Geforce FX Bilinear Anisotropic Filtering Question ??

[ninelven]

nvidia's concept:

Perfomance:
-...........................+

AA:
-...........................+

AF:
-...........................+


ATI/DT's:

Performance:
+..........................-

AA:
-...........................+

AF:
-...........................+


Both seem logical to me, just not one more so than the other. The only problem I can see with application is the program might select 2xAF which would indeed run slower than 2xBal. or Agr. but might run faster than 8x balanced.... given the terrible nature of agressive at the moment I seriously doubt that 8xAgressive actually runs slower than 2xApplication.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Still don't get it..even though the slider is labelled peformance..whatever..I forget now its still affects IQ..if the slider was labeled like this

 Balanced           Application 
-..........................+ 


AA: 
-...........................+ 

AF: 
-...........................+

If you move all the sliders to the right you increase overall IQ and if slide them to the left you increase performance..wow tough one.

I must say I like the ATI panel much more, when you move the sliders left you lower the settings and it states performance (mip maps etc) if you move them to the right settings switch to quality..easier to understand..that was my arguement.

 

[ninelven]

In your case the slider would have to be labeled "Quality" if it desires to keep consistency in that moving from right to left increases the property... if it was labeled performance then moving it to the right would decrease the property where as AA and AF increase as they move from right to left. Two quality variables might also seem confusing to some.

The point I was trying to make is that an inconsistant system on one level would be just as confusing as one on another. In your case, though, the level (quality) is percieved and nvidia's (performance) is stated which would make their's slightly better. Ideally, the slider would be labled thus:

Quality of AF
(Agressive)         (Application)          *oops ;)
-...........................+ 

AA: 
-...........................+ 

AF: 
-...........................+

 

[Doomtrooper]

Moving the performance slider does affect 'quality' as you can see 3 pages back from the tests taken..it affects Mip Maps, LOD and AF...now somewhere back there I stated Application should be labelled High Quality...

Then invert the slider to move from left to right, as I said I felt it was silly to have two sliders moving right to increase image quality and another moving left (even though its labelled Performance)

 

[ninelven]

Moving the performance slider does affect 'quality' as you can see 3 pages back from the tests taken..

Sorry, I usually just take it as a given that an increase in quality exacts a decrease in performance in all aspects (with a level playing field of course) and most of the time, vice-versa.

Edit: Heh, I guess in usage this always turns out to be true because who is going to use a lower quality/ lower performance setting when a higher quality/higher performance one is available. It would become the standard...

 

[Doomtrooper]

Like I said I'm used to the ATI control panel...its more 'nooby' friendly and IMO much easier to understand...

All IQ goes to the right ( and small panel reports what each increment is doing)
All Performance goes to the left ( and small panel reports what each increment is doing)


I think having one slider representing performance is wrong (yes alot of people have no clue where the performance comes from)

ATI alows Mip Map and texture prefernce...move it right Quality..move it left speed (performance)

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Still don't get it..even though the slider is labelled peformance..whatever..I forget now its still affects IQ..if the slider was labeled like this

 Balanced           Application 
-..........................+ 


AA: 
-...........................+ 

AF: 
-...........................+

If you move all the sliders to the right you increase overall IQ and if slide them to the left you increase performance..wow tough one.

I must say I like the ATI panel much more, when you move the sliders left you lower the settings and it states performance (mip maps etc) if you move them to the right settings switch to quality..easier to understand..that was my arguement.

WTF? That's too hard to remember.

On a serious note, why are we discussing which control panel is the easiest to use?
None of us are "n00bs" here.
I am sure everyone on these boards knows how to use the Ati and nVidia control panels.

I would kill myself if that wasn't the case.

 

[Ailuros]

I was wondering that too KILER.

Maybe IHV's should use from now on vertical oriented sliders and not horizontals to avoid any possible "confusion"; unless you're going to switch the argument now wether high quality should be on top or at the bottom sheeesh.

In any case I'd like to note that again the danger is there that a reviewer might overlook the differences in implementation and final quality output.

As it stands and looking at Xmas' AnisoTester output from the FX, I'd say that comparing either "application" or "aggressive" with any of ATI's 8x Level Aniso modes, can make for an unfair comparison from either side.

I personally have no objection to see FX "balanced" compared to R300 "quality", as long as the reviewer documents adequately the differences between implementations.

On a sidenote if a NV25 user has found a driver version past 41.09, that actually presents any changes with that aggressive crap, I'd appreciate the feedback just to have a look at it. I'm not very fond of constant driver swapping.

 

[demalion]

My own gripe is not the order of the items on the slider, it makes sense to me.

My problem is with the labelling, which makes understanding that "Application" means "highest quality" completely counter-intuitive...Xmas has confirmed it with assurance and I still am not sure about it.

I think nVidia named it "Application" to obscure the issue, since labelling it "Quality", or more aptly in the nature of it being a "Performance" slider, "Relaxed" or "Conservative", would have lent itself to comparison more intuitively with, for example, ATI's "Quality" aniso.
I think it worked on me, on every reviewer so far, and will work on users for a good while after release, sufficient to prevent "9700 Quality aniso" versus "GF FX 'Application' aniso" comparisons in mind of the general consumer, in which the GF FX seems likely to lose decidedly in performance while disputably only achieving a tie in quality.

 

[THe_KELRaTH]

It also helps that ATI were quite open as to what the terms quality / performance meant:

SMOOTHVISIONâ„¢ 2.0
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options

Reading all the various posts I still think that:
Aggresive = something boardering between point sampling and bilinear using the same type of adaptive alogorithm to ATI + control mipmap levels
Balanced = Bilinear, again using a similar alogorithm to ATI + control mipmap levels
Application = Starts at Trilinear but under "application " load will drop to bilinear using their own adaptive alogorithm but not use the adaptive alogorithm to select number of samples therefore being closer to older method.

Or that Balanced = Bilinear and is also their Conservative / traditional option
Application = uses all their adaptive techniques to control whether Trilinear, Bilinear or Agressive is used, mipmap level, and amount of sampling.

 

[WaltC]

No question but that the nVidia driver GUI is crummy--I was doing some routine maintenance on the wife's machine the other day (she's got my former Ti4600) and installed the latest Det's for her--and frankly, in setting the driver up, I was appalled at what a poor job nVidia's doing with its driver GUI. It's really not something you can fully appreciate until you've stopped working with the nVidia Det interface for awhile and been working with the ATI driver interface instead for a few months, and then you come back to the Dets. What a difference--and I used to think there wasn't any qualitative difference between driver GUI's--hah. Big difference.

I'm not surprised that no one's figured out that "Application" is a high-quality setting--I certainly wouldn't have understood it that way, and apparently not a single person who has reviewed the card has been able to decipher it in that way. So I'd say the idea that the setting is counterintuitive has been empirically established. The only mistake I think Brent has made so far is in using nVidia's definitions of the settings in its drivers which correspond most closely to ATI's settings--frankly, I think you can throw those away as being promotionally-PR based instructions as opposed to accurate instructions. Unfortunately, I think nVidia's been so unorganized in every facet concerning this product that the only way to find out what does what in the drivers is to run the card through a time-consuming and boring gauntlet of tests so that some sort of comparative baseline can be worked out. I think Anand made a good start of it, but it obviously needs to go further and we really need to find out what such arcane settings as "application" actually are doing in the drivers.

 

[Xmas]

My problem is with the labelling, which makes understanding that "Application" means "highest quality" completely counter-intuitive...Xmas has confirmed it with assurance and I still am not sure about it.

I can only tell that this "high quality mode" does exist on NV30, i cannot guarantee that it can be forced by the current drivers.

 

[Xmas]

SMOOTHVISIONâ„¢ 2.0
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns

Hmm... how exactly is SV AA "adaptive"? And i wish it would be "programmable" by the application, not only the driver.

Reading all the various posts I still think that:
Aggresive = something boardering between point sampling and bilinear using the same type of adaptive alogorithm to ATI + control mipmap levels
Balanced = Bilinear, again using a similar alogorithm to ATI + control mipmap levels
Application = Starts at Trilinear but under "application " load will drop to bilinear using their own adaptive alogorithm but not use the adaptive alogorithm to select number of samples therefore being closer to older method.

Aggressive is not point sampling (point sampling saves absolutely no performance. It just leaves some TMU parts unused). Neither is it true bilinear. It's something between bilinear and trilinear, with mipmap blending only used when the fractional part of the LOD is below or above certain thresholds. Balanced is similar, with a more conservative threshold.
And Application seems to be identical to what a GF4 shows. I'm pretty sure it will give the same quality regardless of the "load".


btw, talking about inappropriate labelling... why does that box under the top slider in the ATI panel show the text "optimal performance" for medium setting?

 

[Doomtrooper]

I refuse to say another word about the

Slider

Some screen shots and peformance numbers of Application setting would be nice though...

Tx in advance.

 

[WaltC]

btw, talking about inappropriate labelling... why does that box under the top slider in the ATI panel show the text "optimal performance" for medium setting?

*chuckle* You mean the one that's grayed out and non-selectable because you are using custom settings? The box that sits between the performance and quality indicators (which have arrows showing the directions for each), is that the one? "Optimal" can mean "most", but it can also mean "median" in a context, as well. My electronic pocket dictionary defines "optimal" as "most favored." I suppose ATI could have said "Best balance between performance and quality" but I don't think it would have fit in the box... And we're all getting a bit silly...

 

[christoph]

btw, talking about inappropriate labelling... why does that box under the top slider in the ATI panel show the text "optimal performance" for medium setting?

it only shows the 'inappropriate labelling' when grayed out

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Man, what a discussion.

One look at nVidia's control panel and an explanation of what the settings actually do tells you that:

(1) Their labeling is fucked up really bad.

(2) Their sliders are inconsistent and could be a source of confusion, especially in light of (1).

I mean, really... the "quality" slider doesn't even have the word "quality" anywhere on it. Sure, that's because they label it the "performance" slider, but that's much more ambiguous than "quality."

The slider should have simply been labeled "AF mode" or something similar, with the slider reading --quality----balanced----performance--

How easy is that?

Further, though I hate to be one to make accusations and contribute to conspiracy theories, I simply can't believe that everyone involved in the development of this GUI was equally brain-dead. Someone would have stood up and said "this is stupid." Sadly, the only plausible reason I can see is that it was intentional. They know that the tendency for uninformed people who discover the control panel will be to "turn everything up," meaning max out AF samples, AA samples, and... AF "whatever." I have to believe, reluctantly, that they intentionally avoided using the word "quality" anywhere on the AF setting to ensure maximum confusion, and then oriented the slider ass-backwards from the other two in the hopes that the ignorant would praise the card for the performance they were getting with "max settings."

And, if the ignorant user realized that things were just too slow (8X AA), they would start "turning down" the settings until performance improved to an acceptable point... which means they would quickly discover that the top slider didn't help them any, while the middle one really does. They'd congratulate themselves on still having "nearly max" settings and running fast.

A pretty sad picture, but I can't think of a better explanation.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

btw, talking about inappropriate labelling... why does that box under the top slider in the ATI panel show the text "optimal performance" for medium setting?

I'm inclined to agree... that is an oversight and probably poorly chosen words. Or, it could well be intentional to prohibit some people from decreasing "performance" too much.

But, technically, I have to point out that performance isn't "always" in reference to speed... it is a more abstract term that can take on a variety of contextual definitions. Does the "performance" of a drug have anything to do with it's "speed?" It if takes longer to begin working than an alternative, but eventually proves more "effective," doesn't it "perform" better?

Here's a much better example: What is the closest synonym for "performance" in the context of the performance of a difficult piano recital? Is it how quickly the pianist finished the recital? How about... the quality of his/her playing?

Which just goes to further my commentary above... performance by itself is just a piss poor label. Does an AF algorithm perform better if it goes faster, or looks better? By who's definition? Perhaps ATi honestly thinks the appropriate definition is the "optimal" combination of the two... which means "optimal performance" would be appropriately labeled (though I seriously doubt that is the case).

Yes, I completely agree that in the typical context of graphics cards, "performance" should be implicitly understood, but not all users are so, um... "informed." At least ATi's sliders use the context of "quality" on one end to make it clear that "performance" on the other end is an opposite... making the understanding of that seting as a "speed/quality" option fairly straightforward.

 

[demalion]

My problem is with the labelling, which makes understanding that "Application" means "highest quality" completely counter-intuitive...Xmas has confirmed it with assurance and I still am not sure about it.

I can only tell that this "high quality mode" does exist on NV30, i cannot guarantee that it can be forced by the current drivers.

I just found something when digging up a response for another thread:

Launch Interview 1[/url]]
There was a quote in the launch information about adaptive Anisotropic texture filtering, but that's slightly confusing since recent report have stated that GeForce4 already does adaptive texture filtering.

What we have is a new technology. We're not disclosing the algorithms that we use, but in the control panel we will have sliders. On one side of the slider will be 'Conservative' and on the other will be 'Agressive'. So if the user sets the slider to conservative then it will give the the standard filtering for whatever the user request, whether its Bilinear, Trilinear, 8X Aniso or whatever it is, it will do the full algorithm. As you move it towards aggressive we have a variety of adaptive algorithms that look at both the content of the texture and the content of the scene and will proactively choose different sampling patterns to maximise image quality whilst also maximising performance. So for benchmarking, if you want a pure apples to apples then set the sliders on conservative, but if you're a user and you're playing you favourite app you can experiment with those sliders and if you find you enjoy the quality with the slider on aggressive then you're going to get more performance out of it.

Considering the well established confusion by reviewers about this issue, this seems to be as a result of the included commentary nVidia provided on the meaning of the settings.

HardOCP[/url]]
The Performance and Quality Setting tab will be the one you will be most interested in. The Performance option at the top determines the level of texture quality you will receive from this card. Performance-Balanced is closest to ATI’s Quality setting on Anisotropic. If you set the slider to Performance-Aggressive you will lose image quality and gain performance. Performance-Application lets the application decide what is best.

Brent would have to comment on whether that was based on nVidia's information or his own guesses (I seem to recall he stated it was based on nVidia's information).

To be fair, another possibility that occurred to me is that for some reason the slider is "accidentally" misbehaving and for the GF FX should have a "Conservative" label there to reflect its actual behavior, since the GF 4 behavior is evidently different. This would, however, necessitate the nVidia provided information either not specifying the information (i.e., that is Brent's guesses above), or that was coincidentally also "accidentally" based on GF 4 behavior.

My personal belief with the current info I have is that this label is intended to prevent "Conservative" comparison to "Quality" on the 9700. I think this can be plausibly denied, however (and I choose that phrase on purpose ) if newer drivers (I read something about a 42.xx somewhere even) reflect a change in the labelling of the slider when a GF FX is installed.

If newer drivers change the labelling, I don't know that we'll ever know for sure, without more information, which is the case between really accidentally, and "'accidentally' and 'just happening' to improve the first preview comparison impresion of the feature" (so if the drivers change it, I suggest we don't start a long discussion disputing it without that further information ).

If this labelling does not change in a timely manner, i.e. without pressure from user/reviewer awarness, it seems a clear cut case of a change in labelling intending to achieve just the ends it has.

...

Come to think of it, it looks like I owe the Anandtech crew an apology for my criticism of them emphasizing the comparison of GF FX "Balanced" with ATI "Performance" aniso.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

I'm curious... what if the "application" setting both removes "forced AF" and sets the algorithm to the highest quality possible?

Does that mean it is impossible (with current drivers at least) to achieve the highest quality the GFFX has to offer if the game in question doesn't have user-selectable AF settings (or at least a default of the maximum samples available)?

:?