Razor04 said:
This is somewhat disappointing: whatever area of R300 we were poking at, we've always found something that could have been done better, as demonstrated by the competition's textbook quality. It's likely that there are even more filtering simplifications on the Radeon, that we simply haven't found yet.
This was my favorite part of the whole article...I think someone feels a need to make up for the past few anti-NV articles lest they appear biased against NV.
That is because
i am, lets say, censorious to NV (but, btw, own a GeForce Ti 4600 since Summer '02 — and still use it.) I am also censorious to ATI, too. After all, I stated the fact that some particular R3x0-features are better solved by the competition. My intention was not to make a list of features "here ATI rules", and "there NV rules". That ATIs filter do not delivering "full" quality, is a matter very few people know. After I saw the strange artifacts in ATIs BF, I felt this could worth a short article. It's purely accidential that the release was just after the "brilinear" article. For another reason I was just studying a paper about MIP-Map-Selection and trilinear filtering, and I am fully understand that for the technical feasibility's sake it is inescapably to compromise. But I cannot accept an not-"quasi"-perfect bilinear filter. (Imho, BF has to be only limited by the fact that MIP-Level-Calculation is per Quad only, and by the color-resolution of the texture, and frame buffer.) I don't give a damn about if it is noticable in "real games". For me, a GPU is more that just an acceleration tool for some games.
Razor04 said:
ATI has done a wonderful job with the R300 but some people just can't seem to acknowledge it without first pointing out any fault it has in an attempt to downplay the R300's superiority over the competitions part.
Yeah, that's true, since R300 ATI is king of the hill, since about 1 1/2 years, big N was not able to release an "overall better" GPU. Of course, R300 and R350 is still far from "perfection". Take the the shader limitations, i. e. It may be sounds a bit heavy, but for calculating texture coordinates, i consider FP24 as "lowered precision", too.
For an article, I have to focus on a special matter. In this article it was about ATIs texture filtering "optimizations". So things like shader limitations, but also NVs "brilinear" (I refuse to consider a graphic card, with a driver not allows simple things as full trilinear filtering, as an accessory for a gamer) have must to stayed out. (So I dont talked about other simplifications in R300, i. e. the matter with Alpha blending. To find harsh words is my style
, this article was not intended to bash ATI.
)
Ailuros said:
There's a lot missing in that article and aths knows it.
With a reason. There will be more filter-related stuff "soon" (lets say, early in 2004.)