Where do you stand with the FX
- Thread starter Typedef Enum
- Start date
I chose "Going to wait for R350" although I'm eager to see the FX in person and "hear" it and "see" it (that is the first time I've made "hearing" a video card an issue). My TI4400 will do me fine for a few more months, which will give the FX time to mature and the R350 to be introduced.
What I don't like (and to be honest, didn't expect) is how with FSAA and AF the 9700 is faster for equivelent visual quality (if not better). I figured Nvidia, with their history of "image quality is king" would one-up ATI as a the second punch in the old one-two.
Another thing that is disturbing is the complete lack of FX cards. What's up with that? Is this thing really shipping next month or are we really looking at "March" now?
I can still remember the "we'll be the first out with a DX9 part". Ugh.
What I don't like (and to be honest, didn't expect) is how with FSAA and AF the 9700 is faster for equivelent visual quality (if not better). I figured Nvidia, with their history of "image quality is king" would one-up ATI as a the second punch in the old one-two.
Another thing that is disturbing is the complete lack of FX cards. What's up with that? Is this thing really shipping next month or are we really looking at "March" now?
I can still remember the "we'll be the first out with a DX9 part". Ugh.
I don't think that's really the case. It seems more to me that nVidia is more concerned with "rendering correctness is king," which has really served them well for anisotropic filtering (I still think it's quite a bit better than ATI's implementation), but they really have been slacking off for a long time with FSAA. While they were the first to introduce usable FSAA with the GeForce DDR (in the 5.xx drivers, if I remember correctly), and were also the first to introduce MSAA with the GeForce3, they clearly haven't done as much as they could have in terms of AA quality. In particular, they only have one mode that is not ordered-grid (2x, which was okay with the GeForce4, but is just sad with the FX). This is, I feel, the one thing that nVidia is clearly behind in. Hopefully they'll fix it ASAP.Windfire said:
Yes, well, their FSAA has never been the best in quality, and they've never really spent much time in improving it. Now I think it's finally caught up to them. Amazing how it took a full three years for the competition to finally put out a product that truly could best nVidia in the FSAA department (previous products were too low-performing to do so).Windfire said:
Chalnoth said:
I agree, and I hope you are right.
But, FSAA only represents a part of visual quality puzzle. Aside from 3dfx's self-inflicted decisions, Nvidia helped accelerate 3dfx's death by introducing and demonstrating the visual superiority of 32bit, Triliniar filtering, Stencil buffer, etc, etc. Heck, the entire Geforce (still don't like that name
"change the world" was about increase the polygons (better image).The FX seems kind of unbalanced--or perhaps their emphasis is moving towards the movie industry.
Doomtrooper
Veteran
That was many years ago, when ATI entered the high end gaming market with the Radeon there was no comparison. I had a GTS and switched to a Radeon and never looked back, the colors were not near as vibrant and texture compression issues were not there.
Then Nvidia brought out Quincunx which IMO was the worst piece of FSAA trash ever..so yes in the early years Nvidia centered on IQ, then took a corner and headed for speed only...although hard to capture Quincunx in action...my eyes couldn't take it.
Then Nvidia brought out Quincunx which IMO was the worst piece of FSAA trash ever..so yes in the early years Nvidia centered on IQ, then took a corner and headed for speed only...although hard to capture Quincunx in action...my eyes couldn't take it.
That's not true either. First of all, Quincunx isn't that bad, as long as you're looking at a pure 3D scene. Only problem is, pretty much every game in existence has text, so that makes the FSAA mode rather pointless. Maybe if some game moved to polygonal text Quincunx would work, but that's not going to happen.Doomtrooper said:
Anyway, in the "early years" speed seemed to be the primary focus. The Riva 128 actually was about as fast as the original Voodoo, but it looked like crap by comparison. It seems like since then, nVidia's sort of been increasing image quality in waves. The TNT dramatically improved image quality. The original GeForce also improved image quality, but to a much lesser extent (The TNT supported FSAA and trilinear filtering, but at unacceptable performance...). Then the GeForce3 again significantly improved image quality, by offering 8x anisotropic filtering and widely-usable FSAA. But the FX doesn't look to have improved image quality at all, when not looking at the programmer-side features and gamma-correct FSAA (which, btw, I would really like to test...).
OGSS was the worst FSAA implementation I've ever seen. It was hardly "usable", IMO.
Actually, ATI caught up to them in August of 2002. Remember, The Fx is being compared to an older product.
I disagree on your premise of finally besting nVidia. Take it for what it's worth.....the V5 really offered incredible FSAA for its time and really was enjoyable in a multitude of titles from different genres. It did take playing a lot of titles to see the strength of the product -- not a few. For a person that likes to talk about texture aliasing.....that was one of the product's strengths so long ago and discussed years ago and simply ignored by many.
Hey, how would you like to be one of Nvidia's board partners now. Lets see, you get to sell an overhyped underperforming card for a very low margin that is made by a third party. It gets better, its off shoots will most likley be just as dissapionting and its mobile part will need to covered with asbestos. Im am sure this will feel like the longest 6 months (nv35) in history for some of these companies. I wonder how BFG is feeling right now ?
Similar threads
