OMG HARDOCP REVIEW OF UT2003 AND FILTERING

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

[Sarcasm]

Turns round to rest of ATI driver guys...

"It's official - it's now open season on image quality guys - [H] says so."

Let's start hacking it up now, and leave no pixel unpolluted.

[/Sarcasm]

How about a new driver control panel option called [Kyle] to go with the others.

Seriously, I would not object to another control panel option called "Ultraspeed" (or maybe "Nvidia Compatabilty Mode") or somesuch that hacked everything out, as long as the current quality modes are still left in the control panel. That way, we could see what the ATI cards can do when hacked down to NV3x levels.

It's would still be a waste of resources, but would be better than the dirty war that Nvidia are engaged in.

 

[Althornin]

I really desire a B3D article on this subject, and i think its a nessecity, to clear up the confusion left in the wake of the [H] article...

 

[digitalwanderer]

[Sarcasm]

Turns round to rest of ATI driver guys...

"It's official - it's now open season on image quality guys - [H] says so."

Let's start hacking it up now, and leave no pixel unpolluted.

[/Sarcasm]

How about a new driver control panel option called [Kyle] to go with the others.

Seriously, I would not object to another control panel option called "Ultraspeed" (or maybe "Nvidia Compatabilty Mode") or somesuch that hacked everything out, as long as the current quality modes are still left in the control panel. That way, we could see what the ATI cards can do when hacked down to NV3x levels.

It's would still be a waste of resources, but would be better than the dirty war that Nvidia are engaged in.

I'd really rather see their resources used to make their drivers better for gaming and such, and I'm pretty sure ATi & CatalystMAKER are of the same opinion from my conversations with them on the matter.

 

[Althornin]

I'd much rather see control panel options that actually give full trilinear in games wihtout having to choose "application" and then set aniso level in game.

 

[Malo]

this is becomnig ridiculous

BrentJ on anandtech forums:

Why would set the card to Performance AF? The main point was to see its default Non-AF Trilinear quality, as that was the main question brought up. Default on the ATI control panel is Application Preference, and on the NVIDIA control panel is Quality.

Isn't the main point because in the modes they set the cards in, the 5900 was doing bilinear and the 9800pro trilinear? Does he not understand this?

From HardOCP review:

You might think that when you set the driver to “Qualityâ€￾ that it would use the best filtering known as full Trilinear Filtering, although the 44.03 driver from NVIDIA does not seem to allow this...but does that matter?

how can it not matter? isn't one doing bi and one is doing tri taking a performance hit but having better IQ?. in an attempt to do apples-to-apples isn't this against all common sense?

You can see that according to this screenshot of the mipmaps that the GFFX has a more ‘harsh’ transition and the 9800p a more ‘softer’ transition bewtween textures. Even with that being so we just are not seeing it make a difference in the first in-game shot above. The tool seems to point out a difference in technique and not quality.

isn't that one of the differences with bi vs tri? trilinear gives you a softer transition taking away mip lines etc....

The mip-map shot shows a difference, but I don’t see it impacting the in-game shot negatively at all.

this is his theme in almost every comment... there IS a difference but you won't notice it running around playing the game.... I think he has gone mad with nvidiocy...

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I'd really rather see their resources used to make their drivers better for gaming and such, and I'm pretty sure ATi & CatalystMAKER are of the same opinion from my conversations with them on the matter.

I'd agree completely, but I get the idea that ATI feel that they are doing everything right, and still they are losing out to Nvidia in this war of dirty tricks. Sooner or later, they may reach the point where they feel they are losing sales, and will have to fight back just as dirty in order to level the playing field of disinformation.

Unless more websites can put out the truth rather than parrot the Nvidia marketing spin, how long will it be before ATI also decide it's financial best interests to lie and cheat like the competition? I hope the day never comes, but there must be some way to give Nvidia and it's lackey fansites a bloody nose.

 

[nelg]

Dig. I was being somewhat facetious with the [Kyle] option thing. In a perfect world, yes, I would agree that I would much rather see the driver team focus on more important issues than lower I.Q. to gain performance. Unfortunately it seems that with sites such as [H], Anandtech and THG not being able to do honest “apples to applesâ€￾ comparisons the idea of a control panel option that would enable just that seems like an understandable idea. At least to me. Employees of ATI come to these boards. They do not seem to duck any questions put to them. That benefits us users. They seem like nice people (they sent you a nice gift) Why should these people have their hard work sullied by unethical/incompetent reviewers. An option in the control panel that would produce comparable I.Q. to Nvidia's would remove (hopefully) any excuse from doing the fairest review possible.

 

[swanlee]

If it were up to Nvidia the drivers would atuomatically default to 320X240 resoltuion if it detected a benchmark or timedemo. That's pretty much what we are seeing here in Nvidia drivers. How can Anyone defend them? I hope Kyle is getting paid a lot of money cause once him and his site are completely discredited by being an Nvidia corporate shill his site hits will dwindle.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Dig. I was being somewhat facetious with the [Kyle] option thing. In a perfect world, yes, I would agree that I would much rather see the driver team focus on more important issues than lower I.Q. to gain performance. Unfortunately it seems that with sites such as [H], Anandtech and THG not being able to do honest “apples to apples” comparisons the idea of a control panel option that would enable just that seems like an understandable idea. At least to me. Employees of ATI come to these boards. They do not seem to duck any questions put to them. That benefits us users. They seem like nice people (they sent you a nice gift) Why should these people have their hard work sullied by unethical/incompetent reviewers. An option in the control panel that would produce comparable I.Q. to Nvidia's would remove (hopefully) any excuse from doing the fairest review possible.

I just don't like the thought of them stooping to nVidia's level. I've been following ATi since the Rage128 days and the last year or so has just been a joy to watch/participate in with 'em after YEARS of knocking heads with them.

I wouldn't object at all to a "Benchmark" setting in their drivers though I guess, if it means I get to honk of some of the blatant nVidiots left around....

 

[Rasmoo]

I'd really rather see their resources used to make their drivers better for gaming and such, and I'm pretty sure ATi & CatalystMAKER are of the same opinion from my conversations with them on the matter.

I'd agree completely, but I get the idea that ATI feel that they are doing everything right, and still they are losing out to Nvidia in this war of dirty tricks. Sooner or later, they may reach the point where they feel they are losing sales, and will have to fight back just as dirty in order to level the playing field of disinformation.

Assuming that it is possible to mimick the GFFX behaviour in R3xx and the man-power is available to doc, implement, and test this, then the decision to carry it all out should have been taken already.

The wise choice will of course be to offer at least two new choices (1 new, 1 renamed), high quality (as in The New Standard) and higher quality. Competitive without really angering any consumer group.

It's just my experience that it can no longer be called a war. Dirty tricks have been validated and laundered (or not noticed, which is practically the same) by significant consumer organs. Plus, NV hasn't really expressed a desire to change - well, almost the contrary, but in softer terms. Which really leaves ATi with no compelling reason to educate the consumers.

 

[Doomtrooper]

[Sarcasm]

Turns round to rest of ATI driver guys...

"It's official - it's now open season on image quality guys - [H] says so."

Let's start hacking it up now, and leave no pixel unpolluted.

[/Sarcasm]

I know you don't work in that department Andy, but why ATI continues to send review cards to the most laughable site on the net is beyond me.
It isn't as if they never got a review card it would relate to a big deal...and these inaccaurate reviews do more harm than good.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I know you don't work in that department Andy, but why ATI continues to send review cards to the most laughable site on the net is beyond me.
It isn't as if they never got a review card it would relate to a big deal...and these inaccaurate reviews do more harm than good.

True. Nvidia has been known to totally cut sites off from review samples if they arn't getting favourable copy. What's wrong with doing the same to sites that are just extensions of the Nvidia marketing teams? Or those that have faulty review methodologies and questionable ethics?

 

[Malo]

I know you don't work in that department Andy, but why ATI continues to send review cards to the most laughable site on the net is beyond me.
It isn't as if they never got a review card it would relate to a big deal...and these inaccaurate reviews do more harm than good.

wouldn't that only be detrimental in the end? I'm mean they're going to get the card eventually anyway and by precluding them, they might be biased to produce a negative review because of this. I mean come one.... they're not exactly building a reputation for unbiased reviews in the first place so I don't really think it's too far fetched that they might put ATI in unfavorable light out of spite....

 

[McElvis]

I know you don't work in that department Andy, but why ATI continues to send review cards to the most laughable site on the net is beyond me.
It isn't as if they never got a review card it would relate to a big deal...and these inaccaurate reviews do more harm than good.

wouldn't that only be detrimental in the end? I'm mean they're going to get the card eventually anyway and by precluding them, they might be biased to produce a negative review because of this. I mean come one.... they're not exactly building a reputation for unbiased reviews in the first place so I don't really think it's too far fetched that they might put ATI in unfavorable light out of spite....

Yep. Think of what they said about Parhelia when they did not get a review sample...

 

[Slides]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the issue, but at least from the screenshots, the IQ seems comparable in the game. Can someone explain what is wrong with what Nvidia is doing in UT2003?

 

[Malo]

so ATI could be stuck in a hard place here...

1) they supply [H] with hardware then they get a bad review because of incompetence

2) they don't supply hardware then they get a bad review out of spite

3) Tseng-Labs release the ET4000000000 and ursurp both power player positions in a single masterstroke of engineering genius and [H] is shutdown because they didn't know how octlinear filtering worked and no one visited them anymore

(sorry got carried away)

 

[nelg]

A few days ago [H] had a “seriousâ€￾ chat with Nvidia’s top brass. Today they publish an article that vindicated Nvidia’s behavior. What did they talk about then?

 

[Malo]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the issue, but at least from the screenshots, the IQ seems comparable in the game. Can someone explain what is wrong with what Nvidia is doing in UT2003?

this is the general issue with the review and the problems with nvidia filtering techniques in UT2k3 in particular:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6719&highlight=ut2k3+trilinear

 

[digitalwanderer]

A few days ago [H] had a “serious” chat with Nvidia’s top brass. Today they publish an article that vindicated Nvidia’s behavior. What did they talk about then?

How "sort of between bilinear and trilinear" filtering looks just as good as true trilinear filtering apparently.

 

[OpenGL guy]

Seriously, I would not object to another control panel option called "Ultraspeed" (or maybe "Nvidia Compatabilty Mode") or somesuch that hacked everything out, as long as the current quality modes are still left in the control panel. That way, we could see what the ATI cards can do when hacked down to NV3x levels.

It's would still be a waste of resources, but would be better than the dirty war that Nvidia are engaged in.

And it wouldn't help... So many people test the cards with the defaults (including OEMs) that you'd gain no ground. Also, people who want to make you look bad still can by just changing your settings to something more stressful.