ATi vs. Nvidia IQ showdown at Firingsquad

Anyone notice that they changed the article a bit? Notice they don't have the blurry comments there anymore?

Did you yell at them OpenGL guy?

 

Hey Dave,

The bet was with Godfrey, and no, it hasn't been settled yet. Don't tell him, but I've had several modifications done to my car that should at least make it more competitive. He is, after all, a race car driver

You're absolutely correct on the applications note. This is not something I had at the time of writing, or was aware of. Thus, I'll download the aforementioned app and give it a look-see.

I wish I could know all about everything, but at the time I was working with the tools at my disposal. Thanks for the tip, though, Dave, every bit of info certainly helps!

 

From the first page of this thread:

Thanks, though.

 

Agree. Hopefully ATI will offer some level of SSAA support in future drivers.

 

I'm definitely not "tackling this" as something to debate myself out of. I enjoy *thoughtful* discussion with a group of people who I have no problem admitting have more technical know-how in the realm of 3D rendering than I myself have, and would likely be able to make very useful contributions to either the existing piece or further works concerning image quality/performance. What I don't enjoy is comments like, this sucks, this is terrible, the author was clearly kidnapped from a mental hospital at birth and given a keyboard or anything to that effect. Not only to responses like that *not* help the situation, but they don't help *me* in my sincere desire to follow up with the technically correct explanation to visual quality discrepencies that clearly exist (because there isn't any argument on whether I'm making the differences between ATI's RADEON 9800 XT and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 up, but how they are being explained), and they don't help the less informed readers, whom many of you seem worried will get the wrong impression.

There's no question of "just might;" the conclusion has already been edited to reflect the changes OpenGL guy pointed out. Of course, I appreciate his help there.

And so you know, I did not have your discussion in mind in my previous commentary. If you look both above and below your post, you'll see plenty of abrasive banter. That's what I was referring to. Many of your points, such as performance, were addressed in different messages, which is why I haven't responded. Some of the others, I can address here. For instance, in NASCAR, the comment about "so distracting that it's hard to tell" is a reference to *my* ability to differentiate between the filtering quality of two images, one of which isn't as clear. I'm certainly not trying to hypnotize anyone into believing the image is too distracting to make any judgement for *themselves.*

Besides, it seems for every one message I'm able to hammer out, I wind up with 10 to reply to

 

They do support SSAA in drivers just not on PC :/

 

Actually, I don't really care if they do or not

 

Simon, I'm shocked!

Surely you have one of our fine products in your machine?

 

I think people would be shocked- I've got a Graphics Star 700 (a circa 1995 Videologic/S3) and a PCX2 in my work PC . My home machine's a little more advanced though but, sorry, still no ATI I'm afraid.

 

"I'm selling these fine leather jackets..."

 

I knew it!

BTW: Tim, Firingsquad not like your direct linking too much.

 

I would like to see FS 2004 in there. To see if you come to the same conclusion that [H] did in regards to AF. The ATi card looked far, far better in AF, in their 5950 review.

 

What a bizarre quote. Had to google to find out what it was about. Here's what I found...

Funny.

Tommy McClain

 

When you write something like:

"That said, in certain games, ATI texture quality has dipped below what we witnessed in our first image quality piece."

This not substantiated in any way by anything in the article. I have a hard time labeling any article where central parts of the conclusion don’t any connection to the results shown in article it self as good or even decent, when such discrepancies are present I don’t think that “terribleâ€￾ was completely unwarranted. It might have been a bit to harsh thou (it is not like I think you are evil or stupid or anything like that).

If you only where drawing conclusions about the difference between the nVidia and Ati (or other stuff actually shown in the article) people might not have been so discontent with the article but you continue and draw conclusions about the Cat3.6 vs. the Cat 3.8.

People reading the article might very well get the impression that Ati has a texture quality problem. When the reality is that MSAA just isn’t meant to stand alone. As I see things it is simply not relevant to compare texture quality without AF.

When you write "...are so distracting that it’s hard to tell" it seems that you are trying to underline a point (that the texture quality is bad).

 

The strange thing is, they do for Macintosh owners. Rage3D forum goers report that the Mac drivers allow at least a 2xSSAA mode.

Why this isn't in the Windows version of the drivers is a slight mystery.

 

Hehe, I was just using your quote for my selfish agenda: A Super-sampling option for the R3XX products. Sorry.

 

So true........but if enough people voice their views in the right forum an answer to this question may be revealed.

 

I wanted to let you folks know that I included a variety of high quality PNG screenshots from the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro in our GeForce FX 5950 Ultra preview that can be used for image quality comparisons.

I was pressed for time and antialiasing and anisotropic filtering were always configured using the respective driver control panels.


3DMark03 - Comparison of frame 1100 from Game 1, frame 219 from Game 2, frame 1643 from Game 3, and frame 805 from Game 4 at 1024x768 with no AA / no AF and 4X AA / 8X AF. Also have the corresponding images from the reference rasterizer.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5950_ultra/page_2.shtml

AquaMark3 - Comparison of frames 1000, 1500, and 3500 at 1024x768 with 4X AA / 8X AF.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5950_ultra/page_3.shtml

First Person Shooters - Various screenshots from Unreal 2 and Serious Sam The Second Encounter at 1600x1200 with 4X AA / 8X AF.

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5950_ultra/page_6.shtml

Morrowind - 1600x1200 with 4X AA / 8X AF

http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_fx_5950_ultra/page_7.shtml


If you have time, I'd appreciate any comments on pointing out any differences that I haven't already mentioned.

Also, if you have ideas for additional comparisons, let me know.

 

Mike, my only beef is with your conclusion.
you denigrate the usefullness of synthetic benchmarks, while ignoring the glaring downside to the GFFX - slow shader performance (currently highlighted by mostly synthetic benchmarks and a few games).
I feel that the downplay of synthetic benchmarks does a disservice to your readers, who might want to buy a card that is still "top of the heap" in 6 months to a year.
I feel that the current trend to ignore synthetics and idolize "rela gameplay" is a red herring. Both are useful - and they tell you two totally different things!
One tells you how the card performs NOW - certainly important (and you ahve this covered very well). The other gives you an idea of how the card will perform in the future - this is the aspect you are lacking.

 

The sad thing is that it is substantiated by the errors of the first article, where several screenshots that were labeled "No AF" clearly showed AF on. So if you compare "NoAF" in both articles, it will seem like a quality drop.
I wrote a feedback mail and several lines in the comments section to that first article pointing out that these screenshots didn't show what they're supposed to show, but there was no reaction.