Anisotropic Filtering

The NVIDIA 6xxx series uses a different algorithm for Anisotropic Filtering. AF on the 6xxx cards appears to be working fine. There is a clear difference between each setting.

AF Setting Image
(click to enlarge)
Difference Map
(click to enlarge)
No AF -
2X AF
4X AF
8X AF
16X AF

Below, you can see the image quality difference between the image with no AF, the image with 2X AF, and the image with 16X AF.



No AF. Hold your mouse over image to see 2X AF.




2X AF. Hold your mouse over image to see 16X AF.




No AF. Hold your mouse over image ti see 16X AF.


There is a very clear difference here between the various AF levels, unlike on the 5xxx series cards. We have a chart indicating the various frames per second for each AF setting under the GeForce 6800 in 1280x1024 mode.

Linux AF Scaling - GeForce 6800

Performance drops as much as 25% moving from 1X (No) AF to 16X AF. There does not appear to be a definitive sweet spot, since the graph scales very linearly.

Image Quality, AF, Trial 1 Final Thoughts
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  • mave - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    I guess the biggest reason why Linux performance lags behind Windows could be NVidia Linux drivers aren't optimized for doom3 yet. Their version number is 6111, windows drivers 61.77 (used for testing).

    Also Doom 3 binary will propably get performance boost later.

    (Just a guess, just have to wait and see)

    Being Linux gamer always means that you have to have patience:=)
  • jepapac - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    From reading your article, I'm guessing that you ran Doom 3 from within KDE on SUSE. Can you run some Doom 3 benchmarks from a super-lightweight window manager like blackbox or better yet just the failsafe xterm. I'd be interested in how much running a bloated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome slows down the gaming performance.
  • tyski34 - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    Putting the Linux and Windows FPS numbers on the first couple of pages on the same chart would have been very helpful (even more helpful if they were color-coded or something). As it is, it was pretty tough to compare the two.
  • Zebo - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    People still playing this disappointment?
  • KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    Virge?

    http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2241...
    http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2241...

    Like those?

    Kristopher
  • ViRGE - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link

    Since you're comparing Linux and Windows from time to time, wouldn't it be prudent to at least post a couple of Windows numbers, just so we know what the actual difference is?

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