Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Aquamark3 IQ
Aquamark3 is a synthetic benchmark based on a game called Aquanox, and it uses the DX9 API. In Part 1 we included it for completeness, but our main focus this time around is image quality. There have been lots of IQ problems found around the net that have helped earn NVIDIAs 51.xx drivers the title "cheatenators". With the 52.14 drivers we have been using, we didn't notice any image quality issues on a visual inspection, which was a very good sign, Lets take a closer look at frame 4000 to point out problems:
NVIDIA 45.23
Note the ground around the explosion
NVIDIA 52.14
Note the difference between the new and old drivers
ATI Catalyst 3.7
Identical to NVIDIA
As we can see, the lighting problem that was once there no longer exists, and the image is consistent with what it should be. On top of this, the 52.14 drivers give us about a more than 50% performance improvement over the 45.23 drivers. We have to remember that this is a benchmark, and any company that wants to sell anything is going to try to fix benchmark problems first. Of course, that's just anther reason I really don't like synthetic benchmarks: I'd rather have NVIDIA and ATI hard at work on the games I'm playing rather than on something I'll never care about using.
Here we can also see a comparison of the images with the highest quality AA setting in the game and 8xAF:
NVIDIA 45.23
NVIDIA 52.14
ATI Catalyst 3.7
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
How very balanced of you #30.Let us be patient; Anand is asking questions on OUR behalf in order to REVEAL truth.
I'm focused on the questions and the answers. Where is your focus?
AgaBooga - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
#33, that's what came to my mind as soon as I read this article. I think that Anand may have just provided some input, done testing, or just edited it slightly...Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
The IQ shots are not the best I could imagine.Some of them are cropped out so that you can't see a lot of details: UT2003, Aquamark3, Wolfenstein.
Some of them are set up so that you wouldn't get any possible artifacts with texture filtering, because of the high camera angle: Warcraft3, C&C Generals.
The Tomb Raider, Aquamark and Wolf screenshots are also too dark to notice anything. And I don't see any sign of a DX9 shader in either the Halo or the TR shots, so we have no idea of DX9 image quality.
But kudos for all the testing you've done, must have been a lot of hard work.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
#30 ATI has not released performance drivers for a long time now and they already said don't hold your breath on those performance increases coming in the 3.8s either. The main focus since the 3.1s have mainly it seems been bug fixes with slight performance improvements in various games. 3.8 = more features and bug fixes with probably slight performance improvements here and there in specific games.Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Derek probably wrote the whole article while Anand was behind him cracking his whip. So I dunno about this "supposed" two authors!Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Would all the fanboys please take a deep breath or troll elsewhere? I swear to god some of you people will go out of your way to look for bias where there isn't any.I own a 9800 Pro and I for one am glad that it seems like Nvidia has closed the gap considerably, their customers deserve it.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Great review, I love the IQ shots. I too am waiting to see the 9600xt review though.AgaBooga - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
To those of you mentioned Anand a few times, you should also note this was written by two authors. Or atleast worked on together by two authors, so you should try and understand that you may different "types" of responses and analyses (sp?) of similar results if they're done by different people. I think we should wait for the 3.8 Cat. article before we jump to too many conclusions.PKIte - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
This is the way I take screen shots in final fantasy XI benchmark 2.- Use Hypersnap-dx
- Enable directx capture in Hypersnap
- Change Hypersnap “Quick Save” settings to repeat capture every 5 seconds
- Launch Final Fantasy XI benchmark 2 menu
- When you click the “START” button press “Print Screen” once resolution changes.
Wow this is the biggest video card review I have ever read: Awesome!!
Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
>Right now NVIDIA is at a disadvantage; ATI's >hardware is much easier to code for and the >performance on Microsoft's HLSL compiler clearly >favors the R3x0 over the NV3xever heard from the ps2_a compiler target?