Good explanation of filtering (must read for beginners)

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trinibwoy

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A lot of my understanding of gpu architecture has come from Tom's lengthy articles on the GF2/3, R300 and I think this article is also useful. Although it was written to address the ATi filtering issue I think that the introduction to mipmaps, and the why and how's of filtering techniques was excellent from a beginner's standpoint.

Criticize Tom all you may but those articles are still the best that I've ever read for people new to the tech :p

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040603/index.html
 
Anyhow, I believe that the introduction to texture filtering is very useful for technophobics such as me.. I finally understand the way filtering works and the numerous ways to optimize it.

I don't know if what you refer to as Tom is Tom Pabst or www.tomshardware.com, but I would like to thank Lars W for a very good article in any case.

Kjetil
 
Yeah, that's an informative and well balanced article that pretty much sums up everything that has been said here in a more, erm, lucid manner.
 
Hmm I was almost sure Nvidia did Texture Stage Optimisations With the NV3x Series.
 
digitalwanderer said:
Uhm, all the kudos to Lars just busted me threshold of credibility. :oops:
Click to expand...

Looks like you need a bigger threshold . I'm sure the wife would appreciate it :LOL: :LOL:
 
Christ! that story was the final straw. I have to vent... not ONE peep out of them when Nvidia was doing all their Drivers hacks and filtering optimizations and now all of a sudden they pick up the story now that ATI has been accused of cheating, (Which I think is rather a harsh judgement of what they're doing.). ATI has been about saving bandwidth when they can for some time. Hyper Z, Hierarchical Z, Adaptive Anistropic... So why should Adaptive Trilinear surprise anybody? It goes right along with all the other bandwidth saving features ATI has implemented over the last couple of years. So why should it be considered a cheat? Because they didn't tell you what they're doing? Why broadcast a new filtering technique to your Competitor? I would have kept my mouth shut about it too.

As for all the bit comparisons and screenshots making the rounds, I say I could care less about numerical precision and differences when screenshots are blown up 1000%. When Full Tri is needed (Or seemingly, if theres any doubt) it is used. When it isn't needed, they don't waste bandwidth on it. Seems pretty Smart on ATI's part to me. Subtle. Neat. A rather Elegant optimization on their part imo.

I'd kindly like to invite all the anal rententive Yammerheads who have been going on and on about this to take a flying leap. ( Oh and I'd like to ask you when Nvidia is going to actually let you turn on Full Trilinear and not just pay lip service to the option? and WHY, if the 6800 is so Fine, is Nvidia still using _pp hints with it? I thought it was this all powerfull Full 32bit precision powerhouse :rolleyes: -lol- )

The only thing ATI SHOULD have done was allowed all the Anal retentive Yammerheads to turn it off if they wanted, to shut them up.

On Topic, The article is pretty good when it comes to helping explain Filtering in General, but the overall tone of the article Implies that ATI is cheating, and I don't see it that way. Sorry. To equate what ATI is doing now with what Nvidia has been doing for nearly 2 years is a joke. (imho of course ;)). Go ahead...Flame away!
 
The conclusion brings up an alarming trend, ie the use of these filtering tricks by both parties to try and one up each other at the cost of image quality and choice for the consumer. We should be offered options to enable or disable these tricks to our desire, simple as that. I'm all for smart optimisations but sometimes these tricks may fail in certain scenarios and users should have the ability to disable them when the need arises and quality drops.
 
ATI are converned about the number of options in the control panel, so they don't seem keen on adding another checkbox. My suggestion to them has been to just keep this as the default option but have it as one notch down the slider, with the full notch as standard trilinear. I think there is some feeling their end that this is tantamount to a "remove-some-performance-for-no-IQ-gain" option, so they weren't too keen on the idea initially. However, if people can spot the differences and they are highlighted hopefully they will recant on this.
 
mozmo said:
The conclusion brings up an alarming trend, ie the use of these filtering tricks by both parties to try and one up each other at the cost of image quality and choice for the consumer.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Instead of people attacking articles that reveal this information to us, we should applaud it, as knowledge is never a bad thing to have when making a decision on spending $500. Instead of people being partisan and criticising Manufacturer X whilst celebrating Manufacturer Y for doing, basically, the same thing we should be angry at both of them. Unless they can see the public doesn't like having the wool pulled over our eyes they won't stop. Both companies are in this game to make as much money as they possibly can, so let's not pretend that Manufacturer Z are 'nice guys' who would never possibly cheat their loyal fanbase. They would, every time, if they thought they could get away with it.
 
Diplo said:
mozmo said:
The conclusion brings up an alarming trend, ie the use of these filtering tricks by both parties to try and one up each other at the cost of image quality and choice for the consumer.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Instead of people attacking articles that reveal this information to us, we should applaud it, as knowledge is never a bad thing to have when making a decision on spending $500. Instead of people being partisan and criticising Manufacturer X whilst celebrating Manufacturer Y for doing, basically, the same thing we should be angry at both of them. Unless they can see the public doesn't like having the wool pulled over our eyes they won't stop. Both companies are in this game to make as much money as they possibly can, so let's not pretend that Manufacturer Z are 'nice guys' who would never possibly cheat their loyal fanbase. They would, every time, if they thought they could get away with it.
Click to expand...

Except I see no difference in image quality with what ATi did.
 
Do you really think this will stop ? Do any of u think this ?


Whats going to happen is if you do find a case where it fails ati will fix it so it doesn't .

Then you wont have anything to complain about .

But nvidia did worse than what ati has done. THey had lowered iq noticable . Yet thier fans defended them.

How do you expect ati to react to that ?


These companys make money off cards for 3 reasons

Speed , iq , features .

Ati found a way that is yet undetectable in gaming situations .

I don't find a problem with that .


I'm still wiating for problem cases though. People keep saying they see them but never post any proof. They just ignore me asking for and offering to host thier proof .

Kinda funny huh
 
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