Image Quality Analysis Fall 2003: A Glance Through the Looking Glass
by Derek Wilson on December 10, 2003 11:14 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Unreal Tournament 2003
ATI (Click to enlarge.)
NVIDIA (Click to enlarge.)
These images are very similar. Even if we were to look at a different image and see some variation, there isn't a perceptible difference in the way each card renders this scene.
ATI 4xAA/8xAF (Click to enlarge.)
NVIDIA 4xAA/8xAF (Click to enlarge.)
Here, we have an 800% zoomed image in order to take a look at antialiasing. As we can see, both cards do a pretty good job of eliminating any jagged edges in this example, but we aren't looking at near horizontal or near vertical lines (which would look better with ATI's rotated grid antialiasing).
At NVIDIA's Editor's Day this year, it was pointed out that under certain conditions, ATI cards will not render detail textures on objects very close to the viewer, while NVIDIA cards would. This issue has been clarified for us by EPIC. The problem occurs when the LOD setting in UT2K3 is above 0.5, which affects ATI's mipmapping algorithm differently than NVIDIA's (ATI cards never rendered the highest detail mipmap under these conditions). With the LOD set below 0.5, there is no problem with ATI rendering detail textures.
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retrospooty - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
I have been visiting Anandtech for well over 4 years , and I have often exclaimed how thorough, fair, and unbiased this site is to others...This is the first article I have ever read here that I think is complete poop. I cannot beleive that in any fair IQ test Nvidia came anywhere close to ATI. Either the author is not being honest, or is color blind. Anyone with eyeballls can compare the two and see that ATI is much sharper, and vibrant especially with AA... Nvidia is WAY blurry.
I am very VERY dissapointed in this. :(
TheGoldenMenkey - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Excellent article. I would much rather be taught why things are different than be showed some differences in rendering and then have someone declare which one is cheating. Thanks for teaching us enough to let us come to our own conclusions. Keep up the good work AT.tazdevl - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Better look @ that... then we might have something to discusshttp://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1931...
dvinnen - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
Artical seemed fair and unbias to me. Your AA and AF question is odvious. Look at the URL of the png file. It clearly states what is on.It seems they have cleaned up there DX9 proformance, but they still treat synthitic benchmarks badly. Most recintly the 3DMark03 patch a month ago and how they handeled the media (PR on one side of the pond said one thing, on the other saide, they said another)
tazdevl - Thursday, December 11, 2003 - link
So Derek to you own stock in nVIDIA? Did Brian Burke write this for you?Were AA and Aniso used in all tests or a few? Which ones? What modes are we comparing against which benchmarks?
Ever thought that BOTH nVIDIA and ATI can fix the outstanding instead of just nVIDIA?
I swear, every since Anand got caught up in the whole NV30 fiasco, the site's credibility is worth absolutely squat when it comes to nVIDIA.
I'm not saying ATI is without faults, but let's try to appear unbiased at a minimum in the article.