Nvidia 3D Vision Vs. AMD HD3D: 18 Games, Evaluated

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It’s about time that someone performed a meaningful comparison of 3D-enabled games using Nvidia’s 3D Vision and AMD’s HD3D. We put 18 different titles under the microscope to determine which technology gives you the most playability, most often.

World Of Warcraft

AMD HD3D and the TriDef Ignition Driver:

The TriDef driver works flawlessly in Virtual 3D mode. The cross-view screenshot does not appear to capture the 3D effect, but you can see that the water shows no anomalies at the highest detail setting.

This popular MMO looks very good using TriDef's default mode, except for some artifacts on reflective water. This can be eliminated by enabling the TriDef Virtual 3D mode, resulting in very good 3D output.

Nvidia 3D Vision:

Excellent 3D result with slight setting reduction

3D Vision works great in World of Warcraft, but the water detail muct be set to the minimum level to avoid artifacts. Compare the water to the TriDef screenshot above.

While the 3D Vision result is almost perfect, there are notable artifacts in reflective water, which are quite a bit more distracting that the ones we experienced using the TriDef driver. Happily, this problem can be eliminated by lowering water detail. Like Blizzard’s StarCraft II, World of Warcraft also supports 3D Vision convergence and separation controls in the game options.

Don Woligroski
Contributor

Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.