3D Performance with DOOM 3: Part 1 High-End Cards

AF image quality

With the recent ATI trilinear filtering optimizations fiasco of a few months ago, we felt it was also important to check out the filtering quality of the ATI and NVIDIA cards. We should note that for all of our tests we used the default settings for both cards, “Quality”. In this mode, both ATI and NVIDIA’s trilinear filtering optimizations are enabled, ensuring an equal playing field. As it stands now things aren’t equal in the control panel of both company’s driver however. NVIDIA provides a little more flexibility than ATI, as you can turn off all filtering optimizations in the control panel. ATI on the other hand doesn’t provide this capability.

A year ago the gaming community called on NVIDIA to provide the capability to turn off their brilinear filtering in GeForce FX, it’s now time for ATI to do the same in their control panel. If there’s one thing we’ve noticed in the past 12 months, gamers don’t like hardware vendors forcing IQ on their users, which is why ATI needs to provide a way to disable their filtering optimizations in the control panel. Fortunately ATI’s optimizations look pretty good (which is why the outcry hasn’t been as large as NVIDIA’s brilinear), as you can see here (all shots taken with beta CATALYST 4.9 driver):

X800 PRO 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 8xAF

X800 PRO 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 8xAF

X800 PRO 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 8xAF

Notice in the colored mipmap transitions how smoothly the X800 card blends from one level to the next. With DOOM 3’s dark levels, a lot has been made about how AA isn’t necessary for enjoyable eye candy. We also feel that the same applies to 8xAF, which is the default setting in DOOM 3’s high quality and ultra quality modes. If you need the extra performance, you can turn it down to 4xAF (with the image_anisotropy setting) with little or no discernible difference, but you won’t want to turn it off completely:

X800 PRO 4xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 4xAF

X800 PRO 4xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 4xAF

X800 PRO 4xAF w/colored mipmaps

X800 PRO 4xAF

X800 PRO AF disabled

NVIDIA’s optimizations for GeForce 6800 also look good:

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF w/colored mipmaps

GeForce 6800 Ultra 8xAF

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 card owners may also want to consider dropping down to 4xAF if they find their current DOOM 3 performance unacceptable, or would like to run at a higher screen resolution, but 8xAF causes too much of a performance hit: