nV GTX260+ vs ATI 4850 IQ comparison

[thilanliyan]

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=3188

 

[Wreckage]

Seems BFG10K and I have a rare chance to agree on something. I do prefer Transparency AA over any other I've seen.

 

[josh6079]

I love his comparisons. He always does a thorough job.

 

[thilanliyan]

I think I prefer things to be a bit sharper...although I do notice the texture crawl...oh well, to each their own.

The review is taking a bit of flak over at XS.

 

[SSChevy2001]

That was a great review. Personally I prefer the way the tree look with AAA ( thicker and more detail ). I don't really notice any texture crawl in-game, but can't adjusting the texture LOD fix some of that?

 

[Insomniator]

The site needs a new name.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
The site needs a new name.

Appopinsblog.net

 

[BFG10K]

Holy shit, this means I can actually comment for a change since I had absolutely no part in starting this thread.

Originally posted by: thilan29

The review is taking a bit of flak over at XS.

Heh, yeah.

It's hilarious to see some people making claims about conclusions I never even stated in the article. They clearly haven?t read the thing, but it?s good to see a few smart people there get it.

For the record I never outright stated one vendor has better IQ than the other. I simply pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of both, and then I stated my preference (nVidia) based on those findings.

I also left it up to the reader to decide based said findings and their preferences. We have an example right here were SSChevy2001 prefers the ?fatter? tree that ATi's AAA generates.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Good review BFG10K. Not bad at all. :thumbsup:

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I also left it up to the reader to decide based said findings and their preferences. We have an example right here were SSChevy2001 prefers the ?fatter? tree that ATi's AAA generates.

Not to mention if one were not as big of a fan of legacy gaming, I could see the xS AA mode section being of no great value to their decision as the performance hit they incur is often too hefty for concurrent titles.

Just goes to show that image quality is more subjective than performance with the current hardware.

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
I don't really notice any texture crawl in-game, but can't adjusting the texture LOD fix some of that?

I've never seen an option for "LOD" in ATi's CCC or ATi Tra Tools like I have nVidia's control panel. Maybe it's because my last ATi driver experience was with the X1k series - they may be there for the 4800s. Although, I think the LOD is clamped by default under the Cat. AI "Standard/Low". If not, I suspect setting it to "Off" would.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
SSChevy2001 prefers the "Fuller" tree that ATi's AAA generates.

Crysis does the same thing when you enable edge AA.

I prefer the tree to look fuller with more detail, where the GTX260 seems to be blurring everything. Even if you look at the leaves you'll see that detail is lost on GTX260 from it blurring them, or parts of the branches are missing just floating not connected to the tree.

Originally posted by: josh6079
I've never seen an option for "LOD" in ATi's CCC or ATi Tra Tools like I have nVidia's control panel. Maybe it's because my last ATi driver experience was with the X1k series - they may be there for the 4800s. Although, I think the LOD is clamped by default under the Cat. AI "Standard/Low". If not, I suspect setting it to "Off" would.

There's a option in ATT, not sure about CCC. I've never used this before, so I'm just wondering how it would affect the Doom 3 SS.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
There's a option in ATT, not sure about CCC. I've never used this before, so I'm just wondering how it would affect the Doom 3 SS.

Is it the Cat AI option in ATT? Set it to off?

 

[SSChevy2001]

Originally posted by: thilan29
Is it the Cat AI option in ATT? Set it to off?

It's in Direct3D -> Settings -> Additional -> Texture LOD Adjustment ( Default is 0 )

 

[josh6079]

Ah, yes, there it is.

Being as it is set to "0" I'm guessing that's the equivalent to being "Clamped"

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001

Originally posted by: thilan29
Is it the Cat AI option in ATT? Set it to off?

It's in Direct3D -> Settings -> Additional -> Texture LOD Adjustment ( Default is 0 )

Thanks.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Not to mention if one were not as big of a fan of legacy gaming, I could see the xS AA mode section being of no great value to their decision as the performance hit they incur is often too hefty for concurrent titles.

The super sample modes are usable in most modern games if the resolution is fairly low (like 1280*1024 which I use... in before "no one games at that res anymore" ). In Crysis I use 1x2 super sample instead of regular MSAA because a. It comes with less of a performance hit than 4x AA and b. it anti-aliases the vegetation as well. In most games that aren't named "Crysis" or "STALKER clear sky" the 32xS mode is usable as well (2x2 super sample + 8xMSAA) which provides pretty much flawless edge quality.

 

[allies]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Seems BFG10K and I have a rare chance to agree on something. I do prefer Transparency AA over any other I've seen.

IMO AAA is better. I haven't seen it in game though so can't comment on "shimmering".

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: josh6079

Not to mention if one were not as big of a fan of legacy gaming, I could see the xS AA mode section being of no great value to their decision as the performance hit they incur is often too hefty for concurrent titles.

The super sample modes are usable in most modern games if the resolution is fairly low (like 1280*1024 which I use... in before "no one games at that res anymore" ). In Crysis I use 1x2 super sample instead of regular MSAA because a. It comes with less of a performance hit than 4x AA and b. it anti-aliases the vegetation as well. In most games that aren't named "Crysis" or "STALKER clear sky" the 32xS mode is usable as well (2x2 super sample + 8xMSAA) which provides pretty much flawless edge quality.

You know that M&M commercial with Santa Clause...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

1280x1024 guys...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

j/k. Really though, never thought about that low of resolution.

You get over 30 frames with 32xS mode in games like CoD: W@W, AoC, Fall Out 3, and Far Cry 2?

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: josh6079

Not to mention if one were not as big of a fan of legacy gaming, I could see the xS AA mode section being of no great value to their decision as the performance hit they incur is often too hefty for concurrent titles.

The super sample modes are usable in most modern games if the resolution is fairly low (like 1280*1024 which I use... in before "no one games at that res anymore" ). In Crysis I use 1x2 super sample instead of regular MSAA because a. It comes with less of a performance hit than 4x AA and b. it anti-aliases the vegetation as well. In most games that aren't named "Crysis" or "STALKER clear sky" the 32xS mode is usable as well (2x2 super sample + 8xMSAA) which provides pretty much flawless edge quality.

You know that M&M commercial with Santa Clause...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

1280x1024 guys...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

j/k. Really though, never thought about that low of resolution.

You get over 30 frames with 32xS mode in games like CoD: W@W, AoC, Fall Out 3, and Far Cry 2?

Hey some of us have old LCDs with good response that work fine.

I'm still rocking a 17.x inch Hitachi LCD with 1280x1024 with a (soon) Geforce 260.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: josh6079

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: josh6079

Not to mention if one were not as big of a fan of legacy gaming, I could see the xS AA mode section being of no great value to their decision as the performance hit they incur is often too hefty for concurrent titles.

The super sample modes are usable in most modern games if the resolution is fairly low (like 1280*1024 which I use... in before "no one games at that res anymore" ). In Crysis I use 1x2 super sample instead of regular MSAA because a. It comes with less of a performance hit than 4x AA and b. it anti-aliases the vegetation as well. In most games that aren't named "Crysis" or "STALKER clear sky" the 32xS mode is usable as well (2x2 super sample + 8xMSAA) which provides pretty much flawless edge quality.

You know that M&M commercial with Santa Clause...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

1280x1024 guys...

"Ahhh! They do exist!" /feint

j/k. Really though, never thought about that low of resolution.

You get over 30 frames with 32xS mode in games like CoD: W@W, AoC, Fall Out 3, and Far Cry 2?

I dont have any of those games (except for FC2 but I uninstalled that because it's boring ) but they would probably run alright, and if they don't theres always the 1x2 SS or 2x1 modes which you can combine with AA. IMO the best feature that nvidia has over ATI is the amount of AA modes you have to play with

Crysis is actually almost playable with 8xSQ (2x2 SS + 2xMSAA) on a single gtx 260. I was actually getting about 25 fps in this scene but I had to switch to windowed mode to get the screenshot which dropped my framerate by a few FPS.

screenshot, enthusiast settings DX9

somewhat modern games I do have that will run with 2x2S + some combo of MSAA at 1280*1024: BF2, source engine games, GRID, CoD4/Cod2, Oblivion, FEAR, the witcher

Ocasionally PCGH will do SSAA benches with nvidia cards so you could check over there.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Wait what is the difference is 8xS and 8xSQ? The former is 1x2 OGSS and the latter 2x2 OGSS?

 

[mwmorph]

Good job on the review. I always knew you were knowledgeable but I never knew you wrote for tech websites.

The only thing I have with IQ comparisons is that at 8x MSAA I don't think I'd ever notice a difference in real world situations where I would be bothered by either. It seems like nitpicking tiny, tiny details that are obvious at 400% zoom but under normal 100% zoom game play would look pretty damn good either way.

I might be crazy but I prefer sharp textures to sharp edges. I always find that good texture filtering looks better than good edge smoothing any day , but then I believe graphically, textures really make the biggest difference in how a game looks(for example Crysis, Turn down textures and it looks much worse, turn down AA and I'm not really nearly as disturbed at the lower IQ).

I rarely feel compelled to put up beyond 2xAA but I always, always have at least 8x AF and if I can 16xAF on.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001

Crysis does the same thing when you enable edge AA.

Yep, and I personally hate it.

The whole point of anti-aliasing foliage is so it doesn't sparkle like a Christmas tree during movement. Crysis? implementation just fattens everything but it doesn?t actually do much anti-aliasing, so it effectively makes the area that sparkles bigger. That and edge AA is absolutely woeful compared regular AA for polygon edges.

There's a option in ATT, not sure about CCC. I've never used this before, so I'm just wondering how it would affect the Doom 3 SS.

I don?t believe this setting actually clamps the LOD like nVidia?s does i.e. 0 is the default, but games that ask for a lower value still get it.

Anyway, LOD is only one part of the equation, and a small one. The other (more significant) part is that fact that ATi under-filters compared to nVidia.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Wait what is the difference is 8xS and 8xSQ? The former is 1x2 OGSS and the latter 2x2 OGSS?

8xS = 4xRGMS + 1x2 OGSS
8xSQ = 2xRGMS + 2x2 OGSS.

There's not much point in using the latter as it's almost as slow as 16xS but it provides visibly inferior edge AA because of the low amount of unaligned samples.

 

[josh6079]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
I dont have any of those games (except for FC2 but I uninstalled that because it's boring ) but they would probably run alright, and if they don't theres always the 1x2 SS or 2x1 modes which you can combine with AA. IMO the best feature that nvidia has over ATI is the amount of AA modes you have to play with

Crysis is actually almost playable with 8xSQ (2x2 SS + 2xMSAA) on a single gtx 260. I was actually getting about 25 fps in this scene but I had to switch to windowed mode to get the screenshot which dropped my framerate by a few FPS.

screenshot, enthusiast settings DX9

somewhat modern games I do have that will run with 2x2S + some combo of MSAA at 1280*1024: BF2, source engine games, GRID, CoD4/Cod2, Oblivion, FEAR, the witcher

Ocasionally PCGH will do SSAA benches with nvidia cards so you could check over there.

Not too shabby.

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out.