Image Quality

Before we get to the benchmark results, we wanted to take a quick look at the image quality of ATI and NVIDIA’s latest mainstream offerings. Since they’re based on the same underlying technologies as those found in the high-end cards (including a new rotated-grid AA sample pattern for the GeForce 6600 GT/GeForce 6800), the results we saw last week should hold true here as well, but we wanted to double check anyway.

Also, since the cards we’re testing today don’t boast the robust memory subsystem as the high-end cards, we included 2xAA image quality results. This is the AA setting gamers with these cards will most likely play at, as 2xAA delivers good IQ without sacrificing too much performance. Let’s start with AA turned off first:

RADEON X800 0xAA

GeForce 6800 0xAA

Now 2xAA:

RADEON X800 2xAA

GeForce 6800 2xAA

While both manufacturers results look good, we’ve still got to give the nod to ATI’s 2xAA mode. The best areas to look at again are the antenna on the right of the screen and the top of the bunker in front of you:



RADEON X800 2xAA




GeForce 6800 2xAA




RADEON X800 2xAA




GeForce 6800 2xAA


4xAA:

Things tighten up under 4xAA mode:

RADEON X800 4xAA

GeForce 6800 4xAA

Looking at the antenna though, the X800 card does a slightly better job at removing the jaggies:



RADEON X800 4xAA




GeForce 6800 4xAA



The difference isn’t as clear-cut though when you focus on the top of the bunker:



RADEON X800 4xAA




GeForce 6800 4xAA

Anisotropic filtering

Again, AF is probably the most subjective topic when it comes to image quality – everyone seems to have a different opinion of what looks best. Therefore we’ll provide the images so you can decide:

RADEON X800 AF disabled

GeForce 6800 AF disabled

RADEON X800 8xAF

GeForce 6800 8xAF