Best source of analog pro vs legacy analog board comparisons?

[naylord]

Hello,

I've been using a regular analog board for years, and I'm considering an upgrade to the pro board. The issue is, I want to make an informed decision, and I understand the theory of a higher bit depth, but what I'm struggling to find is really good actual capture footage demonstrating the quality of one over the other.
This is further compounded by the fact that we have PWM cores as shown here viewtopic.php?t=7565 which I did find give a noticable uptick in quality by reducing banding in FMVs on psx/saturn. So now the value proposition of a pro board is weather or not there is a discernable advantage. My dream scenario would be if My Life in Gaming did a deep dive (or maybe even Digital Foundry) and then I could see it for myself so far I'm not finding conclusive evidence to point out of this is a good purchase or not.

Anyone find good comparison footage or would be interested in making some themselves? I'd greatly appriciate it and it would be a good resource for more people to make informed decisions. Thank you!

[tdelage]

Hello,

I've been using a regular analog board for years, and I'm considering an upgrade to the pro board. The issue is, I want to make an informed decision, and I understand the theory of a higher bit depth, but what I'm struggling to find is really good actual capture footage demonstrating the quality of one over the other.
This is further compounded by the fact that we have PWM cores as shown here viewtopic.php?t=7565 which I did find give a noticable uptick in quality by reducing banding in FMVs on psx/saturn. So now the value proposition of a pro board is weather or not there is a discernable advantage. My dream scenario would be if My Life in Gaming did a deep dive (or maybe even Digital Foundry) and then I could see it for myself so far I'm not finding conclusive evidence to point out of this is a good purchase or not.

Anyone find good comparison footage or would be interested in making some themselves? I'd greatly appriciate it and it would be a good resource for more people to make informed decisions. Thank you!

I own an old 6.1 A/V board as well as a new 9.2 with 24 bit output and also got an HDMI -> VGA adapter to get analog 24bits output through HDMI direct-video mode.

Frankly comparing the picture quality between the old 6.1 board + PWM cores with 9.2 or even direct-video is far from being night and day and most of the differences are at best very subtle, not to say negligible (at least when displayed on my Sony Trinitron 27 inches CRT TV using scart RGB input). I cannot vouch for any other type of video signals like YUV for example though as i've never used anything but RGB.

If you already own a MiSTer with an old AV board + PWM cores and are happy with it, i wouldn't bother forcing myself to buy a new 9.2 just for the sake of it. But hey, if you really have spare money to spend, you can always go for it and use your old AV board as a backup, that's pretty cool too

[akeley]

To add to that, one great thing about the new board is that it has a higher quality audio DAC - the sound is clearer and pop-free. This could be circumvented on the old board by using the optical TOS link and separate DAC but that adds a bunch of cables and stuff to the setup.

The one slight minus with the new board is that a few more obscure/WIP/beta? cores might not work with it.