NVIDIA Puts Its (New) Cards on the Table

Features
By published

Anisotropic Filtering

We'll begin with the results from D3DAFTester v13a (by Demirug).

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8x Aniso by Application - Texture Stage 0
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 UltraATI Radeon 9800 XT
8x Aniso by Application - Texture Stage 1
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 UltraATI Radeon 9800 XT
8x Aniso by Control Panel - Texture Stage 0
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 UltraATI Radeon 9800 XT
8x Aniso by Control Panel - Texture Stage 1
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 UltraATI Radeon 9800 XT

When anisotropic filtering is selected through the applications, there is no discernible difference between the texture stages 0 and 1 on both cards. However, when filtering is forced through the driver menus, there are obvious differences. Although the NVIDIA drivers go a step back in Aniso levels, the driver continues to use a trilinear filter. ATi, on the other hand, switches to full bilinear only filtering when texture stage 1 is selected.