When enough is enough (AF quality on g70)

[Sxotty]

I can honestly say I noticed a decrease in filtering quality when I moved from a geforce4 up to the 9800, mainly perhaps it was due to the whole alpha textures bit. And I noticed a further degradation when getting a x800, but I did not mind too much b/c I was willing to make the tradeoff for higher resolution and the lack of "fog" in many games that accompanied the moves.

Still I wish all these companies would allow the user to make the decision, w/o having to download a third party application.

 

[3dmaniac]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107410&highlight=shimmering
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=646216
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141364&highlight=shimmering
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=821421&page=1&pp=20
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=35592&page=2&pp=15
http://nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=38888&page=1&pp=15
http://www.behardware.com/articles/574-5/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx.html

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16196&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

[overclocked]

Would an "good" ex of shim be in 3DM05-G1 when you clearly se white dots etz...

 

[Moloch]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=107410&highlight=shimmering
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=646216
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141364&highlight=shimmering
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=821421&page=1&pp=20
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=35592&page=2&pp=15
http://nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=38888&page=1&pp=15
http://www.behardware.com/articles/574-5/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx.html

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16196&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

I particually like the [H] thread because of tranCendenZ.
I knew it was him before I saw the name.

It's something some people notice more than others. However the IQ differences in filtering between ATI and Nvidia are minor compared to the IQ differences caused by ATI's lack of features (FP16 HDR, SM3.0, Transparency AA, etc)

[H] forums are good entertainment
On topic, I do agree on testing nvidia cards on HQ.
Oh and if you want the worth shimmering ever, play on a 8500/varients and fire up neverwinter nights.
It was dreadful in neverwinter nights and no driver option reduced it all.
It wasn't nearly as bad in other games, but NWN looked like horrible.
With AF and without btw.

 

[Ailuros]

ATI's particular trilinear optimization doesn't really decrease quality in games it does if you use the right tools and a worst case scenario but my experience is that it doesn't increase IQ either.

Any optimisation decreases quality; it then comes down by what degree the quality is being decreased and if and how much it's being noticed by the naked eye in real time motion.

A texture quality discriminating user will most likely seek in quite a few occassions - irrelevant whether Radeon or GeForce - to disable one or the other or all optimisations depending on application. It gets troublesome if a user cannot disable optimisations; high quality in ForceWare drivers is supposed to represent exactly that: all optimisations off, which does not seem to be possible with this particular issue.

 

[DarN]

I particually like the [H] thread because of tranCendenZ.
I knew it was him before I saw the name.

Also known as Ruined *spit*. He's the official NV poster boy.

 

[DegustatoR]

Would an "good" ex of shim be in 3DM05-G1 when you clearly se white dots etz...

No. That's shader aliasing, you can see this on any card be it GF or R.

 

[5150 Joker]

Indeed, the filtering logic is the same.

Without giving the game away, various people in the driver team are having a look to see what's up. Hopefully they'll come back with something soon.

Could you expand on that a bit? Did nV tell you they are looking into the issue? Hopefully they can get this resolved soon because it has been an eyesore in CSS for me even with opts off in HQ mode. In other games it's bearable since the severity of the shimmering varies.

 

[Rys]

Could you expand on that a bit? Did nV tell you they are looking into the issue? Hopefully they can get this resolved soon because it has been an eyesore in CSS for me even with opts off in HQ mode. In other games it's bearable since the severity of the shimmering varies.

Yeah, they're looking into it. It's fixable in the driver at the expense of some performance, so the interesting thing will be looking at it using a 'broken' driver and any fixed one that they push out (assuming they do), to see the performance drop. Given what I've know of the issue and the games currently around, taking the extra texel samples needed shouldn't show much drop off at all.

 

[Apple740]

Maybe something interesting; in BF2 there is more shimmering than i like, even on my Ati X800, so i played around with the settings. Normally, I play with 4xAA and in-game texture filtering @ high (forcing anistropic in CP doesn't work afaik), with these settings there is ground shimmering (dot crawling) noticable (BF is really the worse in this aspect of all the games i know).
But if i disable AA, the dot crawling vanishes almost completely! No more shimmering.

So isn't this "Nvidia shimmer issue" more a matter of how they implement FSAA (different than Ati) instead of a anistropic filtering issue? Couldn't it be that their 'optimizations' within the default Quality rendering mode are some kind of AA optimizations instead of AF?

 

[Ailuros]

So isn't this "Nvidia shimmer issue" more a matter of how they implement FSAA (different than Ati) instead of a anistropic filtering issue? Couldn't it be that their 'optimizations' within the default Quality rendering mode are some kind of AA optimizations instead of AF?

Multisampling has nothing to do with textures on either/or.

Using Supersampling on GF's won't cure the problem either; it'll just push the problematic area into the further clipping distance (by the degree SSAA offsets normally the LOD bias).

 

[Blastman]

But if i disable AA, the dot crawling vanishes almost completely! No more shimmering.

So isn't this "Nvidia shimmer issue" more a matter of how they implement FSAA (different than Ati) instead of a anistropic filtering issue? Couldn't it be that their 'optimizations' within the default Quality rendering mode are some kind of AA optimizations instead of AF?

Interesting observation. I wonder if anyone else can confirm this. Perhaps NV kicks in additional optimizations when AA is turned on to lessen the performance impact of AA.

 

[ChrisRay]

Interesting observation. I wonder if anyone else can confirm this. Perhaps NV kicks in additional optimizations when AA is turned on to lessen the performance impact of AA.

Shimmering occurs regardless of multisample AA configuration. On both my 6800GT and 7800GTX. Its completely unrelated to multisample FSAA.

 

[davea]

Brian Burke from NVIDIA asked us to pass this bit of information along in regards to "texture shimmering"...

"We have isolated the problem and we are working on the fix. We will also be working on a fix for the application profile problems that some users were experiencing. We hope to have a fix soon."

MikeC is the nvnews admin.

 

[Moose]

Well it is about time this was addressed. Hopefully the fix will come soon.

It will interesting to see if there is much of a performance hit with the fix.

 

[wireframe]

Well it is about time this was addressed. Hopefully the fix will come soon.

It will interesting to see if there is much of a performance hit with the fix.

I doubt you'll see a performance hit. I'd look more for an IQ hit, but that's subjective and the result will undoubtedly be better than shimmering. I would guess that the main difference you will see is that NV40/G70 blur sooner along the Z axis (this has been said before even without a shimmer fix).

 

[IbaneZ]

Originally Posted by MikeC
Brian Burke from NVIDIA asked us to pass this bit of information along in regards to "texture shimmering"...

"We have isolated the problem and we are working on the fix. We will also be working on a fix for the application profile problems that some users were experiencing. We hope to have a fix soon."

MikeC is the nvnews admin.

I guess tEd did the NVIDIA fans a favour. Who would have guessed that.

 

[tEd]

We isolated the problem. Somebody found out and made a big deal out of it , idiot

 

[IbaneZ]

We isolated the problem. Somebody found out and made a big deal out of it , idiot

Yeah yeah, good job dude.

Ze Jermans r00lez!

Now, where's the super cool insider info about R520?

 

[tEd]

Yeah yeah, good job dude.

Ze Jermans r00lez!

Now, where's the super cool insider info about R520?

If i would thank anybody it would be tridam. The only one who had the guts to put the bad word into his review.