Is Hexus.net Blind ?

[nelg]

Look at this page and compare the two screen shots. Notice the difference in details on the back wall and elsewhere.
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD02NDkmdXJsX3BhZ2U9MTI=
Look at these comments with regards to the screen shots.

If there's an obvious difference between the two, I can't see it. There's more final texture detail in the wall textures in the ATI shot, due to the viewer being slightly closer.

In fact, it is the opposite, the ATI screen shot is from a further distance and it still has noiticeably better detail.

 

[Pete]

Agreed, a particularly egregious oversight.

FYI, as nelg forgot the link, he was talking about the SS2 screenshots (in the IQ Comparison section, IIRC).

 

[nelg]

Added the link.

 

[nonamer]

That's hard to believe he could've missed that. Though it could be that he's got the wrong images to compare (they seem to be at difference AA levels, look at cross hair).

EDIT: Wow, I've notice something weird about the stairs: they're not the same number of stairs in both images. Then I realized that one's more zoomed in than the other. Hexus.com is either more blind than it first seems or got something mixed up or they're really sloppy here.

 

[T2k]

Why are you surprised? Hexus was always the most ridiculously biased site, sometimes even against the real world realities. Business as usual: I'm pretty sure it's worth it for them, in terms of income...

EDIT: grammar

 

[hjs]

Look at the big head on the left.
And he can see no differences

 

[AlphaWolf]

Think he means specifically in regards to the texture detail of the floor?

What you are looking for is obvious stepped banding between the textures on the floor, as the view goes away from you. If the texture stages don't blend together well, you'll notice it, indicating a poor quality trilinear filter.

/shrug the ATI shot is definitely a more detailed clearer image overall.

 

[THe_KELRaTH]

Hell.. just look at the plants!

 

[Marc]

There is a problem with this screenshot because if you take them exactly from the same place with the same aniso setting you get exactly the same level of detail on the back wall with NVIDIA and ATI.

 

[nonamer]

Hell.. just look at the plants!

The plant is off the screen in the nVidia, which brings us to another problem: the pictures are not taken in the same place.

 

[Chris123234]

lol he justifies ati detail being better because its closer...but the nvidia is actually closer. .


Or did i mix them up?

 

[Nick]

Ok, I'm probably going to start a war with this but...

I think the first image looks better. Although it looks more blurry than the second image, I think this makes it smoother in a positive way. After all, we're looking at a still image, and you can't see temporal aliasing on that.

What I'm trying to say is: you can totally turn off mipmapping and use the highest detail texture, and the still image will look fabulously sharp (unless you're looking at a chess board where you see spacial aliasing). But when you start moving the camera, the pixel colors start jumping around which is very ugly. I'm not claiming this is happening in the second image, I just think you can't base an opinion on still images. And for the sake of gameplay, I'd rather have some overblur than temporal aliasing. But in the end, actually everybody should test both cards themselves and decide for themselves.

Don't forget, Nyquist's limit is still 2...

 

[OpenGL guy]

Ok, I'm probably going to start a war with this but...

I think the first image looks better. Although it looks more blurry than the second image, I think this makes it smoother in a positive way. After all, we're looking at a still image, and you can't see temporal aliasing on that.

And you shouldn't assume that there is aliasing based on a still image.

But in the end, actually everybody should test both cards themselves and decide for themselves.

Shouldn't the reviewer be doing this? The average consumer can't go out and buy one of each board to test this sort of stuff. In fact, the average consumer has no idea what any of this means.

 

[Nick]

And you shouldn't assume that there is aliasing based on a still image.

I didn't assume that. I just wanted to point out that sharpness of a still image isn't necessarily a good thing.

Shouldn't the reviewer be doing this? The average consumer can't go out and buy one of each board to test this sort of stuff. In fact, the average consumer has no idea what any of this means.

Unfortunately, often even the reviewer doesn't have an idea what this means. You can compare sharpness of a still image and you can show it on the internet with an uncompressed image format, but you can't say much about temporal aliasing. Actually... we could theoretically do some flickering analysis. Compare every frame with a software generated image with extreme supersampling. A constant, converging difference with the reference images (like with overblur) is not as bad as when it's contantly alternating. Of course practically there would be some problems...

Anyway, you have two kinds of consumers: those who really care, and those who don't. I think the "average consumer" doesn't care much and will buy either card as long as the first impression isn't horrible. For those people who do care, I'm afraid there is no other method yet than to compare both cards themselves and pay attention to what really matters to them.

 

[nelg]

Shouldn't the reviewer be doing this? The average consumer can't go out and buy one of each board to test this sort of stuff. In fact, the average consumer has no idea what any of this means.

Yes but as Nick alluded to not many can or will.
Please talk to your marketing department about something along the lines of this

Andy, why don’t you talk to your marketing department about putting together a video demonstrating the issues that you raised? I would assume that a large number of people would be interested in having as much information as possible about it. Maybe a whole presentation on image quality. Show examples of different filtering, precision, AA etc. include it on the driver cd that comes with ATI’s cards and host it on the ATI web site. Arm people with enough information about image quality issues and then maybe the slippery slope that you alluded to could be avoided.

(my post to Andypski)

The funny thing is that the average consumer would very likely have the impression the nV is the leading IHV with respect to I.Q. In this area I think ATI's marketing really should be putting its best foot forward.

 

[Rys]

The review states that viewer distance is different, so the images wont be identical. I didn't have time to make sure I was standing in exactly the same spot in each shot, apologies for that, but the review states that's the case, on the IQ page.

I was also specifically talking about the trilinear filter being applied to the ground texture to show up mip level banding as the texture is drawn further and further away. Again, the review text states that.

I was trying to highlight the fact that the trilinear filter isn't too bad, despite being wrong.

Anything else in the images, peripheral to the ground texture, I don't care about for the purposes of the screenshots. Again, if you read the review I state that clearly.

The texture detail on the wall and stairs is different due to viewer distance. *sigh*, I state all that in the article text. Yeah I get it wrong by stating the ATI picture is closer than the NV one, that's incorrect, but the reason for differences in the shots are still explained the same way, viewer distance is different.

I'll try and take a 2nd load of shots for examination, see what you think. Or maybe Dave can, I know he's got FX5700 Ultra, I'd be interested in his take on the trilinear issue too.

Rys

EDIT:

Here's a pair of images, uncompressed .tga, a selection mask from frame 350 of the Nature test in 3DMark03. Forced (not application set) control panel 4xAA and 8xAF with the driver 'Quality' slider set to maximum.

I chose frame 350 since it shows mip levels, some aliased edges on the stones to compare AA with, and the sand texture shows up nicely when aniso filtered. Beware, these images are 1.2MB each, due to being uncompressed. I concede the SS2 review images could have been more accurate (viewer distance) but I just simply didn't have time to do the IQ part of the review with any detail.

CAT3.8, 9800XT
52.16, FX5950 Ultra

I'd post my D3D AF tester shots for 52.16, but they are identical to what 3DCenter has for 52.14. The driver is definitely doing wrong trilinear (what I'm most interested in). Please look at the two .tga's if you have the time and bandwidth.

To me, using those screenshots (and the UT2003 shots I took for the review), along my own experience testing both boards using the settings above, that while trilinear is being performed incorrectly and IQ is indeed worse, compared to CAT3.8 at equivalent settings, it's really hard to spot. Anti aliasing quality (at 4x) appears to be equivalent to my eyes, and NVIDIA's aniso filter looks good to me too.

Maybe I've just spent too long staring at the screen to see anything now, but the reason I've not completed my IQ article is that I'm honestly struggling to find differences to talk about, other than what 3DCenter has covered already with their 52.14 article.

 

[Rys]

Why are you surprised? Hexus was always the most ridiculously biased site, sometimes even against the real world realities. Business as usual: I'm pretty sure it's worth it for them, in terms of income...

EDIT: grammar

Please, show me our rediculous bias, because I'd love to see examples of it. I've been writing there for 3 years and I've yet to be biased towards anything, at least not conciously. So be my guest, show me our bias, mine in particular (I'm not the only one who writes there)

As for income, I've personally yet to make a penny from HEXUS. I currently don't get paid for writing there. I get to play with nice hardware when it comes in for review, but I'm definitely not earning a living there. Thanks for your completely unfounded speculation, it's utterly entertaining.

Rys

 

[Althornin]

The review states that viewer distance is different, so the images wont be identical. I didn't have time to make sure I was standing in exactly the same spot in each shot, apologies for that, but the review states that's the case, on the IQ page.

I was also specifically talking about the trilinear filter being applied to the ground texture to show up mip level banding as the texture is drawn further and further away. Again, the review text states that.

I was trying to highlight the fact that the trilinear filter isn't too bad, despite being wrong.

Anything else in the images, peripheral to the ground texture, I don't care about for the purposes of the screenshots. Again, if you read the review I state that clearly.

The texture detail on the wall and stairs is different due to viewer distance. *sigh*, I state all that in the article text. Yeah I get it wrong by stating the ATI picture is closer than the NV one, that's incorrect, but the reason for differences in the shots are still explained the same way, viewer distance is different.

I'll try and take a 2nd load of shots for examination, see what you think. Or maybe Dave can, I know he's got FX5700 Ultra, I'd be interested in his take on the trilinear issue too.

Rys

EDIT:

Here's a pair of images, uncompressed .tga, a selection mask from frame 350 of the Nature test in 3DMark03. Forced (not application set) control panel 4xAA and 8xAF with the driver 'Quality' slider set to maximum.

I chose frame 350 since it shows mip levels, some aliased edges on the stones to compare AA with, and the sand texture shows up nicely when aniso filtered. Beware, these images are 1.2MB each, due to being uncompressed. I concede the SS2 review images could have been more accurate (viewer distance) but I just simply didn't have time to do the IQ part of the review with any detail.

CAT3.8, 9800XT
52.16, FX5950 Ultra

I'd post my D3D AF tester shots for 52.16, but they are identical to what 3DCenter has for 52.14. The driver is definitely doing wrong trilinear (what I'm most interested in). Please look at the two .tga's if you have the time and bandwidth.

To me, using those screenshots (and the UT2003 shots I took for the review), along my own experience testing both boards using the settings above, that while trilinear is being performed incorrectly and IQ is indeed worse, compared to CAT3.8 at equivalent settings, it's really hard to spot. Anti aliasing quality (at 4x) appears to be equivalent to my eyes, and NVIDIA's aniso filter looks good to me too.

Maybe I've just spent too long staring at the screen to see anything now, but the reason I've not completed my IQ article is that I'm honestly struggling to find differences to talk about, other than what 3DCenter has covered already with their 52.14 article.

can you cut the melodrama and sighs and stop trying to make your mistake look like less of a mistake?

If there's an obvious difference between the two, I can't see it. There's more final texture detail in the wall textures in the ATI shot, due to the viewer being slightly closer.

That is incorrect, and was the only point of this thread.
*sigh*
The thing is, its becoming more and more apparent that many reviewers just cannot seem to understand things. For instance, you compare framerates between FX cards and Radeons in Serious Sam, but make no mention that ATI offers more detail...i honestly wonder if the loss of detail in the FX screencaps gives them an unfair performance advantage. I'd say yes.

 

[Brent]

Just as a quick note, it is pretty easy to make a saved game place in SS2 to take screenshots from the same place at. I always made one in the Technology Demo map to use for that, the long walkway between both ends of the 3d demo buildings made a good filtering test.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Please, show me our rediculous bias, because I'd love to see examples of it. I've been writing there for 3 years and I've yet to be biased towards anything, at least not conciously. So be my guest, show me our bias, mine in particular (I'm not the only one who writes there)

As for income, I've personally yet to make a penny from HEXUS. I currently don't get paid for writing there. I get to play with nice hardware when it comes in for review, but I'm definitely not earning a living there. Thanks for your completely unfounded speculation, it's utterly entertaining.

Rys

Ok..

1. There can be no question that the GeForce FX out performs the Radeon. We saw the demos of the Ogre, Dawn and the truck - these are incredible. We will have these on the media archive on the end of this review. There is more to the FX than just gaming, and benchmarks. We believe that this card will be the future of games - with the CineFX engine, High-Precision Graphics, Intellisample Technology all needing to have support from the developers to take full advantage of this card.


Card was cancelled BTW




http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD00OTcmdXJsX3BhZ2U9MTQ=

2.The recent 9600 XT review where the reviewer (you) includes benchmarks from a unreleased card.....5700.

I made a thread about your journalistic integrity..way back along with the other pawns of the industry...the sad state of it rather.


http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33670711&highlight=hexus.net+5800