toms hardware puts up article on ati's filtering game

[Shamrock]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

I bet I can find more people who've bought 6800s than you can X800XTs?

The X800 XT has probably been "sold" a few thousand times over at gateway. Most of the orders seem to have been cancelled though. Zipzoomfly put up the X800XT at $440, it sold out in 45 minutes.

Nvidia has nothing against a $440 X800 XT.

oh, you mean the PRE-ORDERED versions that cant be played on till July 1? you do realize, those at Gateway were PRE-orders, right?

Petey, Just going by what they said at the link, they are russian so I am guessing they mean the animated gifs on the right that switch back and forth. That'd be my presumption.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Shamrock
round 2 for all the naysayers

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/nv40-rx800-5-p1.shtml It has comparison videos, and PLAINLY shows the differences...ATI's are DEFINTELY lowering IQ.

Can you point out the correct links(to the vids), my Russian is a little rusty.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
Sandorski you are correct that Nv AA and AF are not the same as ATi AA/AF...but we are talking about the basic filtering method, which actually have clear definitions of what they entail, thus if implemented correctly each filtering method should look the same no matter who does it. Brilinear (nVidia) looks better that bilinear (both ATi and nVidia) but not as good as trilinear (both nV and ATi, up till now). Thus Nv got in trouble for brilinear because it wasn't as good as tri, but now ATi does straight Bi and you say it's no biggie?

Good God! I'm saying, "Prove there is degradation"

That's it.

 

[Shamrock]

sandorski, read my post above...Pete asked the same thing.

Just going by what they said at the link, they are russian so I am guessing they mean the animated gifs on the right that switch back and forth. That'd be my presumption.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Pete
Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as sandorski seems fond of reminding us.

BTW, if Derek is right in his latest Comdex video card article, nV has only 50-100 6800Us in the retail channel. Does that sound abysmally low to anyone else? I wonder which gets closer to the truth behind that tiny figure: Dave Orton's "wafers per die" anecdote, or just a tiny supply of GDDR3?

Shamrock, I only see pics in that article. Are there videos linked in there?

Wow. The normally wise Pete telling people they live in denial of ATIs glory? I see.

Well........
1. AFAIK, I haven't read of any X800XT being available for retail sale. If someone points me at threads of people who have bought them, I'll retract of course. In any case, I don't think the 6800U was any more of a "paper launch" than the X800XT.
2. It annoys me that ATI told reviewers to disable nVidia's brilinear, and leave theirs on, which they didn't even bother to mention they had. It's also interesting how they tried to hide it.
3. AGAIN, if the ATI brilinear is so great, why did they only implement it on their low end 9600 cards? Why not free trilinear level IQ at higher performance on the 9700/9800 series? Why brilinear for the rehashed X800 series, supposedly their best? Could it be because without the brilinear their cards perform about the same and offer less features?
4. A trip to pricewatch shows the X800XT preorder at one vendor for $495, $585 and $599 preorder at two others. I wouldn't call this "nVidia has nothing to compete with their $440 goodness" :roll:
5. So you can preorder OEM X800XTs for $440? Big deal. There will likely be OEM 6800Us under $500, even if there isn't, I'd pay a little more for non 2 year old technology.
6. No DX9c, PS3 on the aged X800 core, whether that matters or not remains to be seen. I think it's safe to say that if it does make a difference this year, it would be better to have it?
7. Last I heard, Doom 3 is supposed to be out next week and will likely run much faster on nVidia. I look forward to this game more than any other this year, if it comes out this year, I want the card that will run it best. If the old rumors of it being in box on some Ultras are true, would rather have that than a coupon for HL2 at some point in the future. (any coupon holders reading this feel scammed?)
8. If you use Linux, tough luck with ATI
9. If you want to do some on card mpeg encoding, tough luck with X800
10. Who was it who said,"Only a marketing person would call 24bit full precision"?
11. I believe Cainam, an actual X800 user, when he says he can see the image degradation

Yeah right Pete. Anyone who has any interest in the 6800 is living in "denial".
They should just send $400-$600 to ATI for this years rehash of the venerable R300 design. All hail the king of 2002.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

1. AFAIK, I haven't read of any X800XT being available for retail sale. If someone points me at threads of people who have bought them, I'll retract of course. In any case, I don't think the 6800U was any more of a "paper launch" than the X800XT.

Zipzoomfly had them available as in stock for around 45 minutes before they were sold out on Friday. It was around 3 pm.
Even if you don't believe Gateway (who said they ARE shipping out all the orders they can on the 9th or 16th), Zipzoomfly is a solid store. If nothing else this does show the huge demand for ATIs card.

5. So you can preorder OEM X800XTs for $440? Big deal. There will likely be OEM 6800Us under $500, even if there isn't, I'd pay a little more for non 2 year old technology.

Where? When? We've seen a GT for $450 at gameve, and Ultras for ridiculous prices. I'd like a card at an affordable price now, or soon, not 6 months from now.

I got in on the Zip deal, and hopefully I'll have my card by the 10th.
:beer:

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

1. AFAIK, I haven't read of any X800XT being available for retail sale. If someone points me at threads of people who have bought them, I'll retract of course. In any case, I don't think the 6800U was any more of a "paper launch" than the X800XT.

Zipzoomfly had them available as in stock for around 45 minutes before they were sold out on Friday. It was around 3 pm.
Even if you don't believe Gateway (who said they ARE shipping out all the orders they can on the 9th or 16th), Zipzoomfly is a solid store. If nothing else this does show the huge demand for ATIs card.

5. So you can preorder OEM X800XTs for $440? Big deal. There will likely be OEM 6800Us under $500, even if there isn't, I'd pay a little more for non 2 year old technology.

Where? When? We've seen a GT for $450 at gameve, and Ultras for ridiculous prices. I'd like a card at an affordable price now, or soon, not 6 months from now.

I got in on the Zip deal, and hopefully I'll have my card by the 10th.
:beer:

LOL
Nice try "General".
Several people over at nVNews have 6800Ultras, so I'm thinking your attempt to delude people they'll have to wait "months" is about as accurate as most of your posts?
I doubt you'll be dissatisfied with your X800XT, if you can overlook the image degradation caused by the 9600 cheater drivers you'll have no option to disable.
You shouldn't be so quick to condemn those of us who can afford a new tech card like the 6800 and just don't want 2002 features on a card we may still be using in 2005.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Several people over at nVNews have 6800Ultras, so I'm thinking your attempt to delude people they'll have to wait "months" is about as accurate as most of your posts?

Really? How much were they? Any site I've seen the 6800U on is charging well over $500. How long do you think it'll take before the card drops into the mid $400s? Christmas, maybe?

You shouldn't be so quick to condemn those of us who can afford a new tech card like the 6800

I'm not condemning anyone. But I don't see the sense in paying $100 more for what has been shown, ultimately, to be a slower card. If the feature set is worth that much to you go for it.

I doubt you'll be dissatisfied with your X800XT, if you can overlook the image degradation caused by the 9600 cheater drivers you'll have no option to disable.

If you have the eagle eyes to notice something like that in game, I commend you.

 

[nRollo]

I'm not condemning anyone. But I don't see the sense in paying $100 more for what has been shown, ultimately, to be a slower card. If the feature set is worth that much to you go for it.

I don't know that the 6800U has been shown to the slower card. It's hard to decide in light of ATIs urging reviewers to make unfair comparisons.
As the X800XT cannot do true trilinear filtering, we can't compare that at all.
Which of the reviews left on the brilinear for both cards?
Do people spending $500 on a video card want brilinear? I'm personally thankful nVidia gives you the option to use true trilinear.

In any case, I've thought about my previous response about being able to "afford" a 6800U and apologize for it. If you have the money for a X800XT, you can obviously afford a 6800U as well.

I should have said,"A person buying a preorder X800XT can't really comment about 6800Us not being "affordable", X800XTs aren't cheap either. If you have $500, you have $600."

If you have the eagle eyes to notice something like that in game, I commend you.

If Cainam says he can see it, I don't know why you or I couldn't.
In any case, what ATI is doing is evil. They should give you the option to run true trilinear, especially you, a guy paying $500 for their card. If they want to force it on POS 9600s that cost about as much as a decent meal, that's one thing, but it's crap to stuff it down your throat on their top of the line card.
If it was good, they'd have offered it on 9700/9800s to help them beat 5900s.
If it was good, they wouldn't have hid it.
If it was good, they wouldn't have tried to keep hiding it in their chat.
Most of all, you'd think they would be the FIRST ones to offer either as much as they flamed nVidia for not offering the choice.

 

[Pete]

Rollo, I'm racking my brain for a similar saying about misunderstanding, but nothing comes to mind. :laugh:

I was saying sandorski was being unreasonable and our resident maniaC was in the right, as Cainam has a X800P and sandi is just going by static screenshots of a card he doesn't have. Cainam seems to be a honest fellow with personal experience with quite a few high-end cards, so why should sandi doubt him when he says his X800P shows noticable mipmap bands and moire?

I'd probably agree with much of your list of grievances, Rollo, if I felt like reading a small treatise on the weekend. Nice to know you consider me normally wise, though I don't deserve it.

On an unrelated note, it's interesting how many web stores are offering X800XT(preorder)s for *under* MSRP. I'm not sure how to interpret this, particularly since so many web stores offer the X800P *above* MSRP. Is there a greater supply of X800XTs than we thought, or are X800XTs costing the OEMs less to make/buy, or is this just a continuation of the pattern of ATi's high end being available at a discount at release?

 

[oldfart]

AFAIK, adaptive Trilinear is not supported in the 9700/9800 hardware. The feature was introduced in the RV350 .13u core which came out after the .15u core of the R350. It was carried over to the X800. It is not possible to enable it on hardware that doesn't support it.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: oldfart
AFAIK, adaptive Trilinear is not supported in the 9700/9800 hardware. The feature was introduced in the RV350 .13u core which came out after the .15u core of the R350. It was carried over to the X800. It is not possible to enable it on hardware that doesn't support it.

Interesting. I wasn't aware the 9600s sported any different hardware features than the 9700/9800s. Could you please supply a link to this?

 

[oldfart]

Id have to dig. Its been posted in this forum several times though.

 

[OfficerDoofey]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM


i did a 15-20 sec movie capture in fraps which shows this. it doesn't stand out quite like it does in the game as the image is sized down, however you can definately see what i'm talking about. unfortunately, the .avi is 75mb (zipped - over 100min uncompressed), and dubbing to divx blends the texture in such a way it's useless to use as an example..

edit: i did put up a sshot where you can see the line where the texture detail changes. again, in a still shot, it's not easily noticed, but obvious when you're moving as the line moves directly in front of you (there's actually 3 lines @ 4xaa/16xaf). it's a 2.8mb bmp, but if you have broadband you can view it here.

Hey great shot Cainam.. i can see exactly what you are talking about... i am going to be majorly pissed off if i see stuff like that when (if) i finally get my new card... lets hope they allow us to go full tri-linear if we want... that will fix the prob right? (even though there may be some slower fps...?)

 

[GeneralGrievous]

On an unrelated note, it's interesting how many web stores are offering X800XT(preorder)s for *under* MSRP. I'm not sure how to interpret this, particularly since so many web stores offer the X800P *above* MSRP. Is there a greater supply of X800XTs than we thought, or are X800XTs costing the OEMs less to make/buy, or is this just a continuation of the pattern of ATi's high end being available at a discount at release?

I can't see XTs being cheaper to make. It's more likely they cost about the same.

 

[OfficerDoofey]

Originally posted by: SP33Demon
Just buy ATI and shut up already... you don't even notice this sht in the middle of a game.

HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

did i mention that comment made me laugh lots.... lol

 

[CaiNaM]

you know.. the fact that it does indeed affect IQ is not nearly as big of a deal to me as the obvious fact ati deliberately and calculatingly mislead the public, and the fanboys who defend it.

it was an underhanded thing to do. ati came right out and told review sites that they must disable trilinear opt. on nv cards to "fairly" compare the two (just read the whitepaper). for what purpose? to give their products an unfair advantage when comparing it to their competition. to deny that or buy into the PR explanation (coverup) is laughable.

now, it doesn't surprise me at all, as i was never one to buy into "ati is a more honest company cause they haven't cheated (tho imo it was only they handn't been caught, heh) as much as nvidia" fanboy fight song.

neither nvidia or ati is above reproach, and each will take an advantage, fair or not, if they think they can get away with it.

the degredation in quality is not extreme (tho in most cases "cheats" aren't overly obvious anyway, are they?) and in some instances it doesn't make much, if any difference - but it's there, and it's easily more noticeable in some cases more than others, and it's only purpose is to inflate it's benchmark scores - using "brilinear" or "trylinear" does not make enough difference to make an unplayable game playable.

at any rate, my only concern is that they allow this so-called "optimization" to be enabled or disabled, allowing reviewers to compare under equitable conditions, and allowing users to benefit from the full capablity of their $400 video cards. i like my x800pro. it's a damn nice card and it's plenty fast that i shouldn't have to have this optimization on - i feel i should have the choice to enable it in games it doesn't noticeably affect the image quality, and disable it in the games where it is noticeable or where the performance gained from it is insignificant.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

With all this negative remarks being thrown around, I'd be surprised if we don't see full trilinear become an option with the catalyst 4.6s. The optomization itself seems to be a good thing, one that can be useful a couple of years down the road when these cards are slow.

Worst case scenario: If they don't give the option of full trilinear I can live with it after getting the card at this price.

 

[BFG10K]

It looks like you're trying to play the same "adaptive algorhyhm" spin games that ATI plays lately BFG.

For all accounts ATi's algorithm is adaptive because it uses intelligence. True brilinear (at least by the initial definition) just reduces texture filtering based on texture stage.

How is ATIs "adaptive" anisotropic and trilinear filtering, which the user can't disable and ATI never would have told you about, somehow OK when you used to flame nVidia to Hell and back for this sort of thing?

I never flamed nVidia for adaptive AF and in fact I praised them for finally following ATi's lead. The problem I had was with their brilinear which showed visible IQ reduction even in still shots. Even worse, initial versions only activated when they detected the likes of "UT2003.exe".

I seem to remember you saying you had to have the 9700Pro because it gave you the option of true trilinear?

I picked up the 9700 Pro because it was 2-3 times faster than my old Ti4600 and also because it offered 16xAF for a near zero performance hit, something nVidia couldn't do. Truth be told I personally don't care that much about trilinear because I always use full strength bilinear AF. The IQ is basically the same but it's faster.

Are you about to buy a 6800U for the same reason?

The 6800U is a potential option because it allows the same kind of AF and also I like nVidia's control panel much more than ATi's at the moment. The only thing that concerns me about the 6800U is the slow shader + AF performance.

I'm waiting for new drivers from ATi (to see how their new control panel works) and nVidia (to see if the performance improves) before making a final decision.

Interesting. I wasn't aware the 9600s sported any different hardware features than the 9700/9800s

Yes the feature was added to the RV350 core and later. That means R350 cards (9800XT) and earlier don't have it.

 

[nRollo]

Yes the feature was added to the RV350 core and later. That means R350 cards (9800XT) and earlier don't have it.

Do you have some links to reputable sources which say this is a hardware feature the R300 etc don't have? I can't remember seeing anything like this, a link to ATI themselves saying it would be most appreciated.

 

[BFG10K]

It was listed in all of the initial threads that analyzed the matter (B3D, Rage3D, etc). Also I think the discussion with the ATi reps mentions it too.

 

[Shamrock]

here some actual avi files you can download, from a guy named tEd. He also knows how to disable try-linear, but wont tell how.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13037&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

page 2, first post. Now B3d are "seeing" the light that yes ATI is now degrading IQ. Even some of the veterans over there are saying it's bad.

To BFG:

For all accounts ATi's algorithm is adaptive because it uses intelligence. True brilinear (at least by the initial definition) just reduces texture filtering based on texture stage.

If it has intelligence, what is it's IQ (pun!) Get it, IQ, Intelligence Quotient? lil joke here! In all honesty, no it doest use intelligence, computers are not Intelligent and actually have an IQ of 0. It does do preset algorithms that are detected, then applied. the drivers are not "smart"

 

[jasonja]

Look everyone... a dead horse.. lets beat it!

 

[Shamrock]

sucks doesnt it? NV fans heard it for 18 months!

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Pete
Rollo, I'm racking my brain for a similar saying about misunderstanding, but nothing comes to mind. :laugh:

I was saying sandorski was being unreasonable and our resident maniaC was in the right, as Cainam has a X800P and sandi is just going by static screenshots of a card he doesn't have. Cainam seems to be a honest fellow with personal experience with quite a few high-end cards, so why should sandi doubt him when he says his X800P shows noticable mipmap bands and moire?

I'd probably agree with much of your list of grievances, Rollo, if I felt like reading a small treatise on the weekend. Nice to know you consider me normally wise, though I don't deserve it.

On an unrelated note, it's interesting how many web stores are offering X800XT(preorder)s for *under* MSRP. I'm not sure how to interpret this, particularly since so many web stores offer the X800P *above* MSRP. Is there a greater supply of X800XTs than we thought, or are X800XTs costing the OEMs less to make/buy, or is this just a continuation of the pattern of ATi's high end being available at a discount at release?

It's not an issue of whether he is honest or not. It's all too common for people to attribute one thing as the reason for an issue they may be experiencing. I know I have done it and many threads posted regularly place blame on certain things incorrectly all the time. I'm sorry I am not as accepting of it as others, but as I said ad nauseum already, someone needs to Prove it.