Image quality

While we couldn’t take 100% reproducible screens with the VST, that was no problem in CS: Source. First we’ll take a look at AA quality with ATI’s X800 XT Platinum Edition:

X800 XT PE AA disabled

X800 XT PE 4xAA

GeForce 6800 Ultra:

GeForce 6800 Ultra AA disabled

GeForce 6800 Ultra 4xAA

Notes

We’ve said this a few times before, and today we’ll say it again: NVIDIA has really raised the bar in their AA quality with the GeForce 6800 series. Looking at both vendors 4xAA mode, it’s difficult to give the edge to one or the other. Staircases are particularly notorious for their jaggies, with their long, flat lines and sharp edges, but both cards did a magnificent job of removing them. ATI still provides more modes, and an exotic, temporal AA feature, but judging purely from a quality standpoint, it’s hard to pick a winner here.

Anisotropic filtering

Filtering was one of those areas where card manufacturers used to cut corners in order to increase their performance, but with today’s latest cards that’s not as often the case. Sure, both ATI and NVIDIA’s latest drivers contain optimizations, but this isn’t a bad thing if done properly.

Like AA, we’ve had a more difficult time spotting differences between both card’s filtering quality – they’re both that good. At some angles X800 cards still have some problems, but we’ve found that these cases rarely crop up during gaming. The biggest issue instead that we’ve seen has been squashing driver bugs. This can vary from the obvious, such as the examples we provided with X800 cards in Far Cry 1.2, or the more subtle, like the shadow issues we showed with GeForce cards in our second Far Cry performance article.

Regardless, lets look at AF, starting first with X800 XT PE:

ATI AF off

X800 XT PE 8xAF

ATI X800 XT PE 16xAF

And now the GeForce 6800 Ultra card

GeForce 6800 Ultra AF disabled

6800 Ultra 8xAF

6800 Ultra 16xAF

Notes

Even when zoomed, textures along the walls and floors look good on both GeForce 6800 and X800 hardware. We’ve provided PNGs so you can look for yourself.

HDR lighting

One other area we wanted to briefly explore was high dynamic range lighting in CS: Source. Since ATI Shader Day we’ve been lusting to see it in action, and with the release of CS: Source beta it’s finally here! Feast your eyes on these screenshots fellow gamers:

X800 XT HDR lighting

The sun on that ATI card is burning my eyes!

Last X800 XT HDR shot in dust

You really need sunglasses for this NVIDIA shot

GeForce 6800 Ultra HDR

Another 6800 Ultra dust HDR shot