Image quality

With NVIDIA releasing a new graphics driver last week, it’s important that we take a look at the WinFast A400 Ultra TDH’s image quality. Therefore we booted up 3DMark 03 to first evaluate AA image quality in comparison to ATI’s X800 XT Platinum Edition with CATALYST 4.7:

WinFast A400 Ultra TDH

WinFast A400 Ultra TDH 2xAA

WinFast A400 Ultra TDH 4xAA

X800 XT PE AA disabled

X800 XT PE 2xAA

X800 XT PE 4xAA

Notes

With NVIDIA’s new rotated-grid sampling pattern, the battle for AA quality has never been closer, and thus more subjective. We’ve found that superiority can depend on where you look, our test sample with 3DMark is a perfect example of this:

GeForce 6800 Ultra 4xAA




RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition 4xAA


Looking at the area between the two engines, the jaggies on the leading edge of the B-17’s wing are less pronounced on the GeForce 6800 Ultra card than they are on the X800 XT. But, if you change your point of reference to the trailing B-17’s tail, the ATI card looks a little better:



GeForce 6800 Ultra 4xAA




RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition 4xAA

Anisotropic filtering

Judging AF quality once mipmaps are disabled is just as difficult.

WinFast A400 Ultra TDH AF disabled

WinFast A400 Ultra TDH 8xAF

X800 XT PE AF off

X800 XT PE 8xAA

Quite frankly, both cards are delivering excellent image quality, and while there has been lots of debate concerning the filtering optimizations both ATI and NVIDIA are employing in their drivers, we feel the bigger issue now is squashing IQ bugs in games. The texturing problems X800 users have had with the initial Far Cry 1.2 patch is well documented, but these little anomalies are present in dozens of games with both ATI and NVIDIA hardware. Fixing these bugs is in our opinion, the greatest IQ issue that exists between today’s high-end cards.