[Hellbinder]

Well. After reading this review from Guru3d..

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/134/1/

And being rather startled at the Wins that the 6800U racks up.. I honestly am wondering what their "Optomized" filtering looks like. Does it deliver the same Quality as ATi's default Filtering? As i remember it, Nvidias Optomized filtering is Quite Worse.

It is very strange to see Nvidias Scores Jump like this accross the board. Ther DX9 scores seem supiciously high as well.

What say you guys who have been reviewing the card/Cards..

Is this a Visually Fair Competition?

1. Filtering Quality

2. Shader Quality

3. Texture and Mipmap Quality..

Is it Turning out that the 400mhz 6800 is Simply faster than even an Overclocked XTPE?

[Rys]

It appears to be an IQ comparable way of testing, yes. NVIDIA's filtering optimisations with NV40 appear to be very good in terms of retaining the base image quality.

As for their results, they're just CPU limited for a large chunk of the time. Look how close the X800 PRO gets when that's the case. Overclocking their XT would buy them very little, and it shows.

Rys

[jvd]

why did u make me read that crap ? I hate clicking through 8 pages of crap to get to benchmarks. Why that stuff took 8 pages i dunno . But that was nuts .

I stoped listening after the first paragraph.

Woaah, one month after announcing the product ATI finally sent out the reference samples to us for a review. There aren't that many samples available that's for sure

Its funny but considering he posted that on the 15th and on the 16th i got my x800xt and so did anyone that ordered from bestbuy i find it very funny .

[radar1200gs]

If you are so concerned about NV40's optimized filtering, simply disable it and be done with it. You do have the option you know...

[dksuiko]

Originally Posted by jvd

why did u make me read that crap ? I hate clicking through 8 pages of crap to get to benchmarks. Why that stuff took 8 pages i dunno . But that was nuts .

I stoped listening after the first paragraph.

Its funny but considering he posted that on the 15th and on the 16th i got my x800xt and so did anyone that ordered from bestbuy i find it very funny .

How about you relax a little bit and read? He was talking about the reference samples that ATI sends to reviewers, not production models. Do you have some sort of inferiority complex or something? Christ, he wasn't bashing ATI - so quit crying like a baby. And if you hate clicking through 8 pages to get to the benchmarks, use the damn pull-down menu. That's what they put it there for. Man, some folks are so uptight when they read video card reviews that they scream murder on the smallest things.

[dksuiko]

Originally Posted by radar1200gs

If you are so concerned about NV40's optimized filtering, simply disable it and be done with it. You do have the option you know...

...or how about we investigate it and learn what they're doing so we are better informed on how the optimizations work?

[bloodbob]

Originally Posted by Hellbinder

Is this a Visually Fair Competition?

1. Filtering Quality

2. Shader Quality

3. Texture and Mipmap Quality..

Please show us evidence of 2 and 3 in the current drivers

1. Is arguable they are both mathematically BAD in my opinon go look at the pick the best IQ poll dave set up a few weeks ago the NV40 rated better then the R420.

As such 2 probably is better on the Nvidia cards as they support 32 bit FP and in some cases its better then 24bit FP ( well according to epic )

and number 3 ATI are playing with the LODs with AF their LOD calculating algorithim is worse ( though its acceptable in my opinon and M$ recommends the optimisation) and it apears the NV isn't as angle dependant as the R420.

I don't even know why you linked to guru 3d because they say its not worse then ATI's

The good thing here is that image quality wise the 6800 and x800 now are now the same, take two computers equip one with a x800 and the other with a 6800,look at a screenshot from both PC's and you cannot see the difference.

I don't care who's filtering is worse because I want them both to remove the tri-linear and Angle dependant optimisations on their next gen ( distance adpative AF is okay in my opinon AF is fine atleast for a while ).

[rwolf]

This has been talked to death.

[pat777]

Originally Posted by bloodbob

As such 2 probably is better on the Nvidia cards as they support 32 bit FP and in some cases its better then 24bit FP ( well according to epic )

I don't know, Epic loves money. If 32 FP has any noticable difference compared to 24 FP this generation then 6800U will have better shader quality.

[hstewarth]

Originally Posted by pat777

I don't know, Epic loves money. If 32 FP has any noticable difference compared to 24 FP this generation then 6800U will have better shader quality.

Does UT2004 fully support 32 FP or maybe Epic is talking about Unreal 3 stuff. For UT2003, there was some discusion about an Ultra Detail mode, does UT2004 support it. I have not got a 6800U, is there any more detail options if with it if you load it on 6800U?

[Tim]

Originally Posted by hstewarth

Does UT2004 fully support 32 FP or maybe Epic is talking about Unreal 3 stuff. For UT2003, there was some discusion about an Ultra Detail mode, does UT2004 support it. I have not got a 6800U, is there any more detail options if with it if you load it on 6800U?

No UT2004 is SM1.x only (mostly DX7 (no shaders) thou). Anything beyond that seems to be UE3 stuff.

[london-boy]

A new thread on this issue was needed.

[Rugor]

I think Guru3D got theirs later than some other sites because they are known to be Nvidia-Centric in their positions.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Rugor

I think Guru3D got theirs later than some other sites because they are known to be Nvidia-Centric in their positions.

Really? I thought it was 'cause ATi hated 'em.

[volt]

Originally Posted by rwolf

This has been talked to death.

I second that, but who cares?

Anyway I came to a conclusion that ATI's optimized filtering is *slightly* better in terms of IQ -- not in all situations however.

[overclocked]

HB, if we reverse your question and switch Ati/nV had you still have this question then. :? And if yes what does that tell you?

[Hellbinder]

I dont think much discussion has happened on the real comparitability between ATi and Nvidias Optomized modes. In the past Nvidias Optomized mode was not very pleasing to the eye.

There is no need to reverse the Qestion or anything like that.

Is Nvidia delivering the same IQ as ATi When both are using optimizations or not. Its that simple.

If they are... Then It looks like the X800XT PE is no longer as fast as the Nv40 in most cases. If that is True than ATi's entire reason for Bailing on SM3 and supposedly going for "raw speed" is bogus as well. If a 16 pipeline Card even with a huge Clock advantage, cant beat a competitors 16 pipelined card with all the bells and wistles...

Thats really the jist of my questioning here.

Are the Two cards pretty much even with optimizations on or not. Based on the opinion of the more ballanced people here?

[Sxotty]

You have to make your own opinions man What you see is what is important right? You can't expect someone else to have the same opinion as you and this stuff is getting quite subjective...

[jvd]

the optimized filtering has come a long way since the firxt drivers with it .

ITs just behind ati's from what i can tell between the cards . Both look very good now .

Of course thats not the only thing nvidia is optimizing

[Albuquerque]

I think it was a very good review; it seems the 6800 series simply has better drivers than the x800, as evidenced by having all the cards "top out" in many of the games at differing framerates. I'm sure the X800XT has more fillrate than the 6800 Ultra, so when I see all of them flatlining because of CPU bottleneck and the 6800 is still able to pull ahead by a few frames, that says to me the drivers just require a little less overhead.

I don't think ANYONE is going to be disappointed in either of these cards. As for the true winner, I honestly think that's not either of the companies, but us crazy people paying the cash for the cards When was the last time we had such great competition? I can only think of NV vs 3DFX in the TNT2 days

[bloodbob]

Hellbender I'll give you an honest answer as far as I know.

Currently the 6800 in defualt mode only scrimp on AF angles and brilinear.

I believe the angle dependancy is a little better in the 6800 though I haven't really looked to hard into it.

Brilinear vs Trilinear well they both do about the same trilinear/brilinear mix BUT brilinear does favour to use the lower resolution mipmap more then trilinear and the other way around for the higher resoulution mipmap. So their is slight more of a bandwidth save on the 6800 taking into account the texture CACHE.

Now I also belive X800 does another optimisation which the 6800 doesn't I believe that on texture layers 1-7 when AF is enabled it pushes the LOD back further I could be mistaken about this.

6800 does better LOD calculation as well but it doesn't factor in all that much.

[jvd]

6800 does better LOD calculation as well but it doesn't factor in all that much

what do u mean by this ?

[bloodbob]

Originally Posted by jvd

what do u mean by this ?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewto...=293862#293862 go read around the general ball park.

[bdmosky]

Originally Posted by Albuquerque

I don't think ANYONE is going to be disappointed in either of these cards. As for the true winner, I honestly think that's not either of the companies, but us crazy people paying the cash for the cards When was the last time we had such great competition? I can only think of NV vs 3DFX in the TNT2 days

Sorry... but so far I don't see competition bringing prices down. Perhaps a little too reminiscent of the 3DFX Voodoo2 SLI days for my taste. I'm really disappointed right now because I was waiting for this generation to come out so that I could upgrade, but these introductory prices are ridiculous. They've yet to even bring down the last generation's prices much. Where's the $199 pricepoint here? No, I don't want a POS X600 either! I miss the 4200 days where you could get the same features and composition of the high end with a slight clock speed reduction at a much lower price. I'm not going to pay over $500 for a video card, or even $350 for the "bottom of the performance GPUs."

[Lockon]

Sorry... but so far I don't see competition bringing prices down

WTF ?
I payed $1050 for my GF3, $990 for the ti4600, $790 for my 9800pro, and $760 for my current card x800xt. all cards were bought as soon as available here in Australia(usually 2-4 weeks behind the U.S)

I dont know about you, but i can clearly see a pattern