Image Quality Analysis Fall 2003: A Glance Through the Looking Glass
by Derek Wilson on December 10, 2003 11:14 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
ATI (Click to enlarge.)
NVIDIA (Click to enlarge.)
Tests here were too tricky to get close enough to the same frame on both cards for a difference image. We can see, however, that the ground on the ATI card has more lighting effects. We can see the same thing in the frame with anisotropic filtering and antialiasing turned on.
ATI 4xAA/8xAF (Click to enlarge.)
NVIDIA 4xAA/8xAF (Click to enlarge.)
Again, ATI does a better job at antialiasing in this game than the NVIDIA card.
Also, ATI has helped us track down the motion issue that we've been seeing on their cards. ATI supports using a separate filtering scheme for texture magnification (filtering when the screen pixels are smaller than texels) and minification (filtering when the screen pixels are larger than texels). NVIDIA hardware requires that magnification be done using the same filtering method as minification. Since TRAOD only requests anisotropic filtering be done on texture minification, NVIDIA does anisotropic filtering just fine while ATI doesn't do anisotropic filtering on magnification. The difference in filtering methods causes the flickering effect by which we have been bothered, and could be fixed via a patch from EIDOS; though, ATI reports that EIDOS is unwilling to do so. ATI could fix the problem themselves by doing application detection (determining that TRAOD is running and then adjusting settings specific to that game), but ATI is unwilling to take this step (even though it would be valid and helpful) in order to avoid the controversy.
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retrospooty - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
I have been visiting Anandtech for well over 4 years , and I have often exclaimed how thorough, fair, and unbiased this site is to others...This is the first article I have ever read here that I think is complete poop. I cannot beleive that in any fair IQ test Nvidia came anywhere close to ATI. Either the author is not being honest, or is color blind. Anyone with eyeballls can compare the two and see that ATI is much sharper, and vibrant especially with AA... Nvidia is WAY blurry.
I am very VERY dissapointed in this. :(
TheGoldenMenkey - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Excellent article. I would much rather be taught why things are different than be showed some differences in rendering and then have someone declare which one is cheating. Thanks for teaching us enough to let us come to our own conclusions. Keep up the good work AT.tazdevl - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Better look @ that... then we might have something to discusshttp://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1931...
dvinnen - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Artical seemed fair and unbias to me. Your AA and AF question is odvious. Look at the URL of the png file. It clearly states what is on.It seems they have cleaned up there DX9 proformance, but they still treat synthitic benchmarks badly. Most recintly the 3DMark03 patch a month ago and how they handeled the media (PR on one side of the pond said one thing, on the other saide, they said another)
tazdevl - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
So Derek to you own stock in nVIDIA? Did Brian Burke write this for you?Were AA and Aniso used in all tests or a few? Which ones? What modes are we comparing against which benchmarks?
Ever thought that BOTH nVIDIA and ATI can fix the outstanding instead of just nVIDIA?
I swear, every since Anand got caught up in the whole NV30 fiasco, the site's credibility is worth absolutely squat when it comes to nVIDIA.
I'm not saying ATI is without faults, but let's try to appear unbiased at a minimum in the article.