ATI X1900 XTX Versus Nvida 7800 & 7900

[DasFox]

In comparision to the ATI X1900 XTX Versus Nvida 7800 & 7900, does anyone have any screenshots to show the differences in image quality between these three cards, or a site that has done tests on these, that shows the differences in image quality?

I'd really love to see the differences, because if the ATI has better image quality, I may be tempted to dump my Nvidia setup and go with ATI.

ALOHA

 

[LittleNemoNES]

From Personal experience, ATI's HQ AF is way better than Nvidias' but Nvidias SSAA is better than ATI's. Look no further than fences. While ATI's AA makes them look a lot better, Nvidias AA makes them look really clean cut. ATI's AF looks a lot better @ angles.

However, ATI has the edge in that its AA and AF are more effiecient in it's x1k series than Nvidias 7xxx series.

I'm looking for a site that had a comparison -- dont remember which one it was

 

[Polish3d]

This is an important point

I own a 7800GTX and am borrowing an XTX.

When I installed the XTX I was very surprised at how much SHARPER the picture was on my monitor.

For instance, w/ the GTX the bios text was blurry. On XTX I can make out each pixel that make up the lettering. That's how big the difference in sharpness is.

This applies both to 2D and 3D. Textures on BF2 characters that I never saw before are now visible.

This is such a compliment to my 2005FPW that I will probably not go back to Nvidia for this reason alone unless it becomes too compelling not to for some other reason.

This difference will NOT show up in screenshots but it is quite significant.


This is my first ATI card (had 6600GT) before and I am highly pleased.

I will be buying one myself

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Here it is: Enjoy!

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?page=6&articleid=777&cid=2

 

[DasFox]

So we are not talking leaps and bounds in quality, just marginal differences then I take?

I read here on the forum someone said their ATI IQ was much superior to Nvidia.

ALOHA

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: DasFox
So we are not talking leaps and bounds in quality, just marginal differences then I take?

I read here on the forum someone said their ATI IQ was much superior to Nvidia.

ALOHA

Mostly fan boyism. But ATI AF is definitely better.

 

[DasFox]

Hmm personally for me from the screenshots I couldn't tell a big difference.

I better just be happy with my game rig and go play some games, LOL!

ALOHA

 

[hardwareking]

and don't forget ATI's adaptive AA takes less of a performance hit.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: hardwareking
and don't forget ATI's adaptive AA takes less of a performance hit.

Actually its the other way around.

Link

Overall, the cost of TAA or AAA is slightly higher for ATI but strangely, even if there are no difference between the Radeon in Quake 4, the 7800 GTX 512 MB´s performances are reduced by 7%. On average, the reduction is similar for both GPU manufacturers. In Far Cry, Serious Sam 2, Act of War and Colin McRae 05 it´s unadvised to activate it as it strongly reduces performance in some areas. Keep in mind that it´s an average reduction, which can be higher at times.

Question does SSAA on NV cards supersample textures as well?

 

[Sc4freak]

It does the entire screen. It renders everything at a higher resolution (either doubling or quadrupling the number of pixels rendered) then downsamples it to fit your resolution. That's why SSAA is so horrendously slow, but looks great.

 

[Polish3d]

Originally posted by: DasFox
So we are not talking leaps and bounds in quality, just marginal differences then I take?

I read here on the forum someone said their ATI IQ was much superior to Nvidia.

ALOHA

I typed out that long post in answer to your question, did you not read it?

 

[Jules]

Search Function

 

[DasFox]

Frackal I read it, thanks for the reply, but I wouldn't say this tells a person a whole lot, just some of your own observations, nothing technical in the way of specs, but thanks anyhow.

ALOHA

 

[Sable]

Originally posted by: DasFox
Frackal I read it, thanks for the reply, but I wouldn't say this tells a person a whole lot, just some of your own observations, nothing technical in the way of specs, but thanks anyhow.

ALOHA

Specs? What specs? It's all qualitive. ATI's HQAF is sharper/cleaner/better looking than NV's. Some people don't notice any difference, other people can blatently see it. It's not a huge difference but it is noticable. (IMO)

 

[Polish3d]

The ATI signal to your monitor (or whatever) is a much sharper one. That's a pretty significant difference IMO. Too bad most people either can't test it or perhaps dont have a monitor that is good enough to highlight it. I'm not kidding though when I say its enough to more or less eliminate me going to an nvidia card, which is kind of a shame but perhaps G80 will be better

 

[CP5670]

I have never noticed this difference in 2D quality. Both my main CRT and the LCD I have look identical on my X1900XTX and 7800GT in terms of sharpness (although the colors are slightly more saturated on the ATI card). Maybe the difference only appears with larger LCDs? It can't be the signal quality, as that shouldn't really matter on DVI.

At default quality settings, the ATI AF looks dramatically better to me. The difference is hard to see in screenshots, as a lot of it has to do with the shimmering that occurs only in motion. If you use the high quality modes on both cards, they are very close with a slight edge to Nvidia in terms of shimmering, but the 7 series cards take a significant performance hit in many games with HQ (enough that you instantly notice it without doing any benchmarks) while the X1900s maintain about the same framerate.

The standard AA modes look about the same, but Nvidia has a definite overall advantage with AA due to the combined and SS modes. I use the 2x2 SSAA mode in several old games, which looks amazing and works at all resolutions. If you play recent games only though this may not matter to you.

 

[imported_Questar]

One thing a screenshot can't capture is the texture shimmering on a Nvidia based card.

 

[nitromullet]

Well, here is a screen cap from HL2 that (4xAAA/16xHQAF I think) I took from my old X1800XT 512 that I still had hosted on some webspace. If someone with a 7-series wants to post a cap from the same location, it shoud be a decent representation of the two in HL2.

http://www.mindspring.com/~megatron/HL2/d1_canals_010000.jpg

 

[DasFox]

nitromullet, now based on just this screenshot my SLI 7900GT cards looks this good. Thing is, I don't doubt what people are saying here, BUT I also believe this sharpness, can have alot to do with the quality of the monitor someone is using.

Monitors alone can really make a difference too.

THANKS

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Peter
It's actually the NVidia chips that quite consistently produce signal integrity issues on high-resolution DVI.

Two solutions: (1) Use an ATi card, or (2) use an NVidia card that DOESN'T use the chip's own DVI transmitter, but a discrete transmitter chip to overcome the (quite well known) problem.

One workaround: Enable said "alternate DVI timing" mode to reduce the signal frequency - at the expense of the screen redraw rate dropping from 60 to around 48 Hz.

Quoted Peter from this thread. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=31&threadid=1873079&enterthread=y

For the most part the quality difference is minimal, though ATI has better AA in that the performance hit is not as large as enabling AA in nVidia hardware. ATI does have better image quality but I don't think for most people it's large enough that it would make a huge difference in which card they buy. It's like the people bragging their card is better cause it gets 52fps in game xyz while another card only gets 50fps.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Well, here is a screen cap from HL2 that (4xAAA/16xHQAF I think) I took from my old X1800XT 512 that I still had hosted on some webspace. If someone with a 7-series wants to post a cap from the same location, it shoud be a decent representation of the two in HL2.

http://www.mindspring.com/~megatron/HL2/d1_canals_010000.jpg

Some of the fences seem to be blurred out. Someone should take the same screenshot on a 7 series card.

 

[Steelski]

Originally posted by: DasFox
Hmm personally for me from the screenshots I couldn't tell a big difference.

I better just be happy with my game rig and go play some games, LOL!

ALOHA

There is a difference, its just very difficult to see because the screenshot is not of what you are actually going to see, but it is the image buffer that is in the card. there are other processes after the screenshot is taken from the buffer that the image has got to go through to get to your eyes.

Here is a link to something that may shock you..... a movie of image quality in action. whilst neither card performs admirabley. you can see which performs a lot better!
http://www.thetechlounge.com/articles.php?id=232&page=11

 

[DasFox]

This is kind of like picking cars, many of them good, just that some people ended up buying a Ford instead of a Chevy, LOL

Seems like images have a shimmer effect that is more noticeable in Nvidia.

ALOHA

 

[CKXP]

Originally posted by: Steelski

Originally posted by: DasFox
Hmm personally for me from the screenshots I couldn't tell a big difference.

I better just be happy with my game rig and go play some games, LOL!

ALOHA

There is a difference, its just very difficult to see because the screenshot is not of what you are actually going to see, but it is the image buffer that is in the card. there are other processes after the screenshot is taken from the buffer that the image has got to go through to get to your eyes.

Here is a link to something that may shock you..... a movie of image quality in action. whilst neither card performs admirabley. you can see which performs a lot better!
http://www.thetechlounge.com/articles.php?id=232&page=11

what doesn't shock me is that shimmering is much more noticable on the 7800gtx than on the x1800xt is that ATI so happened to provide those demos....:disgust:

In fact, ATI provided me with some videos where they ran timedemos in HL2 and BF2 demonstrating the texture shimmering problem with a 7800GTX, and then they ran the same timedemo on the X1800 XT.

that looks more like high performance and not high quality was selected for the 7800gtx for it's "Performance and Quality settings" for those demos provided by ATI

 

[Steelski]

Originally posted by: CKXP

Originally posted by: Steelski

Originally posted by: DasFox
Hmm personally for me from the screenshots I couldn't tell a big difference.

I better just be happy with my game rig and go play some games, LOL!

ALOHA

There is a difference, its just very difficult to see because the screenshot is not of what you are actually going to see, but it is the image buffer that is in the card. there are other processes after the screenshot is taken from the buffer that the image has got to go through to get to your eyes.

Here is a link to something that may shock you..... a movie of image quality in action. whilst neither card performs admirabley. you can see which performs a lot better!
http://www.thetechlounge.com/articles.php?id=232&page=11

what doesn't shock me is that shimmering is much more noticable on the 7800gtx than on the x1800xt is that ATI so happened to provide those demos....:disgust:

In fact, ATI provided me with some videos where they ran timedemos in HL2 and BF2 demonstrating the texture shimmering problem with a 7800GTX, and then they ran the same timedemo on the X1800 XT.

that looks more like high performance and not high quality was selected for the 7800gtx for it's "Performance and Quality settings" for those demos provided by ATI

it does not matter who provided it. Its there, and it happens and its by far not the only instance that this occurs in.

As for the high quality. you know that all sites dont use HQ for benchmarks. which would lead us onto the argument that if Nvidia takes a performance dive to almost equal IQ then do the lesser quality benchmarks really count for anything in the HQ departments.