Nvida "over optimizing"?
 

[quote:63486]Germans claim Nvidia caught over optimising - [Computer Hardware]
Submitted by Forcefire on 8/30/2005 8:53:05 AM 22 Comments


WE CALL IT optimisation these days, but what do you call it when a firm over optimises? We used to call it something different in the days of the NV30, when Nvidia had to do something to make its chip work better and do better in benchmarks but to our surprise it seems to have done it again. The chaps from 3D Center, a very talented in-depth site, spotted and tested and proved that Nvidia is using a lower anisotropic filtering quality than any other card available.

Those guys noticed a texture shimmering problem when you are using normal driver settings. This was the case with NV40 cards but you could resolve this flickering by using high quality driver settings. This won't work on G70 based cards, so the guys well known for its thorough benchmarks went digging a little deeper into the chip.

It turns out that Nvidia is not doing anisotropic filtering the way it should and that the picture quality is the one to suffer. You will get the shimmering effect on your textures whenever you are using Geforce 7800GTX cards but you won't see this using Radeon cards.

The guys claimed that all NV40 and G70 cards will suffer from the same flickering problem and that these cards have "by far worse AF quality". They also add that Nvidia got the flickering because it was using general under sampling and as a result is getting the flickers. It's interesting to note that older Geforce 5800 Ultra won't suffer from this, just the new cards that 6800 or 7800 based.

Another German web site Computerbase , went a step further. It made a custom driver by changing the inf, where the driver could not recognise 7800GTX and use its optimisations. The card was listed as unknown but was working just fine. But when the guys went testing they noticed a massive performance drop when using those drivers, close to 30 percent and related it to anisotropic filtering. Nvidia has a lot to explain.

3DCenter, for the original article, is here in English while the Computerbase German article is here. We will ask Nvidia what is going on but we think there's something up. At lease the guys proved it isn’t a hardware bug - it's a driver problem only but performance drops dramatically as soon as you resolve it.

Source: theinquirer [/quote:63486]

Sources are naturally sketchy, anyone have any other info from some place respected. Im off to work now or id look....

Disscuss.

Nvdiowned.

im buying ati.

i remember when this happened before, one of the few reasons ill never go back to nvidia. ati > nvidia

LOL, ATi did it as well with the 8500 (9100 now), on the Q3 engine.. THAT was a huge fiasco as well.

[quote="Short Hand":d7d37]LOL, ATi did it as well with the 8500 (9100 now), on the Q3 engine.. THAT was a huge fiasco as well.[/quote:d7d37]

really? when that came out i wasnt really into computers as much as i am now, so yeah doesnt count biggrin:

lol, you're late they already fixed it... With no performance drop. Just ati fanboy bullshit.
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=55812

Should I even mention that ATI has the same shimmer problem? (too a lesser degree, but it's still there)
Anyone that says they'll only buy ATI is a tool and a nub. Company loyalty = fucking retarded




PS: Watch the videos that supposed have the shimmer, I bet 98% percent of you won't notice it. Even when playing it against the new drivers with no shimmering, it's nearly impossible to see.

Its obvious that article was written by ATI fanboys. Its completely biased, just the way it is written makes the article a joke.

i will only buy ati ... and ive tried both. i dont think it has anything to do with company loyalty. when you grow use to something, you stick with it.

So if you were to buy high end right now you'd buy a X850XT even though is half as fast as 7800GTX and the same price?

I wonder what geRV would say about this.

Gerv isn't that big of a fanboy.

He has a preference to ATI but at least he knows his shit unlike the other ATI nubboys here.

he dead

I've owned both nvidia and ATi, nvidia was good but over the past years they really shit themselves, so i went ATi and i like them a lot more. I got an X800XL so i dont plan on buying another nvidia card for atleast another 2 years.

They've shit themselves by introducing new technology to push graphics further while actively competing with ATI who hasn't introduced a bit of new technology since the 9700? (Old/mature/proven tech almost always beats new tech, except 6800 vs X800)

The only bad thing Nvidia has done is the FX series. They've fully rebounded back to the top while ATI has done the opposite (severly falling stocks, 7 lawsuits against them, no R520)