ATI cheating on anisotropic filtering performance

[KimB]

With quotes like:

As we will see repeatedly throughout our benchmark section, anisotropic filtering is the greatest strength of the new Radeon X800 cards.

You'd think that some reviewers would have bothered to pay attention to how each card applied its anisotropic filtering. Fortunately, one did:
http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r420_x800/index.php?p=13#tex

Notice that while the benchmarks around the web are sure to have used nVidia's "highest-quality" setting, a setting which removes the "brilinear," ATI is still using full bilinear filtering on texture stages other than the base texture.

 

[Nick Spolec]

Well, obviously this has been an ATI standard since the R300 was released.

Certainly, ATI should be giving you the ability to enable FULL trilinear... But, do other texture stages besides the first really need filtering? What usually encompasses the second, third, and later stages? Lights or what?

 

[Althornin]

nice inflammatory thread title, unfortunately, you couldnt be more wrong with it.
ATI has done nothing to hide/mislead regarding thier aniso.
Lay blame where it belongs - at the feet of reviewers.

 

[Mark]

I thought "brilinear" was only removed in the new nVidia drivers if you unchecked the "optimize texture filtering" option (or whatever it's called). It is, of course, checked by default so we can only assume that is how reviewers ran their benchmarks.

 

[Nick Spolec]

Yeah.. I agree. It is a loaded thread title.

It's not like ATI hides their ansio methods. We all knew this was ATI's way of doing it.

But I still think they should give the user the option to enable full Trilinear across all texture stages.

 

[Natoma]

But I still think they should give the user the option to enable full Trilinear across all texture stages.

Maybe someone *cough* Kombatant *cough* can spill the beans on a future CAT release.

 

[Tim]

I thought in nVidia drivers "brilinear" was only removed in the new nVidia drivers if you unchecked the "optimize texture filtering" option (or whatever it's called) which is, of course, checked by default.

You thought right.

 

[Moose]

"With application controlled AF, the same filtering levels and types are applied across all texture layers."

If you set AF to "application controlled" it does full AF. Control panel controlled only does full AF on the 1st layer.

How is this cheating????

Its like saying Nvidia is cheating at AF if you turn on the AF optimizations.

Of course there are rumors that even with the optimizations turned "off" the 61.11 drivers were still applying the optimizations.

I think you may have the companies confused here.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

And IIRC, if aniso with is requested from within the app, trilinear is applied on all stages.

This is not true with "brilinear" on the FX series, and is also not the case on any card with the 61.11 drivers in D3D.

That being said, I would prefer ATI give the option to force full trilinear on all stages in the CP.

 

[ZenOps]

I'm not sure how important Trilinear AF is. ATi has always used that type of AF as default, and then a full Trilinear or Bilinear pass afterward.

If you want to harp on mixed filtering in pre-textures, you also have to mention Nvidias non-filtered lighting effects, They appear to not even be bilinear (would that be called mono-linear?) a lack of precision which is immediately noticable in games like Far Cry.

 

[Evildeus]

Flame war? 8)

 

[whql]

Well, why don’t we include the part that Chalnoth also left out of Toms conclusion regarding AF performance:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040504/ati-x800-38.html

Thanks to its performance advantage when using anisotropic filtering, the Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition shows its rivals who's boss in this discipline without noticeably sacrificing image quality.

 

[Stryyder]

This thread title should read Chalnoth upset ATI released part on par with the revolutionary NV40 and will beat NVIDIA to market, tries to incite riot in a Beyond 3d thread.

 

[Dave Baumann]

UT has always proven itself to be fairly texture intensive and our X800 & 6800 reviews have used application control AF, meaning all filtering on all levels. I think you'll find the X800 PRO at 16X AF outperforming the 6800U at 8X AF.

 

[Diplo]

If IQ isn't noticeably different then I don't see a problem. However, I'd expect the people who agree with this to give Nvidia the same benefit when they 'optimise' without any noticeable difference (noticeable not being blow-ups of individual frames with microscopic differences).

 

[Snarfy]

But I still think they should give the user the option to enable full Trilinear across all texture stages.

Maybe someone *cough* Kombatant *cough* can spill the beans on a future CAT release.

you mean the new control center? i saw a pic of it, looks nice. havent heard if it lets ya enable tri across the board. could be, the cats have always been great drivers.

This thread title should read Chalnoth upset ATI released part on par with the revolutionary NV40 and will beat NVIDIA to market, tries to incite riot in a Beyond 3d thread.

haha, amen.

silly Chalnoth. i bet in prison, he'd be bubba's favorite cell mate

If IQ isn't noticeably different then I don't see a problem. However, I'd expect the people who agree with this to give Nvidia the same benefit when they 'optimise' without any noticeable difference (noticeable not being blow-ups of individual frames with microscopic differences).

i suppose this counts as noticably different, then:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/geforce_6800-46.html

You can tell the 6800 quality instantly. in motion, i'm sure its positively nauseating. Since the 6800 wont be out till sometime in june, we have some time before the horrible videos show up. Thank god.

 

[Mark]

But I still think they should give the user the option to enable full Trilinear across all texture stages.

Maybe someone *cough* Kombatant *cough* can spill the beans on a future CAT release.

Komb knows that if he were to spill any bean of any kind on anything future-Catalyst related he would be promtly given the boot from the beta program and likely be given a call from some nasty ATI lawyers.

He's not stupid, that Komb, so I doubt you'll get any such bean from him or any Catalyst beta tester.

 

[Kombatant]

He's not stupid, that Komb, so I doubt you'll get any such bean from him or any Catalyst beta tester.

And no, ladies and gentlemen, I didn't give him any money for that compliment

Btw, thread title =

 

[Snarfy]

He's not stupid, that Komb.

Oh. Really?

 

[SithSolo1]

And no, ladies and gentlemen, I didn't give him any money for that compliment

Lies!