NVIDIA Puts Its (New) Cards on the Table

Image Quality

To get a better impression of the image quality of these new drivers, we conducted extensive quality tests with FSAA and anisotropic filtering. Additionally we took a close look at IQ in the games "Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness" and "Halo - Combat Evolved". All screenshots were taken with NVIDIA's new driver v52.16 and ATi's Catalyst v3.8. The anisotropic filtering quality was always set to maximum in the drivers.

FSAA (Full Scene Anti-Aliasing)

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The image below shows the barrels of a defensive turret in AquaMark 3 at 200% magnification. ATi's edge smoothing produces visibly smoother output.

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ATi once again does a better job of smoothing the edges of the almost vertical antennas seen in this screenshot. On the other objects, the differences are minimal, though.

ATi comes out looking better in the FSAA test. Thanks to the rotated grid technique, ATi's drivers can smooth object edges that are almost horizontal or vertical better than NVIDIA's. At other angles, the differences are much smaller.