Anand Compares NV38/R360 IQ

I can't see any AA at all on two of those three images.

 

Looking at the original Anandtech 4xAA JPG shots from F1 Challenge (.gifs really aren't good for image quality comparisons, and JPGs suck as well) either he did something wrong or there's something strange going on as there appears to be no aa on the horizontal edge of the banner over the track at all on either the 45.23 or 52.14 shots. I would expect to see one intermediate shade even on nVidia's 2x mode (it should stretch about halfway across the stairstep between one y coordinate and the next), and in the 4x mode there should be mostly one intermediate shade stretching about the same distance with the odd pixel of other shades here and there, but there seem to be pretty much no intermediate shades at all.

There are a few pixels dotted around some of the other edges in the image that look like they do have some level of AA applied though.

Very curious. :?

 

If you grab the F1 FX images and zoom in there is one intermediate shade on the banner aswell as other horizontal offset areas (like the car front window), areas that are near the vertical axis have 4 shades.

EDIT here's a closeup - I think I'm just seeing an odd pixel
www.jlmay.f2s.com/F1 Zoom.JPG
and here's a reminder pic of NV30 v R300 AA
www.jlmay.f2s.com/NV30-ATIAA.jpg

NV Horizontal offset AA..... Where?

 

Taken with the in-game view carefully angled to minimise the problem. I guess it's a case of "Nvidia tells us it doesn't impact image quality"

 

the one thing that stood out for me was on the 52.14s the last fence panel on the right. If you look at the 3.7s and the 43s they both show the trees through the fence. On the 52s you get grey.

 

Not on the horizontal edges - as far as I can see there are a couple of pixels (at most) at each stairstep on the banner that might be an intermediate colour - in either 2x or 4x AA modes there should be a long strip of an intermediate shade running about halfway between each stairstep and the next (because of the sampling patterns used). There might be a similar problem with the horizontal edges of the tires as well, but because of the underlying noise from the road surface it's difficult to tell.

It's very strange.

Looking at it some more there also doesn't seem to be much detail in the road surface in the 52.14 drivers AF shot (looking at the area of track nearest to the car the track 'noise' looks to be at a much lower frequency)

[Edit - the lower frequency on the track detail appears to be new on the 52.14 driver - the 45.23 screenshot doesn't have this effect.]

 

Hey andy while you're here, quick question.

Does ATI lap the R3x00 core before applying it to the circuitboard? I noticed that the core on my 9800 pro was unbelievably reflective when I took off the stock heatsink to apply arctic ceramique; almost a perfect mirror. Never seen that before on any core, processor or VGA alike.

 

Oh dear... Looks like CatalystMaker's gonna piss off AT. All that designer TR-AOD benchmarking's just gone out the window with Cat 3.8

" Tomb Raider frame rates improve as much as 20%"

 

The back of a die/wafer is generally that shiny. At least all the wafers I've seen.

 

I don't know so I can't tell you I'm afraid - you could try sireric.

 

I agree that in the centre of the image, the road and the overhead signs looked much better in the cats... but I couldn't really tell with the side buildings which was giving the better image there (since without knowing what the building SHOULD look like). Only thing I can say is the new dets were pretty (and obviously) bad.

Looking at it like that though, the cat is the obvious winner.

 

Just from the AA aspect of it I don't think Nivida is competing at all. Why even turn it on for a FX card? I'm not blinded by anything. If anything I see more clearly than ever.

I guess the questions you should ask yourself is this: 1. Does AA quality matter to me even on the horiziontal? 2. Do I want my card to perform the best it can out of the box, or wait six months to a year to see good performance?

If the answers to both of those questions are yes then you have your answer.

If you answer NO to both questions then you my fellow are the one that is not seeing clearly.

 

I think what you have struck on here could be regarded as the heart of nVidia's problems now - After about twelve months of deception, cheats, and image quality reductions, people expect that and nothing more from them, and because of that are naturally wary and skeptical of anything that comes out of nVidia. nVidia need to start earning back the respect they had in the past - The Detonator 50s might be the beginning of that long road, they might not. Just remember how long it took ATi to regain trust and respect after their reputation for poor quality drivers and the whole Quack incident.

Personally, I think there will be a lot of genuine improvement in the Detonator 50s, but that is going to be tempered by more image quality reductions in other areas - From what I've read it's going to be very much a mixed bag.

 

English translation is ready:
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/detonator_52.14/index_e.php


Please keep in mind, ATi have a similary optimization under Direct3D AF: texture stages 1-7 are only bilinear filtered. IMO this is not corrected with Cata 3.8.


2006: We have GeForceFX III / Radeon 20000 and play Doom 7 with a nice bilinear filter at all

 

This is only true if you've forced AF from the control panel. If you use application enabled AF, then you get what the application asks for.

It's funnier if you get your facts straight.

 

That reminds me GL Guy, those ideas you told us about a CP option to force trilinear on all texture stages; have they taken off yet?

 

Is it reasonable to assume that the jump in DX9 shader performance is due to some form of wrapper so calls for Full precision auto drop to partial and calls for partial auto drop to 16Int.

 

That's a bad excuse IMO. The number of games that take control of the AF themselves is quite small. Luckily aTuner can disable that "optimization". But something isn't automatically good if something else is worse.

At least OpenGL has been exempted from any filtering "optimizations" so far.

Maybe his comment was badly worded, but I don't think Leonidas has to get his facts straight.

 

No, that would be easy to spot. If the driver drops to lower precision at all, it needs to do a more thorough analysis of how the values are used to decide where a drop in precision would be "acceptable".

I don't think performance increases of 30% with complex shaders in comparison to early drivers are particularly surprising. Many shaders leave room for optimization, especially those written in HLSL.

btw, it's FX12, not 16.

 

And the number of games that benefit from trilinear on every stage is small.

I have no idea what this means.

No, I believe he thought that ATI never did full trilinear, which is not the case. Many people have gotten confused on this issue.