Why such little drop in performance in X800 when AF applied?

[ChrisRay]

I believe NVIDIA's trilinear optimizations are enabled by default. Easily turned off, though, and, yes, the filtering optimizations give roughly a 20% boost across the board according to my somewhat limited testing.

Right, Trilinear Optimisations enabled by default. Texture stage optimisations disabled by default.

The AF opts make a big deal, Trilinear opts as well

 

[ChrisRay]

I'm just saying, Texture stage optimisations can make a big deal in regards to performance.

If you saw my NV40 Anisotropic Filtering investigation over at nvnews. On Nvidia cards it improves performance significantly. So now it makes you wonder. Nvidia has these opts disabled by default (Nvidias Texture stage opts are a bit more aggressive than ATIS IIRC)

I vist nvnews as often as i vist rage3d. Which is once a month.

If nvidia has it disabled by default then that is nvidia's problem is it not ?

If the game requests it then ati does it. It is not forced .

So if farcry wants it on through all texture stages than it will do it on all texture stages.

If will not force farcry to do it on only the first texture stage .

I do not know if nvidia's version will allways force it or lets the aplication choose .

just find it an interesting revelation. Nvidia has an option called "Application Preference" which will do Application Handled AF if you would rather the game handle the way AF is done.

I'm actually just trying to learn something from the way different things are done. You can control texture stage optimisations if you'd like with Nvidias Advanced Control panel tabs and turn them on.

 

[tEd]

I believe NVIDIA's trilinear optimizations are enabled by default. Easily turned off, though, and, yes, the filtering optimizations give roughly a 20% boost across the board according to my somewhat limited testing.

Right, Trilinear Optimisations enabled by default. Texture stage optimisations disabled by default.

The AF opts make a big deal, Trilinear opts as well

what kind of stage opt. do they exactly?

 

[ChrisRay]

I believe NVIDIA's trilinear optimizations are enabled by default. Easily turned off, though, and, yes, the filtering optimizations give roughly a 20% boost across the board according to my somewhat limited testing.

Right, Trilinear Optimisations enabled by default. Texture stage optimisations disabled by default.

The AF opts make a big deal, Trilinear opts as well

what kind of stage opt. do they exactly?

Second I'll show you.

 

[ChrisRay]

Ok Sorry about the repost.

With AF opts enabled.

Texture Stage Zero looks like this.

With AF opts on Texture Stage 1-7 Looks like this.

With AF opts off, Texture Stage 0 looks like this.

With AF opts off, texture Stage 1-7 looks like this.

Hope this helps some..


Chris

 

[tEd]

Ok Sorry about the repost.


Hope this helps some..


Chris

yes thanks

 

[PeterAce]

ChrisRay,

You screenshots show that 'AF Optimations' look like they are 'Stage Optimisations'.

AF Opt ON = Trilinear (Stage 0) Bilinear (Stages 1-7).

AF Opt OFF = Trilinear (0 - 7).

 

[ChrisRay]

ChrisRay,

You screenshots show that 'AF Optimations' look like they are 'Stage Optimisations'.

AF Opt ON = Trilinear (Stage 0) Bilinear (Stages 1-7).

AF Opt OFF = Trilinear (0 - 7).

Yup, I thought I pointed out that AF opts were texture stage optimisations earlier 8)

I was just labeling them the way Nvidia labels it AF opts.

 

[tEd]

ChrisRay,

You screenshots show that 'AF Optimations' look like they are 'Stage Optimisations'.

AF Opt ON = Trilinear (Stage 0) Bilinear (Stages 1-7).

AF Opt OFF = Trilinear (0 - 7).

Yup, I thought I pointed out that AF opts were texture stage optimisations earlier 8)

I was just labeling them the way Nvidia labels it AF opts.

has sombody found a way to disable the angle dependencie yet , with rivatuner perhaps?

 

[AAlcHemY]

Sorry for the basic question, but what are these 'stages' actually?

 

[ERK]

ChrisRay,

You screenshots show that 'AF Optimations' look like they are 'Stage Optimisations'.

AF Opt ON = Trilinear (Stage 0) Bilinear (Stages 1-7).

AF Opt OFF = Trilinear (0 - 7).

I think you mean Brilinear instead of Trilinear, but as I think was pointed out above, that may be considered a slightly different 'optimization.'

E

 

[ChrisRay]

ChrisRay,

You screenshots show that 'AF Optimations' look like they are 'Stage Optimisations'.

AF Opt ON = Trilinear (Stage 0) Bilinear (Stages 1-7).

AF Opt OFF = Trilinear (0 - 7).

I think you mean Brilinear instead of Trilinear, but as I think was pointed out above, that may be considered a slightly different 'optimization.'

E

Yes Unless trilinear opts are turned off, Brilinear occurs on stage 0-7 if texture stage opts are turned off.

And with Trilinear Opts and AF opts, Trilinear occurs on texture stage 0-7.

Texture Stage optimizations are whole different issue.

 

[Neeyik]

Sorry for the basic question, but what are these 'stages' actually?

For stages, one can read "layers". Fixed function allows up to 8 texture stages per pass; stage 0 is the the first.

 

[christoph]

the stage (or texture layer) optimization relies on the concept that in typical cases only the base texture really benefits from full tri af filtering.

 

[dan2097]

Ati will do first stage af and the rest bilinear unless the program asks for something else .

Using control panel af you can never get anything better than bilinear on texture stages 1-7 regardless of what the application requests, try that af tool with control panel af, it requests trilinear on stages 1-7...

Only in application preference af can you get brilinear/trilinear on these stages.

The hidden af mode in the registry which can be unlocked with rtool/radlinker forces af but with the level of filtering i.e. bilinear/trilinear decided by the programs.

Nvidias texture stage optimizations work the same way except there is an option in the control panel option to disable them rather than having to use 3rd party software/dive into the registry

 

[Quitch]

Apparently as of 3.7 this is no longer the case:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13911

 

[radar1200gs]

Here is an interesting potential test to add to the arsenal.

I've been digging around glade wrappers recently (OpenGlide mucks up carmageddon 2's menu's) and came across this one:
http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/index.html

the following is a quote from its documentation
http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/readme.htm

anisotropy - safe: none - fastest: none - nicest: lots of it
This is another texture filtering control, and you probably also have one of these in you graphics card driver's own settings. Anisotropic filtering, in a nutshell, will increase texture sharpness on surfaces at steeper angles "into" the screen.
Having this control in the wrapper theoretically means that you no longer need to force aniso in your driver settings, if you did that with earlier versions. The wrapper will also take care not to "beautify" textures that are used for special effects (chroma keying again ...), to avoid the artifacts that this would cause.
However, I've found that ATI's current drivers do not properly handle application control of aniso filtering. You'll get a lot of texture shimmering (tested w Cat4.5 and Cat4.6). So for the time being, forget it and keep forcing aniso in the driver. NVIDIA cards work fine here.

 

[croc_mak]

This could be happening on ATI drivers if the application does not specify both mag and min filters to be anisotropic. Nvidia hardware does not have a separate controls for mag and min for aniso.

This is a well known issue. Hope the glidwrapper folks are reading this

 

[tEd]

@ChrisRay

Could you please make a screenshot of the default triliner/brilinear filtering(no af) of the nv40 with this little program herehttp://www.lexicon.net/mccann/Trilines.zip

thanks

 

[digitalwanderer]

Using control panel af you can never get anything better than bilinear on texture stages 1-7 regardless of what the application requests, try that af tool with control panel af, it requests trilinear on stages 1-7...

Only in application preference af can you get brilinear/trilinear on these stages.

The hidden af mode in the registry which can be unlocked with rtool/radlinker forces af but with the level of filtering i.e. bilinear/trilinear decided by the programs.

Nvidias texture stage optimizations work the same way except there is an option in the control panel option to disable them rather than having to use 3rd party software/dive into the registry

Really? And here I've always been forcing AF thru control panel.

Where exactly is the option in Radlinker to force it on all levels...is that just setting the AF slider to "forced" and "highest quality"? (I'm utterly in love with Radlinker lately, WAY TOO COOL! 8) )