Could somebody explain to me how the ATI X1950XTX's image is any better or worse than the nVidia GeForce 8800GTX's image on this page? The article suggests the 8800GTX's image quality is "far superior" - I absolutely do not see that!
[EDIT: Keep in mind I'm talking about the Oblivion images specifically - the ones at the bottom of the page.]
I found it but I don't know if I'm allowed to link to it - it's right on their front page at the moment. They have pictures comparing anisotropic filtering methods. The 8800GTX is a massive improvement here, and I could hardly stand to play a game with it looking like it does on the Radeon. Seriously, when I upgraded to an nVidia GeForce 6600GT from a GeForce4 Ti4200 I was taken aback by the poor quality texture filtering. Why should games look worse with a new card? I almost wanted to put my old card back in, but I'd already given it to my dad...
So yeah, I'm glad nVidia has found it in their hearts to get their crap (back) together with the filtering, as they've had their issues with it as well. I think the reason is because nVidia and ATI were in such competition that they thought they had to make painful optimizations in order to stay ahead, but with this new hardware it's just not necessary - it's fast, and they've got ATI beat for a while!
One is produces a brighter picture....thus the textures are more visbile and it looks cleaner....you have to look at the hill in the background.... I still wouldn't call it a "Far Superior" difference....but it is slightly noticable.
I don't see how that can't simply be indicative of differences in the (in-game) time of day when the screenshots were taken. That's what I thought it was when I saw it, especially because the vegetation/sky didn't look the same either.
I think it would be helpful if the screenshot were taken at a more stable time of day. Now, if you compare the tree in the very right of the pictures, you'll see that more light is shining on it for the 8800GTX. Why would this be? Shouldn't the same amount of light be shining on it regardless of what card is used? Or else how can game developers depend on things to turn out as they want them to turn out? Admittedly having no professional experience in these areas, I still think this points to different-time-of-day. How could there be that much variation otherwise?
And if not, I'd like to know what makes it look different. HDR? It doesn't seem HDR would affect how lighting is applied to that tree, or would it? Is nVidia using some more "accurate" form of lighting..? Couldn't that interfere with some games, if so, as they depend on lighting working a certain way to be experienced as intended?
I just don't think we have enough information to determine if the 8800GTX's image quality is "far superior" or not from that example in the article. What's supposed to be superior? Because if it's the lighting, I just don't buy it.
Also, and this goes along with my post in the feature requests forum, I think the textures for the 8800GTX look "dirtier"! JPEG compression artifacts seem to plague them more, which has nothing to do with the card at all but hinders our ability to judge image quality.
Actually, you can't compare really without renderization. It's not just about the quality of a screenshot, but FPS and how many textures the card can create. Current games and software aren't really developed for DX10 yet. If you look at the card SPECS, you'll see that it has the capability to way outperform current DX9 cards.
Yes, yes, I know. But that doesn't distract me from the fact that "far superior" image quality is touted by THG without this being sufficiently proven, at least in that one example
Hell yea I see a difference, not a big one to justify a new purchase of a GFX card but I see a difference. The 8800GTX seems that the leaves on the trees are much sharper and smoother as well as the weeds, no more jaggies!
I see no jaggies in the X1950XTX image. Are we looking at the same pictures? In fact, the leaves look sharper and cleaner to me in the X1950XTX image due to the artifacts in the compression of the 8800GTX image.
They say that the human eye can't see over 90fps anyway...your eye just isn't that quick. If it was, old tv's would be rendered USELESS, as would film reel movies. When your optic nerves and synapses are fast enough to see individual pictures, you need more pictures or FPS to fill in the gaps, so it appears as motion. Like a flip-book being flipped really slowly. Anyway, my point is that current apps running on a 7900GTX aren't going to look that much different than current aps running on an 8800 because the frame rate is already pretty high. The new cards will allow massive physics calculations, more realistic multi-action. If you move a box across the screen using a 7900GTX card or an 8800 GTX card, they're both going to have high frame rates and look the same. But if you add gravity and about 300,000 boxes in many many colors, the 8800 will be a big big winner, if the 7900 is even capable of rendering that. From my understanding, the new cards are about 3X or so more powerful than today's cards. That's not to say you're going to notice a sudden 3X improvement. But combined with fast quad core systems and plenty of RAM and better hardware utilization...it's really all coming together and I'm sure within the next few years that games like FEAR and Oblivion will look quite dated. Scary.
Sure, but of course in a screenshot FPS really makes no difference, and that's what Image Quality is about (or at least part of it). Also, the 8800GTX is approximately 2x better-performing than the X1950XTX at its best, not 3x. And I could be wrong, but I think 300,000 boxes could be rendered with no problem whatsoever on cards generations old. But more to the point - can anyone prove that there is a significant quality difference between the two images produced by the cards? Because given those two images, I certainly can't.
actually the human eye can see single frame differences out of thousands played. Tests were done on fighter pilots and they successfully identified a single frame shown in a blur of 2000fps or so.
fps is a crazy subject. A lot of people claim the more the merrier. But in reality when you have a super good monitor and can run vsync your frames are significantly crippled. But does the gameplay seem slow? no.
who cares to some SHARPER TREES & Brighter Building when you drive at 320KM/H with a Mercedes MClaren SLR in Need For Speed Carbon ?or When you Dodge the Bullets in F.E.A.R or Quake or Battlefield 2142 ??... and who cares about some Brighter field when you have a Army of 100Units in Dawn Of War Dark Crusade...??
come on Guys... i see no point in image Quality of 8800GTX that makes it better than any X1900 Series cards...
and i`m so dissapointed with 8800GTX Performance compare to a X1950XTX ,there isnt much FPS difference in F.E.A.R...
only fools will buy 8800 series cards in these prices when you can buy a R600 card in a few months...
Just buy what's in your budget, almost any newer card is likely to be an improvement. Most smart people never waste money on brand new hardware tech, as it's not really being utilized by software and is overpriced. You're kind of stupid if you run out and buy the very first of any product of any kind anyway - without a test period to see how well it works on the masses, how can it really be recommended? Look at what happened to the original purchasers of the original Xbox... I'm glad I waited, mine still works!
What I was calling stupid was paying premium prices for things...not all of us scream like a little school girl and demand candy or Prada. :-) Some of us WORK for a living, others of us (like you) seem to take life for granted. I can only hope that world war 3 comes sooner than later, and that people wisen up and quit allowing the few rich people in the world to set all the rules. If you don't know what happened with early Xbox's then you probably don't know about the recent exploding laptop batteries...there's just something to be said for not buying the latest and greatest technology. Same goes for medicines. You know that there are vaccines that actually caused people to contract the virus they were trying to be protected from? They DIED! I rest my case. At least until some other idiot opens his mouth. (fingers)
To tell you the truth, i can barely see a difference between the two images, and frankly, i prefer ATI's output a little better due to the "warmer" colours.
if ppl want the best stuff they have 2 pay for it, nothing wrong with that and if u dont want to pay for it just dont - but dont tell ppl what 2 do with there money
well good for you and wauw looks like u already know, your one smart guy
but i want a education thats why i go 2 school and ur probably older than me so i cant see why ur being such a smartass
and yes i do know about sony and as i said i dont care about consoles period.
so u think buying new hardware is the same as medicine? lol.
This is at least the 2nd thread compaining about how "not great" the 8800 is. Maybe if you actually bought the card it would be easier for you to notice the differences rather than going by a review and benchmarks. At least the AMD fanboys didn't create threads stating how "not great" the Core2Duo is compared to older Athlons. You're killing me with this, if you don't think the 8800 is worth having, then don't buy it! Sheesh...
I'm glad I waited, mine still works!