Nvidia Filtering Techniques
Posted by: [PM] on: 11/02/2003 01:05 PM [ Print | 25 comment(s) ] · 1909 views
In the meantime the expression "brilinear" has been established for Nvidia's towards bilinear filtering shifted pseudo-trilinear filtering. Although this term is semantically nonsense, 3DCenter use it in this column.
There is an alarming development for a while: Newer Cards and/or newer drivers lower the image quality without being asked to do so. On a GeForce4Ti 4200 a better texture image quality (via anisotropic filtering) can be produced with current drivers (compared to a GeForceFX 5900 Ultra). On the other side the following is correct: The 4x-FSAA-Quality of the GeForce256 is by default better as with GeForce3 (and also as with GeForce 5900 Ultra). Because here stands 4x ordered grid supersampling vs. 4x ordered grid multisampling. But here it's not called "a step back".
View: Will "brilinear" filtering persist?
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MagamiAKO Unregistered |
#49138 Posted on: 11/02/2003 04:41 PM
man will they ever give up? One thing I noticed at Quakecon. There are 2 markets of gamers, and there's relatively nobody inbetween. You have your self-proclaimed 'hardcore' gamers that compete in tournaments. Specifically what they do in Quake 3 Arena is unbelievable, they turn off the weapons, rail trails, set fullbright, set the FOV to 120. These 'hardcore' gamers sacrifice a LOT of noticeable quality for speed. Then you have the other market, and this is your home user dumb market, the "What the hell are you talking about?" market, who doesn't even understand half of the options available on ANY video card. These are the general markets, and all of this hardware satisfies both markets. You can't really get TOO picky. Fact of the matter is, they didn't mention AT ALL that "ATI also 'optimizes' anisotropic filtering". |
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MagamiAKO Unregistered |
#49139 Posted on: 11/02/2003 04:49 PM
I can notice many instances where developers take such shortcuts but try to achieve a higher than before level of image quality. Half-Life 2's shadows. Sure, they look nice, but they're not *REAL* shadows. My god, let's start saying how much Valve sucks. In fact, let's say how bump mapping is a completely shitty feature because it's "pseudo detail". Give it a break, christ. You're NOT going to get "perfect quality" on any hardware. Some may do things slightly better than others, and so forth, but you're just not going to see 100% perfection because IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE. There is one clear difference between Hollywood rendering farms and desktop video cards, and that's the fact that there is an acceptable level of image quality that is FAR lower than that of Hollywood machines. Can't you people be happy? Just go out and buy a god damn wildcat if you want "PERFECT" image quality. Also, make sure to buy that $1500-$2000 LCD monitor to see that perfection as well. |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49140 Posted on: 11/02/2003 04:53 PM
When will you give up?? if you pay hundreds of $ or £ for a card you expect it to be fast and have as good IQ as the card its replacing. Not everyone is a dumb noob or a hardcore gamer, there a a lot of stages in between. It seems like any time someone moans about IQ you say it doesnt matter. You need to wake up and realise it does matter. Some of us have mved on from GF4s, not because they cant play the games, but because we like our games to be fast and look good. By the way a lot of hardcore gamers turn off the extras not to boost speed ( 200 or 300 FPS makes no difference in quake3 ) they turn it off to make the game easier to play, less 'clutter'. |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49141 Posted on: 11/02/2003 04:59 PM
I agree that what matters is the final output rather than how it gets there, but the fact remains that some areas of the image are being degraded to 'make way' for flashier shader effects. The result may still look good but people are noticing... |
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Mmm_Beefy Unregistered Posts: 43 Joined: 2002-12-17 |
#49142 Posted on: 11/02/2003 05:46 PM
so let me see if i understand you right... because the average joe pc user doesnt know their getting cheated/inferior products... Myself, and others that do know (either by taking time out and reading up ourselves, or working in the industry), should allow ourselves to get ripped off/feel cheated because of them? and as for the hardcore gamers.. they cut the stuff out to see you better (like neo said.. clutter) NOT for speed. i'm for what works, i went from Diamond, to S3 Virge, to matrox, to 3dfx, to nvidia, and now i'll soon go to ati. |
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hinkle Unregistered |
#49143 Posted on: 11/02/2003 07:02 PM
I can't agree more. Image quality is just more than a super l33t anti-aliasing mode or trilinear, alpha-blended and L-Buffer corrected anistropic filtering! (Just inventing things here) In fact last month a on LAN I got a real good laugh because there was a guy who tried to convince me that he had better IQ on his Radeon than on my GeForce. The thing to know here is that he used a cheap noname 17'' monitor and I got a Eizo 21'' monitor... whatever 
And even if he had the same monitor as myself, there still wouldn't be any dramatic difference between both our cards unless one would compare highly zoomed still screenshots with some mathematical photoshop effect applied on it to make the differences more noticeables. Stop comparing and restart gaming... like in the old days |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49144 Posted on: 11/02/2003 07:16 PM
You agree.. thats a surprise... Your right in that it is about gaming in the end for most. However i have a business to run and my customer ask for certain machines when they return. They dont know what card is in the machine. They all ask for radeon powered computers.. Without knowing it. Some get quite distressed when they find out. I find that very interesting. I know for a fact that its influenced a number of people into getting R3x0 powered cards for their own PC. |
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El_Coyote Unregistered Posts: 503 Joined: 2002-12-18 |
#49145 Posted on: 11/02/2003 09:50 PM
yu might be gullible enough to accept being ripped off, but I for sure am not, so quit your trolling. |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49146 Posted on: 11/02/2003 10:13 PM
Why are they defending it ? brand loyalty is one thing and is understandable on something like a car, but a graphics card is something else entirely and such loyalty is very sad. Right now i like ATI but if the new XGI boards are better ill dump ATI in a heart beat. Whether you can see it or not (thats debatable) when i pay 500 whatevers for a card i expect trilinier filtering. Nvidia arent offering it right now so they are off the list.. end of story. Some people need to grow up and change loyalties.. not to ATI but to themselves. |
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hinkle Unregistered |
#49147 Posted on: 11/02/2003 10:32 PM
You pay 500 bucks for trilinear filtering... fine with me but I pay 500 bucks for things which are important to me and these are: * fast fps and mature driver support without the need to wait for the next driver release to fix issue with new games * driver features which I in fact can use like nview's multiple monitor support and not some strange post-processing game effects to make games look like ASCII text or black and white movies. * stable linux driver support (even if some gamers don't care about linux but I do) * the best driver support for professional applications like 3ds max (in fact this the most important point to me) It's not just AF and AA which makes a product, there's much more to it. You've got your reason to buy the brand of your choice and I've got mine. Let's leave there. But this doesn't make a stupid fanboy because I don't care if ATI will be number 1 for the next ten years. If ATI cannot fullfill my needs, I won't buy ATI products... It's that easy. On the other side I will have no problems switching over to ATI when the time comes. I'm not bound to any company because I just happen to buy products from them. |
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BetrayerX Unregistered |
#49148 Posted on: 11/02/2003 10:47 PM
They CHOOSE to sacrifice IQ....their election....not NVidias, not ATI's. Is not the same. Or are you suggesting these companies should sell a Frag-fest Edition of these video cards where everything come with poor IQ? |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49149 Posted on: 11/02/2003 10:58 PM
Ok fine thats cool if you need linux and pro app support, but your first point is wrong.. Radeon drivers are fine and faster. I use multi monitors on my raddy perfectly well thanks. Smartshaders will be important soon enough.. just wait. I agree that AA and AF arent everything, but how about real DX9 support ? All three are pretty darn fundamental now, but nvidia offers little in all of them. All of your wants dont take away from the fact that your defending something for which there is no reasonable defence. Point out the FXs strengths by all means, but dont make excuses for its shortcomings.. |
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recidivist Unregistered |
#49150 Posted on: 11/03/2003 02:05 AM
What is it with these recidivist nvidiot apologists...? Oh, I get it, it's the ordered grid sampled AA modes, or perhaps the 1st order approximations to filtering to Cinematic Computing. Naah, it must be the prodigious IQ & performance enhancements from the 52.xx farceware drivers. The new cratpimizer does a wonderous job of scheduling & craptimizing for mixed mode & _pp hint... Hmm, I wonder why "mixed mode" is a euphemism for truncation to fx12 PS1.1 level shaders...? Oh, I get it, we don't actually have enough register space to use a useful number of real-time shaders - even in _pp mode... Seriously, with all of nvidia's discgraceful antics towards it's FX customers (yes, all 3 of you...), you'd think that even affiliate sites would think it a disservice to their readership to continue pushing the nvidiot barrow... Let's stick our heads in the sand & pretend our lord of graphics isn't doing this to us. Pathetic... |
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Boo-Boo Unregistered |
#49151 Posted on: 11/03/2003 02:15 AM
"fast fps and mature driver support without the need to wait for the next driver release to fix issue with new games" do u EVER read the PDF file that accompanies nVidia driver releases? well judging from your statement it's clear to me that u didn't |
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recidivist Unregistered |
#49152 Posted on: 11/03/2003 03:15 AM
I've just read the article & there's nothing that we didn't already know in it. There are one or two inccuracies. They don't understand the significance of "brilinear" filtering for the FX architecture... The reason is that the FX series use the texture engine for the fragment pipeline. Thus if you can offload work from the filtering stage you can unload the already weak PS2.0 pipeline... The R3x0 engine is different as tex & pixel engines can operate independently. Peculiarly perhaps, I don't see pseudo-trilinear as a bad optimization at all - if the option for full trilinear was also allowed. |
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hinkle Unregistered |
#49153 Posted on: 11/03/2003 04:50 AM
Well in fact I do and even if the latest 52.16 driver seem to have more problem than previous ones (although I currently am not affected by any of those issues), I can always go back to a older more "stable" driver if I want to and that's currently the big difference to ATI. ATI has not yet produced a driver like nvidia did in their best times although their driver support has increased dramatically since last year... there's no denying but ATI is still leagues away from the quality of previous nvidia drivers. Concerning the "no need to wait for the next driver release to fix issue with new games", Worms 3D seems again to be an example for this. Runs fine on my GeForce but stuttering problems are reported on rage3d.net with Radeons... the next catalyst driver is probably going to fix this. And just to confirm, I'm really not trying to justify the 500$ I spent. I know about shader speed of the FX serie long before any HL2 or TR:AoD benchmark were available. So I get 35Fps instead of 50fps in HL2, I don't care, at least 3dsmax runs at full speed without artifacts. |
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Mmm_Beefy Unregistered Posts: 43 Joined: 2002-12-17 |
#49155 Posted on: 11/03/2003 05:26 AM
erm come again? you missed my point... |
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Esthero Unregistered |
#49157 Posted on: 11/03/2003 12:25 PM
Ok I had enough of NVIDIA trying to cheat, lie and cut on all corners. As a former big NVIDIA fan, I now conclude that they absolutely DO NOT listen to the wishes their customers and generally think we’re stupid. Well in that case, fine with me. I will take my money elsewhere(ATI or XGI). A friend once said NVIDIA is slowly shifting focus to the OEM market/customer. I laughed about it, back then. |
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HaLDoL Unregistered |
#49160 Posted on: 11/03/2003 02:49 PM
Let me say one thing about ATI drivers: The best game this year, Call of Duty, does not work with Bugalyst 3.8. There you have it, a brand new shiny trilinear filtering card, but you cannot play the game of the year. Indeed, very mature drivers .... |
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HaLDoL Unregistered |
#49161 Posted on: 11/03/2003 02:55 PM
Games are not made for strolling around, looking at the beautifulkl rendered (trilinear or not) landscapes. In most games you don't have time for this, so you'll NEVER notice the difference. Many review sites state that the IQ difference between ATI and Nvidia is minimal and only noticable with a magnifying glass. I only can conclude that nvidia did a better IQ job with bilinear filtering than ATI with trilinear filtering. |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49186 Posted on: 11/04/2003 12:03 AM
Yes you can.. i can. |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49187 Posted on: 11/04/2003 12:07 AM
Wow you really are brainwashed... Look ATI now has the best 2D, AA and AF. Not everyone plays fast action games. there are other types you know. Maybe your not clever enough to play them.. thats tyhe way it looks anyway. Do you have both cards ?? i have many examples of both and you can see it a mile away. In the end its hardly the point, you pay best prices you expect best IQ.. with the FX you dont get it. |
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HaLDoL Unregistered |
#49198 Posted on: 11/04/2003 01:05 PM
wow you can see it a mile away, so why can't all those hw review sites? |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49218 Posted on: 11/05/2003 10:24 AM
Linking to Rage3d is pointless. Its full of idiotic nvidia fanboys like you now. I dont know anyone whos having major problems. If the 3.8s dont work for you use the 3.7s . geez... |
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neo-n Unregistered Posts: 1 Joined: 2003-10-28 |
#49219 Posted on: 11/05/2003 10:27 AM
Well duh.... many CAN !! At least the ones that havent got nvidias money in the bank (like toms). |
