Lars looks at Aquamark (German)

So...when all things are pretty much apples to apples (44.03 drivers against ANY Catalyst drivers), the 5900 Ultra performs almost as well as a Radeon 9600.

Seems to be a pretty consistent trend here...
 
Nice article from what I could make of it, sounds like THG is jumping on the reality bandwagon. 8)

I look forward to the translated version, babblefish just don't cut it for me anymore. :rolleyes:
 
There are a number of interesting points raised in this article; THG mentions they contacted Nvidia about the loss of filtering quality in 51.75. As usual, Nvidia cried bug and claimed that it would be fixed. They did provide a workaround in recommending forcing filtering from the control panel instead of using the application setting. The quality in 51.75 indeed improved to be at least comparable to ATI's - whose filtering in Aquamark also looks noticeably worse than 44.03 by the way, as several people here had already noted.

The game Aquanox 2 itself showed similar problems with lighting and shadows as Aquamark did with the newer drivers, which is some indication of a general problem (or bug) rather than a benchmark-specific optimisation.

Nvidia stated a new Detonator 50 series build is to follow shortly.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Nice article from what I could make of it, sounds like THG is jumping on the reality bandwagon. 8)

I look forward to the translated version, babblefish just don't cut it for me anymore. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I would not come to that conclusion...yet ;)
 
Doomtrooper said:
digitalwanderer said:
Nice article from what I could make of it, sounds like THG is jumping on the reality bandwagon. 8)

I look forward to the translated version, babblefish just don't cut it for me anymore. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I would not come to that conclusion...yet ;)
Click to expand...
No sprechenzi deutch....what you saying? :?
 
I hope that all reviewers follow public driver releases in this manner to keep all IHVs honest when it comes to image quality. Great review Lars.
 
After all the flak Borsti's been getting on these forums, I wonder if he can handle praise? ;)
 
Very good, Lars. I've seldomly seen such detailed IQ comparisons. I hope you keep up this level for the future... :p
 
I have to say that i'm really looking forward to the release of the Det 50's. I mean, how stupid would Nvidia look if the IQ degradations that we see now still remains for the public release. And if they fix the IQ degradation (bugs :)), what kind of improvement will we see in speed ? Especially compared to the current Det 50 beta.
 
Is the reason the 44.03 drivers offer a sharper image due to Nvidias Texture sharpening? I find with ATI drivers that if no AF is used or trilinear AF is on it's much softer but with Bilinear AF on it's as sharp as 44.03.
 
I have a problem with this:

Since NVIDIA published new driver optimizations guidelines (see NVIDIA´s Optimization Guidelines), we wonder if the performance increase of v45.23 and 51.75 came from AM3 specific optimizations - which would possibly hurt their guidelines.
Click to expand...

I have not seen nVidia publish these guidelines--is there a link to the nVidia site wherein they are published? I've seen other sites, who report they have received this info from nVidia PR, publish these guidelines. But I have not seen them published by nVidia.

My own cynical idea is that these are a wholesale creation of nVidia PR, and that these guidelines have no connection in reality with driver development at nVidia, but were manufactured in order to address what nVidia perceives as a PR problem--not a real problem. I mean, I would very much like to believe otherwise, but as so many things in several sets of nVidia drivers since these "guidelines" were first published (by [H]?) seem to directly contradict that these are in fact guiding principles behind nVidia's current driver development--it's hard to believe that anyone writing drivers at nVidia takes them seriously (or is even aware of them.)

I mean--look at the charts. These seem entirely designed for public consumption in my view as I can't imagine discussing these issues with driver programmers in this manner.
 
Is the reason the 44.03 drivers offer a sharper image due to Nvidias Texture sharpening? I find with ATI drivers that if no AF is used or trilinear AF is on it's much softer but with Bilinear AF on it's as sharp as 44.03.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen, the ATI cards don't use Aniso correctly with AM3 when set to "application" in the control panel, but it works fine if you force it with the control panel. Kind of the opposite of UT2k3. Hence, the blurry textures on some of the ships in earlier reviews. It wasn't due to 45º angles. Aniso wasn't actually working due to having chose "application" in the drivers.

I see that Tom's touched on this in the article, only they said it's like this for the Det 51.75's. I wonder if they are aware that it's like this with the 9700's too?

This is the page where he talks about having to force Aniso with the control panel for the Det drivers:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030918/aquamark-12.html

Seeing that both cards are having problems with this, maybe it's a problem with the game itself?
 
:?:
One example is the particle effects in their game. It would not make sense to use shaders to create them. They run much faster when implemented by DX7 fixed function instructions. In the end, the average use of PS2.0 in the rendered image is 30%.
Click to expand...
Would this be true for both architectures ?
 
jjayb said:
...Seeing that both cards are having problems with this, maybe it's a problem with the game itself?
Click to expand...

I think that's entirely likely. When you can see driver behavior repeated in multiple applications, or when you know about something like for instance the Dets being unable to comply with commands for full trilinear in UT2K3, etc., then you can infer a driver problem; but when you have behavior isolated to a specific application the application cannot be overlooked as a probable cause.
 
opss... something´s strange here... ;)

@WaltC
I thought about that as well. But the Radeon drivers filter very well in the other situation while the 51.75 does not - and the v44.03 and 45.23 (without lighting) filter correct in the first case. So it does not look like an application issue. I´ll speak to Massive about this... but the guys have a very busy week.

ATI told me that they know about some issues. I don´t think that htis is a serious issue compared to those of the 45.23. The frame where the shot was taken is 3600 and the area I showed is in the lower left position of the shot.

Regarding the rules... NV made an extra press briefing to announce their new driver optimization guidelines to the press. The slides [H] used were taken from the official presentation. But you´re right, they´re not up on the NV side.

Lars
 
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