µATX Part 1: ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 Performance Review

With the release of the Catalyst 7.8 driver, the X1250 graphics core has been touted as having the capability to playback high definition content in 1080p with an appropriate CPU and CyberLink's PowerDVD player. We confirmed this claim with our Mission Impossible titles that are encoded in the VC1 format in HD-DVD and the less demanding MPEG-2 format for Blu-ray with our E2160 processor. We tested Casino Royale that is encoded under H.264 and found the average CPU utilization rate to be around 89% with the E2160. While the majority of the movie was viewable, there were certain action sequences that created a 100% CPU usage rate that resulted in the movie stopping or PowerDVD locking up.