ATI vs Nvidia graphics and Image quality

[vision33r]

Personally owned several Nvidia products more than ATI over the years..

Now the new owner of the ATI x1800xt 256MB and gave my 6800GT over to my wife's PC. I did get a chance to use a 7800GT that I borrowed from a friend who tried to convince me to buy it but I chose ATI this round...

Now visually, I thought the 7800GT had a cleaner image quality than the 6800GT overall. This includes 2x-8x FSAA, 16AF, and even HDR enabled for HL2:Lost Coast and Pandora Tomorrow.

When I got the ATI x1800xt and installed it. What I noticed was that the colors seem much warmer on the ATI.

*(My monitor is a Dell 2405 DVI, using the monitor driver and Dell's color profile in display properties.)*

The ATI graphics looks much more cleaner and crisper than the Nvidia. I play a lot of WOW, Oblivion, CSS, BF2, and I've noticed objects in the games that I play that I could not distinquish or recognize under Nvidia graphics.

Like fog, light effects, and distant objects seem to be very blurry and have more banding under Nvidia graphics.

The white seems more "grey" under Nvidia, the red seems more "purple" too.

ATI definitely got the sweeter looking image quality in 2D and 3D but I like Nvidia's Desktop manager better than the Catalyst Control Center.

What do you guys think?

 

[compgeek89]

I went from 7800 GTX 512 -> x1800 XT -> 7800 GT SLI, never noticed any difference. Im on a CRT.

 

[Genx87]

I do believe you can set the hues for Nvidia via their control panel.
If you are seeing white as grey, chances are the colors were off.

 

[compgeek89]

Originally posted by: Genx87
I do believe you can set the hues for Nvidia via their control panel.
If you are seeing white as grey, chances are the colors were off.

That is a very good point. Never thought of that becasue i never had the issue.

 

[nitromullet]

WoW definitely looks better on ATI IMO becasue of the warmer colors and reduced AF shimmering.

Overall, I prefer ATI's IQ to NVIDIA's right now, I think the colors look better, the AF looks better, and HDR+AA is a really nice bonus.

That being said, I like the fact that you can pick 8xAA with a single NVIDIA card, which looks better than ATI's max for a single card of 6xAA. CrossFire has the absolute best IQ I've ever seen, since it has all the aforementioned IQ benefits but you can also crank up the AA past 6x.

 

[vision33r]

Color correction today is better on LCDs than CRTs, you can set it once for each new video card and monitor and no need to change it.

I happened to use the color profile that came from Dell as a primary.

The hues is not what bothers me, I think the IQ on Nvidia's 2x-4x FSAA textures are a bit more washed than ATI.

Doom 3 seem to look better on Nvidia, I replayed the "Hell" stage and the color lighting seems brighter or more vibrant. Maybe because under ATI I had temporal AA turned on.

 

[zephyrprime]

I went from a x850xt to a 7900gt and while I got a performance boost, image quality did suffer. I noticed the shimmering and the texturing seems dithery now. And the Nalu demo doesn't even work right. wtf?

 

[Appledrop]

i went from an x800xtpe to a geforce 2 ultra (dont ask), and desktop doesnt blur at edges at high res, and colours are less washed out soo

 

[BassBomb]

Originally posted by: Azzith
i went from an x800xtpe to a geforce 2 ultra (dont ask), and desktop doesnt blur at edges at high res, and colours are less washed out soo

LMAO oh snap

my cuz still has a GF2 MX200 and he upgraded to a DELL 1905FP and his video card lags at 1280x1024 alot

 

[hans030390]

I've used both ATI and Nvidia cards, and I'd have to say I've never noticed a difference.

 

[Fallengod]

me either. FPS come first. Shoot, I usually play at low resolutions with low texture quality anyways so I can have a steady 300fps.

 

[BFG10K]

ATi's default driver quality beats nVidia's default driver quality hands down. nVidia's default settings shimmer badly in many games.

 

[firebyyrd]

I have to say, the ATI X1800Xt seems sharper and crisper than the 7800GT I used to own.

Colors also seem less shady then before, I don't know.. my color corrections are all stock and default, unchanged.

 

[josh6079]

X1900XTX looks better than 7800GT SLI.

 

[Captante]

My last upgrade was from a PNY 6800GT to an HIS X1900XTX and IQ in games has improved in everything I've played except Doom 3 & Quake 4, both of which look about the same to my eye.
I expected a boost in 2-d IQ as well since I got a huge improvement back when I jumped from a Ti4600 to 9800 Pro but theres no difference at all on my 21 inch CRT ... DVD playback is a lot better though, much brighter picture with richer & more accurate colors.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

There was a huge difference between my Kyro 4000 64MB and my ATi 9200 128MB. Shadows on the latter looked much more colorful, which is quite ugly. For example, in Deus Ex when you start on Liberty Island there's some metal crates a couple hundred feet away. On the 4000 there's shadowing on the crates and the occasional brighter spots due to bumps on it. On the 9200 the bumps are a mixture of purple, yellow, and green. The graphics also look a lot more pixelated, as if there's a thin filter of moving pixels everywhere on the screen.