[bloodbob]

OMG CAN ANYONE REPRODUCE HIS R350 AF SHOTS??? please note that AF WAS ENABLED IN UT SUPPOSEDLY ( drivers where set to application preference he stated in the start of the review ).

Cause not having UT2003 ( well or a r350 mines a r300 ) I can't tell. Frankly I think he deliberately incorrectly set the testing up and ATI should be making a libel case against him.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTAw

no this isn't the NV35 review either this is a new thing since ATI wasn't happy with how he portraited their cards in the NV35 review.

[whql]

Before you read this latest [H] article I would suggest you read their ATI Radeon 8500 revisited article to put into context what they feel "real" Trilinear should look like and the use of mipmap colors to highlight it...

[bloodbob]

I didn't own a 8500 but are you trying to say that ATI don't do tri linear filtering or you trying to say this is normal for hardocp?

Because I've seen other pictures of UT2003 on a R3X0 with AF and trilinear here on the beyond3d forum and they looked the way they should have.

[K.I.L.E.R]

We all know [H] is the most unreliable site on the internet.
[H] is the comical Ali of the internet.

[Kristof]

In the first picture above we have a cut out from a screenshot on both cards in Phobos. In this map there is a nice floor texture that makes it easy to spot mip-map boundaries. Suffice it to say it is hard to notice any difference at all between the two pictures.

Did they select poor contrast textures on purpose so that the mipmap change is nicely hidden ? Ever texture I saw used was black on grey, or dark brown and light brown, or grey on grey... and all with poor lighting. How on earth would you see anything on such poor contrast pictures ? And why start of with 3 pictures with no chance of ever seeing a mipmap boundary (overly complex environments). We have shown them an ideal place to look at this when we discussed the problem on the forum before.

The mip-map shot shows otherwise, it says that there are some pretty hard transitions between mip-maps on the GFFX 5900 Ultra. But when you look at the in-game shot you just don’t see that.

Yeah right... just because they can not see it while playing does not mean the degradation in image quality is not there... and other people might notice. Now if they played on a LCD that blurs everything anyway then I can understand they did not see a problem... (actually they mention all the specs but the important one which would be the display device used, unless I am going blind and can't see it in their spec list - I mean who cares what HDD they used !)

Not one lick of difference here except in the mip-map shot where the 9800 Pro looks down right ugly compared to the 5900 Ultra. But again it doesn't translate to the in-game images.

Err... so what is it... either it is down right ugly or it is not... how can you say something is ugly and then next say it does not translate to in-game images ?

Reality IMHO is that trilinear filtering is an industry standard you don't go and change it. Make this a performance option sure but never a quality or application option.

Just my 2 personal cents...

K-

[Hanners]

NVIDIA has seemingly found a way to do less work doing Trilinear Filtering than ATI while producing an IQ that easily comparable with ATI's.

:?

[mboeller]

After looking over the article you could not expect an good article cause;

Editor's Note: As mentioned above, ATI has come to us and told us that our UT2K3 benchmarks were off in our BFGTech Asylum 5900 Ultra review and that the benchmark numbers we shared were damaging the 9800 line of products.

ATi attacked him (in his opinion, and thats all that count here)

Editor's Note: Bottom line is that we are still very comfortable with our recent benchmarks and thoughts that are reflected in our BFGTech Asylum 5900 Ultra review.

And so he defended himself.


Nothing more nothing less.


so overall an useless article, but nothing unexpected and something ATi should/could have expected when the informed Hardocp about the AF issue.

[Dean]

I had to go to anandtech forums also to say something to Evan Lieb as he was applauding Brent and Kyle for their "update"

http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...92&STARTPAGE=1

The fun starts about 30 messages down there.

[John Reynolds]

They just don't have a clue the slippery slope their 'logic' operates on. By condoning such tactics these large and, yes, influential sites will force other vendors to endorse such tactics themselves to remain competitive. And I don't think consumers buying $400-500 USD video boards in 2003 should be using bilinear texture filtering. I wonder if game developers belonging to the Way It's Meant to be Played have the same vision as Nvidia appears to since the latter seems perfectly willing to hack a game's IQ down for their own purposes?

And for all his arrogant blustering, Kyle simply appears to be completely unaware of how to be a positive influence on the market. And that is truly a shame.

[MuFu]

Are B3D going to run a short article on this? From the examples I've seen (e.g. in the post Dave made), it should be a startlinglingly obvious issue to illustrate. Not quite sure how [H] have managed to steer around it. :?

MuFu.

[digitalwanderer]

Was that a review or a justification? I swear every other paragraph was along the lines of, "even though some anal-technical types might be able to tell a difference with the colored mipmaps, you barely notice the mipmap lines in real game play if you're a real gamer and not some image quality freak..."

I feel disapointed, but unsurprised.

[MuFu]

Originally Posted by MuFu

startlinglingly

Hehe.

MuFu.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by MuFu

Not quite sure how [H] have managed to steer around it. :?

Easy, lots of practice. 8)

[Sticky]

Will someone be doing a follow up article to the [H] article?? Becasue I am interested in another perspective.

Perhaps 1 or 2 members on here could provide screen shots of there respective cards (9700/9800 and 5900 ultra) and let everyone draw there own conclusions as is the standard here.

[nelg]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

They just don't have a clue the slippery slope their 'logic' operates on. By condoning such tactics these large and, yes, influential sites will force other vendors to endorse such tactics themselves to remain competitive. And I don't think consumers buying $400-500 USD video boards in 2003 should be using bilinear texture filtering. I wonder if game developers belonging to the Way It's Meant to be Played have the same vision as Nvidia appears to since the latter seems perfectly willing to hack a game's IQ down for their own purposes?

And for all his arrogant blustering, Kyle simply appears to be completely unaware of how to be a positive influence on the market. And that is truly a shame.

I see Dave posting in forums at [H] (before being banned ?), Rage3d, NVnews, Anandtech, etc. I applaud and thank him for that. He seems to be the only site operator/reviewer that seems to have finding the truth as his primary concern.
[flame] An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards will eventually write a more deceptive review than [H]. [/flame]

[nelg]

This was first brought to me by their PR Director, Chris Evenden, last Tuesday morning. At that time they did not submit any proof of their claims that shed light on the specific benchmarks we used. As of posting this, ATI has still never given us proof of any of their statements specific to the benchmarks they suggest are damaging to their product.

Some very important questions need to be asked of [H]. Did they ask ATI for proof? If they did not, why not? If so, were they denied? If ATI said they would provide proof, why did they not wait?

[Yonex]

Kyle has lost all credibility.

Brent is fast approaching.

The longer this issue goes the more it looks like the Quak issue that they screamed about.
At this point Kyle is a 2 faced liar. Spin it how you want, he is.

They are simply choosing to argue the side they choose instead of the truth and looking out for the readers.

It's sad, years worth of credibiltiy built by fighting for us the enthusiasts, gone in a matter of a couple weeks.

[Yonex]

Originally Posted by nelg

Some very important questions need to be asked of [H]. Did they ask ATI for proof? If they did not, why not? If so, were they denied? If ATI said they would provide proof, why did they not wait?

According to Kyle's own rules you have to wait a month before any action can take place.

[andypski]

[Sarcasm]

Turns round to rest of ATI driver guys...

"It's official - it's now open season on image quality guys - [H] says so."

Let's start hacking it up now, and leave no pixel unpolluted.

[/Sarcasm]

[nelg]

Originally Posted by andypski

[Sarcasm]

Turns round to rest of ATI driver guys...

"It's official - it's now open season on image quality guys - [H] says so."

Let's start hacking it up now, and leave no pixel unpolluted.

[/Sarcasm]

How about a new driver control panel option called [Kyle] to go with the others.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by nelg

How about a new driver control panel option called [Kyle] to go with the others.

Seriously, I would not object to another control panel option called "Ultraspeed" (or maybe "Nvidia Compatabilty Mode") or somesuch that hacked everything out, as long as the current quality modes are still left in the control panel. That way, we could see what the ATI cards can do when hacked down to NV3x levels.

It's would still be a waste of resources, but would be better than the dirty war that Nvidia are engaged in.

[Althornin]

I really desire a B3D article on this subject, and i think its a nessecity, to clear up the confusion left in the wake of the [H] article...

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

Seriously, I would not object to another control panel option called "Ultraspeed" (or maybe "Nvidia Compatabilty Mode") or somesuch that hacked everything out, as long as the current quality modes are still left in the control panel. That way, we could see what the ATI cards can do when hacked down to NV3x levels.

It's would still be a waste of resources, but would be better than the dirty war that Nvidia are engaged in.

I'd really rather see their resources used to make their drivers better for gaming and such, and I'm pretty sure ATi & CatalystMAKER are of the same opinion from my conversations with them on the matter.

[Althornin]

I'd much rather see control panel options that actually give full trilinear in games wihtout having to choose "application" and then set aniso level in game.

[Malo]

this is becomnig ridiculous

BrentJ on anandtech forums:

Why would set the card to Performance AF? The main point was to see its default Non-AF Trilinear quality, as that was the main question brought up. Default on the ATI control panel is Application Preference, and on the NVIDIA control panel is Quality.

Isn't the main point because in the modes they set the cards in, the 5900 was doing bilinear and the 9800pro trilinear? Does he not understand this?

From HardOCP review:

You might think that when you set the driver to “Quality� that it would use the best filtering known as full Trilinear Filtering, although the 44.03 driver from NVIDIA does not seem to allow this...but does that matter?

how can it not matter? isn't one doing bi and one is doing tri taking a performance hit but having better IQ?. in an attempt to do apples-to-apples isn't this against all common sense?

You can see that according to this screenshot of the mipmaps that the GFFX has a more ‘harsh’ transition and the 9800p a more ‘softer’ transition bewtween textures. Even with that being so we just are not seeing it make a difference in the first in-game shot above. The tool seems to point out a difference in technique and not quality.

isn't that one of the differences with bi vs tri? trilinear gives you a softer transition taking away mip lines etc....

The mip-map shot shows a difference, but I don’t see it impacting the in-game shot negatively at all.

this is his theme in almost every comment... there IS a difference but you won't notice it running around playing the game.... I think he has gone mad with nvidiocy...