The DVD playback is really nice (superior to the G400-TV, and equal to the Radeon). I'm going to get a GeForce2 card with TVOut for test. If the TwinView compares to DualHead, I'm pairing that with my WinTV card.

[ryoken]

Hello,

Thank you for your replies. They have assisted me greatly in comparing and selecting between the Marvel G450 eTV and the AIW Radeon.

TV-output will be quite an important part for me, so I guess the Matrox wins hands down here (thanx AndrewDV)! Though my optometrist strong advised against reading text off the TV (heheheh ), I guess this benchmark surely proves the point that the G450's video-out is superior. Out of curiousity, did you do this test via composite or s-video out AndrewDV?

I didn't know that the Radeon doesn't support AVI capture in full-rez... wow... that's not very good Thanks for pointing that out rwierenga. Hopefully, a driver update will address that issue...

I think the one BIG reason I'll probably choose the G450 eTV is the DVDMax feature. Though I will probably make some VCDs, I'll likely be outputting more onto tape. The AIW does not have this feature, from what I understand, so there's some brownie points for Matrox! In addition, arbymo mentions in a different forum that with the AIW Radeon in PAL, I will not only be viewing at a low resolution of 640x480 (or maybe 800x600), but also at 50Hz! Ouch! Now 'eye-gouging' it ain't for most, as I'll have a blank black screen on my monitor. I don't think ANY monitor will display at a 50Hz refresh rate, not that I want it to... I mean 60Hz is bad enough, but *imagine* staring at a 50Hz monitor all day...

With DVD playback, I think I might try another software DVD program instead of the bundled one. Maybe they'd give better quality, or maybe if I get a super-fast CPU, the workload will lower, thus better quality DVD. Also, as I'm in a PAL zone, there have been posts about poor or jittery playback of DVDs on PAL TVs, so I might give another DVD program a try. If worse comes to worse, I'll just miss out on DVD via G450 on TV I guess... any hints or tips there?

Excellent! The AIW Radeon appears under "Sound, video ..." in the device manager. I wonder if the G450 eTV does this too though?

With regards to nVidia, I believe (from reading reviews) that their 2D output and video capturing especially, is inferior to both Matrox and ATI. But then again, as nVidia is open (ie. any manufacturer can produce them), there will be varying levels of quality for the GeForce range, and others. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that boards based on nVidia will have a good nVidia chip, but the manufacturer may cheap out on all other components on the graphics board/PCB, thus causing sub-par performance and/or quality. But again, this varies from one brand to another. Compared with Matrox, they make their own chips and own boards and all quality is controlled by them, probably attributing to the reason why their quality of output is so high (but don't forget the quality of their support and 'previous' drivers).

Thanks again,
ryoken

PS - arbymo, thanks for the 'opening ceremony'! I have replied to you on the other thread

[AndrewDV]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by ryoken:
Hello,

Out of curiousity, did you do this test via composite or s-video out AndrewDV?
</font>

Abosultely! In both cases, the G400-TV performed superior to the Radeon.

As far as DVD playback, check out the review of software players on this site. This is just personal preference, but I use PowerDVD.

[ryoken]

Thank you!

Originally posted by AndrewDV


Abosultely! In both cases, the G400-TV performed superior to the Radeon.

As far as DVD playback, check out the review of software players on this site. This is just personal preference, but I use PowerDVD.

Thanx for that AndrewDV! It's reassuring to know that both composite and s-video work better than on the AIW Radeon!

Hmm... this is a bit off-topic, but I wonder whether there are any cards out there that would accept a component input... wonder how that would compare to IEEE1394/Firewire... hmm...

For DVD, I'll have a look at that software DVD review...

Thanks again,
ryoken