Decison to make: 256mb 7800GTX or X1900XT

Yes, Hellbinder, but nVidia also offers as an option in its drivers "Transparency multisampling," which gives similar results at higher performance for those games where supersampling on alpha textures is too costly. It is, of course, possible to use a utility to do the same thing on ATI hardware, but there is something to be said for having the support in the driver.

 

I chose the x1800xt 512mb over the 7800gtx 256mb.

They're the same price here in Canada.

 

Oh, it's not. It's just I haven't played many openGL games lately where I had any problems. (Then again, I haven't played any of the games you listed either. )

Thanks Chal, I really was just curious.

 

I'd get the two GTX, sell them imediately, buy a cheap-o used 6800GT or X800. You should do well with any of these till march, put the money aside and wait till G71 is here.

Then I'd decide if I get that or go with the X1900, which should be a bit cheaper by then.

 

WTF? Is that ignorance, AEGism or defamatory? I thought Adaptive AA was default on ALL X1X00 cards, it can be reg-hacked on "inferior" products untill it's supported across all products (Cat 6.3?)

Besides, there's also temporal AA

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIyLDg=

 

He is talking about Transparency multisampling, Atis AAA is only availeble in a super sampling flavor.

 

For how long? 2 weeks?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/11/10/ati_catalyst_511/

 

I don't know how transparency multisampling works and if it's different than transparency supersampling (I think is something related to alpha test and alpha blend), but both performance and quality adaptive do the same type of filtering, having in quality the same number of alpha texture samples than geometric samples (6x geometry samples - 6x alpha texture samples, 4x G - 4x AT or 2x G-2x AT) and in performance half the samples (6x G-3x AT or 4x G-2x AT)

There is another level of adaptive, but you can only activate through a registry key, with a third of texture samples than geometry (only the 6x-2x mode is possible this way) because ATI didn't included it in the control panel.

 

That's clear, but you really don't need anything faster at the moment because any of these cards will be half asleep and waiting for anything to happen with your 1280 monitor. I'd save the money until the upgrade is necessary and go cheap right now.

But whatever you do, I'd buy those two GTX and resell them, it's a good deal this way or the other.

 

What about all those AA modes that Nvidia has that have only been accessable through utilities? Or their higher AF mode.

On the contrary, I dont see any benchmarks that show what ATi's adaptive AA performs like against Nvidias transparency aa. I would wager my paycheck right now that ATi at 6x FSAA, with adaptive, and HQAF will score higher than a comparatively set Nvidia card (and look better) well over 90% of the time.

 

Performance mode is not multisampling, it is supersampling with half the samples.

 

I never had any stuttering problems with NWN on my 9700Pro. I had the odd driver release that would break the pixel shaded water. I had severe texture aliaising with my 8500 in NWN though due to the adaptive bi-linear AF.

On the flip-side I had to stop give up CoH on my 6800GT as the texture aliaising was unbearable. I take it it's fixed by now? Was this one of the issues the LOD clamp fixed?

 

and then we get drawn into a fight wether 2xSS looks better against 4xMS or 1.5SS is anything usefull..

Why would ati go for SS in AD AA?

 

I believe so. But it's been a while since it's been an issue at all, as NCSoft changed the default LOD with anisotropic enabled.

 

Just get the two GTXs, sell them and get an X1900 XT, you won't regret it.

 

I don't know, why don't you ask them why they went for SS only solution for AD AA?

 

Where should I start?

 

The middle.

 

Besides the obvious quality deficit in Ati's ADAA compared to nV's TRAA, I wasn't even aware that ati actually used ss instead of ms .. I'm hardly the person to ask a good question to a public trading company

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not pac-man!