Geforce FX Bilinear Anisotropic Filtering Question ??

[Doomtrooper]

Maybe for Brent since he has a card

Does the FX drop down to Bilinear filtering in the balanced mode ?

the GeForce FX driver lets you choose between two different anisotropic filtering modes that adjust the engine between optimizing for performance and image quality, the two options being Balanced and Aggressive

 

[Luminescent]

Exactly what I wanted to know.

Bump.

 

[Ante P]

No.
It just totally ruins IQ anyway.

 

[Crusher]

The settings refer to the performance, not the quality. Balanced would be the better looking, slower of the two, and aggressive is where any performance enhancing changes would take place.

 

[Doomtrooper]

I realize that Crusher..but it doesn't control degree as you can see the slider at the bottom for that...what gives the 'performance' change.

 

[Ante P]

I realize that Crusher..but it doesn't control degree as you can see the slider at the bottom for that...what gives the 'performance' change.

It lowers Aniso for certain mipmap levels?
I dunno, I was under the impression that it was just continuation on the work RivaTuner and aTuner exposed in the later Dets. But now with some sort of automatic detection of which levels to "disable".

Judging by Anands screenshots it surely looks like certain levels are limited to a way lower Aniso level than what one would expect of "8x Aniso" and since the texture in teh example isn't even viewed at a "funny" angle that seems prety likely IMOH.

Why not just ask nVidia though?

 

[Crusher]

The slider at the bottom is to determine the number of samples used in the filtering. AFAIK the balanced/performance is supposed to switch between the "filter everything the same" full-on mode that the GeForce 4 used, and an angle-dependent adaptive algorithm like ATI uses, for increased speed. Whether they force bilinear along with that or not, I don't know, but I haven't heard any mention of that happening.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I don't know what marketing guy came up with the aniso "terms", (Balanced and Aggressive), but they just plain suck. Balanced in particular. Doesn't that imply some "happy medium" between high quality/low performance and low quality/high performance modes?

These companies design 100million+ transistor chips. You'd think coming up with a appropriate labels on a control panel interface wouldn't be so tough....

 

[Crusher]

Yeah, I don't know what's up with that, a simple "Application/Quality/Performance" would have been better. I'm also a big fan of having a line of text below the slider that gives more info on the selected mode.

e.g. "Performance - uses a faster adaptive method of anisotropic filtering that reduces the quality in areas where it is unlikely to be noticable."

 

[Xmas]

I don't know what marketing guy came up with the aniso "terms", (Balanced and Aggressive), but they just plain suck. Balanced in particular. Doesn't that imply some "happy medium" between high quality/low performance and low quality/high performance modes?

Yes, it does. But what's wrong about that?

 

[Ailuros]

I dunno, I was under the impression that it was just continuation on the work RivaTuner and aTuner exposed in the Dets.

Probably true for OGL, but I have my doubts that it also stands for D3D, since the methods he applied between API's are quite different.

AFAIK the Rivatuner OGL performance mode used to keep lightmaps from keeping filtered as an example.

D3D in Rivatuner on the other was optimized on specific texturing stages.

 

[Ante P]

I don't know what marketing guy came up with the aniso "terms", (Balanced and Aggressive), but they just plain suck. Balanced in particular. Doesn't that imply some "happy medium" between high quality/low performance and low quality/high performance modes?

Yes, it does. But what's wrong about that?

Since there's no high quality mode it's a bit too vague, perhaps that's what he's implying?

 

[Ante P]

I dunno, I was under the impression that it was just continuation on the work RivaTuner and aTuner exposed in the Dets.

Probably true for OGL, but I have my doubts that it also stands for D3D, since the methods he applied between API's are quite different.

AFAIK the Rivatuner OGL performance mode used to keep lightmaps from keeping filtered as an example.

D3D in Rivatuner on the other was optimized on specific texturing stages.

I was referring to the D3D "optimizations" where you'd limit certain mipmap levels (or texturing stages if that's teh correct term here).

 

[Xmas]

I don't know what marketing guy came up with the aniso "terms", (Balanced and Aggressive), but they just plain suck. Balanced in particular. Doesn't that imply some "happy medium" between high quality/low performance and low quality/high performance modes?

Yes, it does. But what's wrong about that?

Since there's no high quality mode it's a bit too vague, perhaps that's what he's implying?

Huh? There is, what do you think that 'Application' setting on that slider means?

 

[demalion]

? Since when does "Application" mean "High Quality"? I'd assume it means not to force any settings and let the application set everything, like it does for my drivers. Does it intuitively mean something else to you?

 

[Brent]

i'll run some tests to see if its bi or tri and whats going on

man, so many more things to do with the card, i'll be busy for weeks

 

[Crusher]

Huh? There is, what do you think that 'Application' setting on that slider means?

It usually means the application makes the choice of what type of filtering method to use, which isn't necessarily going to be the highest quality. It just lets you change it on the fly in a game that offers the ability to modify the filtering mode. If you choose "Application" for FSAA, you won't get any FSAA in most games, since most games don't give the option to enable FSAA in their menus. If you choose "Application" for the performance in regards to the anisotropic filtering mode, I'm guessing you'll get the same as if you had selected "Balanced" in most applications.

 

[Dave H]

AFAIK the balanced/performance is supposed to switch between the "filter everything the same" full-on mode that the GeForce 4 used, and an angle-dependent adaptive algorithm like ATI uses, for increased speed. Whether they force bilinear along with that or not, I don't know, but I haven't heard any mention of that happening.

If you look at the balanced/aggressive IQ comparison at Anand, it's quite clear that aggressive is not just switching on an angle-dependent algorithm: the section in question is just a normal flat floor, no funny angles going on. Meanwhile, aggressive both looks hideous (albeit better than no AF) and incurs an incredibly tiny performance hit. The balanced mode incurs a similar or slightly smaller performance hit than 9700's quality (angle-dependent) AF, so I would assume Nvidia's balanced mode is angle-dependent also.

Of course, Nvidia did promise a slider to turn their "new, adaptive" AF algorithm on and off...but AFAIK they didn't specify exactly what that "new, adaptive" algorithm consisted of...

 

[Doomtrooper]

i'll run some tests to see if its bi or tri and whats going on

man, so many more things to do with the card, i'll be busy for weeks

Tx ...shouldn't take long (can't remember console command for Serious Sam though) or Quake 3 to show the Mip Maps .

 

[demalion]

That was a serious question, by the way...I'm used to application meaning what I and Crusher said...is there a tradition of it meaning something else for nVidia drivers? The position of that option on the slider makes Xmas' interpretation make sense, though I still can't see it.