Ways to solve complaining about ATI's filtering?

[mikechai]

I've never understood the mentality "I don't want this, but you do want. Please justify to me why you should have it". Why do people have to justify their dersires to other people FFS. :?

It's just plain arrogance IMO.

Because you're asking someone else to do the work. If you have enough people with enough good reasons, then ATI may well provide the control panel option you are after. If you just "want it", and expect other people to put in the time, effort and money for that alone, without any better reason than that, then maybe you are the arrogant one?

Well, if I shelf out $499 to buy the card and want to use *traditional* full trilinear(since the card can do it, but was disabled), will this be a good enough reason ?
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[Bjorn]

If you just "want it", and expect other people to put in the time, effort and money for that alone, without any better reason than that, then maybe you are the arrogant one?

Well, implementing a checkbox for this would hardly be a big thing, don't you think ?

And implementing it would definitely be a good thing for proving that this new method actually gives better or just as good IQ.

 

[Quitch]

I've never understood the mentality "I don't want this, but you do want. Please justify to me why you should have it". Why do people have to justify their dersires to other people FFS. :?

It's just plain arrogance IMO.

Because you're asking someone else to do the work. If you have enough people with enough good reasons, then ATI may well provide the control panel option you are after. If you just "want it", and expect other people to put in the time, effort and money for that alone, without any better reason than that, then maybe you are the arrogant one?

Well, if I shelf out $499 to buy the card and want to use *traditional* full trilinear(since the card can do it, but was disabled), will this be a good enough reason ?

So you shell out more money, then want to deliberately slow down the card for no (that has been shown) IQ gain? It's no wonder the checkbox isn't there, I can just imagine the fun the reviewers would have with this one.

 

[Bjorn]

So you shell out more money, then want to deliberately slow down the card for no (that has been shown) IQ gain?

I don't think it has been shown that this method is just as good in all circumstances. Though it hasn't been shown to be worse either. (The R420 seems to have a bit worse AF quality then the NV4X though).

 

[Quitch]

Which is exactly why asking for a way to disable it at this point seems a little premature. Why disable a good as/higher IQ + higher performance method, except through not really understanding it?

I don't think the cry should go out for such an option unless the method is found inferior, which so far it hasn't. Even if it is, who's to say this isn't one or two easily correctable cases? Some people seem obsessed with maintaining very old tech because they understand what it does. "I know what tri does so I wish to force it because tri is best." It's living in the past.

 

[Stryyder]

I cannot understand why so many people want to disable what seems to be a superior filtering technique, just so they can get worse performance.....

I just don't get it.b

 

[Kombatant]

My post earlier was made to make a point. And that point is that most people ask for Pure Trilinear without even knowing why. They've heard the word, they think it's God's gift to filtering, so they want it. But tell me this: why should you even care about Pure Trilinear, when you can have something else that will look the same and will also be faster?? I truly believe that if those people really cared about IQ, like they say, they would embrace this filtering method, and ask ATI to perfect it even more, so that they can have even better and faster IQ.

And since you want my opinion, I will state it once again: If ATI, by using this method, can provide me with equal IQ + more speed, I don't want Pure Tri. If they can't, please provide it as an option. But until it is proven (if it is ever) that they can't, cut them some slack here. You have the biggest reviewers trying hard to find differences between pure tri and ati's filtering the past 3-4 days and so far, the evidence is practically non-existent. That alone should tell you something.

 

[martrox]

mikechai, has there been any new outcome from the X-bit "expose" on the R420? In other words, were the COD screenshots Bilinier as many have sermised, did X-bit hose this - I really don't want to call it a hack job......

And IF it was botched, have they responded with a retraction and admission of error? And have they retested to see wether there are any real differences?

 

[Bjorn]

My post earlier was made to make a point. And that point is that most people ask for Pure Trilinear without even knowing why.

Because it hasn't been proven that this new method is better in all circumstances and we want to have the full trilinear option to able to check that.

 

[Kombatant]

My post earlier was made to make a point. And that point is that most people ask for Pure Trilinear without even knowing why.

Because it hasn't been proven that this new method is better in all circumstances and we want to have the full trilinear option to able to check that.

So there is no way to get full trilinear pictures? Even from other cards that support full tri, or use a software rasterizer?

 

[Sxotty]

No harm, no foul.

I guess we are back to shader replacement then as long as it doesn't degrade IQ. Joy of joys. Misrepresentation and lies are now a universal characteristic. And for the reason this actually may be quite bad is that many sites used colored mipmaps to determine that the X800 had better IQ, then it turns out that the IQ is trilinear only when colored mips are used to test it... yes that does certainly have the possibility to be "bad". Do I personally mind? No not really just as I didn't really mind brilinear (well I haven't actually experienced it), but the point being I do not mind optimizations or even cheats that increase speed and keep IQ up to snuff, however I do mind when a company decides w/o telling folks to change something like this and further decides that the consumer cannot choose for themselves what they want.

After all the stink about "if the application requests a certain thing that is what should be given" by ATI fans they really should notice the hypocritical duality of a stance that says well except when it is ATI if they decide not to give the application its request it is ok...

 

[mikechai]

mikechai, has there been any new outcome from the X-bit "expose" on the R420? In other words, were the COD screenshots Bilinier as many have sermised, did X-bit hose this - I really don't want to call it a hack job......

And IF it was botched, have they responded with a retraction and admission of error? And have they retested to see wether there are any real differences?

Its from digit-life or ixbt actually.
The images are hosted at ixbt site. Its not a hack job.

I was reading that article, I clicked the small pics to look at the bigger images. But I found that the R420 trilinear pics was wrong. By looking at the filename, I guess there is a mix up of url link.
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r420xt/r420-anis00-00.jpg

Since the R360 pic url is http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/nv40/r360-anis0x.jpg
Then I thought it should be http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r420xt/r420-anis0x.jpg

Then I downloaded all the pics and I can clearly see the difference in IQ.
That's why I posted the comparison html.

Looking at the url, you can see that the shots for R360, NV38 and NV40 are from their NV40 article while R420 shots were from R420 article. Its highly unlikely they benched all the card again for the R420 article. But there is a possibility of wrong settings, that I don't know.

Unfortunately, Digit-life/ixbt have not commented on this issue yet.
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[Tim]

No harm, no foul.

I guess we are back to shader replacement then as long as it doesn't degrade IQ.

This has nothing to do with shader replacement. This is a generic optimization that improves performance with equal or better image quality.

This much more like the shader compilers that all vendors use and everybody likes.

 

[Drak]

Which is exactly why asking for a way to disable it at this point seems a little premature. Why disable a good as/higher IQ + higher performance method, except through not really understanding it?

I don't think the cry should go out for such an option unless the method is found inferior, which so far it hasn't. Even if it is, who's to say this isn't one or two easily correctable cases? Some people seem obsessed with maintaining very old tech because they understand what it does. "I know what tri does so I wish to force it because tri is best." It's living in the past.

So, because you don't get why people would like to disable trylinear, you want to impose your point of view on others so they can't disable it?

Choice is always power. It's not the fact that we want to disable it, we want to have the choice. We can try it on/off, probably decide that we want it on and be very happy with it.

You have to remember, it's in human nature to yearn for what you can't have. People are rarely satisfied with what they have. By removing the option for full trilinear, ATI is making it more desirable than it should be.

ATI have already stated that the driver is already running an analysis in software (at texture upload time) and sets a flag or variable to enable/disable trylinear for that texture in hardware. I bet it's not even going to cost them one miserable man/hour to put an "if registry entry exists then set trylinear flag to 0". Come on. One man hour is very generous . They'd need maybe 20 minutes to implement the option and 40 minutes to test it.

 

[Blastman]

The X800 is doing Full-Trilinear.

l…

The objective of trilinear filtering is to make transitions between mipmap levels as near to invisible as possible. As long as this is achieved, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to implement the filtering.

Is there one strictly defined method for smoothing out mipmap transitions that is Trilinear? Unless you can make a case that ATI’s new Adaptive-Trilinear is not doing as good a job as blending mipmaps as other cards like the 6800 and 9800. Then case closed. The X800 is doing Full-Trilinear or Pure-Trlinear or whatever you want to label it. If the X800 is not doing full Tri then neither are the other cards out there. This is simply about ATI’s old method of Trilinear versus their new method of Trilinear..

Does the amount of Tri filtering increase when you do AF? i.e. are there more mipmap boundries in a frame then when you just use Tri filtering and no AF? or does more Tri filtering work have to be done with AF on?

The way I was seeing it they should get the same % increase in performance with and without AF due to "trylinear" filtering.

Sorry for appearing stupid and thanks for any replies.

This is a legitimate question and one I had too. I think some people here are confusing Tri/Bilinear with AF. And I think the answer to this question is no. If you look at these 9600 benchmarks at the…techreport … the performance delta between Trilinear and Bilinear in … % … is pretty constant all the way from no-AF to 16xAF.

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[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, if I shelf out $499 to buy the card and want to use *traditional* full trilinear(since the card can do it, but was disabled), will this be a good enough reason ?

If the card doesn't offer it, only "smartfiltering" (ie better, faster), then you can't have it. Just like you can't have non-angle dependent AF on R420 or NV40.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, implementing a checkbox for this would hardly be a big thing, don't you think ?

And implementing it would definitely be a good thing for proving that this new method actually gives better or just as good IQ.

If it's the case that the hardware supports it, which I expect it does, as R420 does actually do trilinear where needed.

I also voted for a checkbox in the CP, for the same reason - it allows ATI to keep the high ground and lets customers feel happier even if they are actually losing out on a good optimisation.

 

[digitalwanderer]

This has nothing to do with shader replacement. This is a generic optimization that improves performance with equal or better image quality.

This much more like the shader compilers that all vendors use and everybody likes.

What he said. This is an across the board optimization, it's not application selective...that's a big horking difference right there.

That and I can't SEE any difference. I just can't. I've tried like hell to, and I can't....so I can't say it degrades image quality at all.

 

[bGeek]

My post earlier was made to make a point. And that point is that most people ask for Pure Trilinear without even knowing why.

Because it hasn't been proven that this new method is better in all circumstances and we want to have the full trilinear option to able to check that.

So there is no way to get full trilinear pictures? Even from other cards that support full tri, or use a software rasterizer?

There is no way to get Full Trilnear pictures from an X800. ATI commented yesterday that filtering will not be comparable from generation to generation of thier own products, much less Nvidia. You can approximate some conclusions when comparing against other products or the software rasterizer.

The best comparison would be on the same architecture.

 

[Stryyder]

Well, implementing a checkbox for this would hardly be a big thing, don't you think ?

And implementing it would definitely be a good thing for proving that this new method actually gives better or just as good IQ.

If it's the case that the hardware supports it, which I expect it does, as R420 does actually do trilinear where needed.

I also voted for a checkbox in the CP, for the same reason - it allows ATI to keep the high ground and lets customers feel happier even if they are actually losing out on a good optimisation.

Yes but it also exposes them to reviewers with bad methods or motives saying that it is only fair to bench Tri opts off on NV40 vs Adaptive Trilinear off on X800 and they will take a huge hit for no reason since Adaptive Tri is until someone proves otherwise as good or better the NV40's Trilinear.