Does the X1800 have better filtering than the X800?

[VIAN]

My bro just got COD2 for his PC. He has a X800 Pro installed. COD2 is a performance hog.

For it to be playable on his system, I had to settle for 800x600 with 2xAA using DX9 with Low Dynamic Lights, Textures on auto and everything else off. I could've done 1024x768 with DX7, and DX7 doesn't look too bad, but it eliminates all shadows and lighting. And the lighting makes it look that much better.

Anyway, While trying to find out the best settings, I notice that the filtering was worse on the X800 Pro than with High Quality driver settings on the 7800GT (well, obviously). Then I started to think about the X1800, if it was also like this. They improved the AF, but I wonder if they improved just the Filtering part. Anyone know? Anyone care about filtering anymore? Reviewers don't seem to give a crap. Actually, I didn't read much of those reviews since I was too excited, but I haven't even heard it in the forums.

 

[LostTime77]

I was running 1024 by 768 reso with 4xaa and all high settings on my x800xt if that makes it feel any better. I was still getting a bit of lag in some places. CoD 2 is not optimized well and is a big performance hog. However I belive there was a patch that Anand announced for dual core systems that may have helped performance.

 

[mwmorph]

what? you set texture on normal on the x800pro and you expect it to be equal to a 7800gt with textures no high? filtering only does so much. you need to compare at the same settings.

did you check the settings in control panel? download ati tray tools and turn off all optomizations and set everything to highest quality. also, something looks fishy. on DX7, my 9800xt can run 1280x1024 4xaa everything maxed in the 60fps average range.

 

[Matthias99]

They improved the AF, but I wonder if they improved just the Filtering part. Anyone know?

Uh... guh?

AF is filtering, so I don't know what you mean by "just the Filtering part" -- what is the 'non-filtering' part?

The X800 and 7800 are very similar in AF quality (since they use almost identical algorithms), and the X1800s can do it "right" (with correct angle-dependent calculations). Or do you mean the quality of regular bi/trilinear filtering?

As noted, you cannot compare between different texture quality levels. Low-quality textures with the best possible AF will still look much worse than high-quality textures with mediocre AF.

 

[VIAN]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

They improved the AF, but I wonder if they improved just the Filtering part. Anyone know?

Uh... guh?

AF is filtering, so I don't know what you mean by "just the Filtering part" -- what is the 'non-filtering' part?

The X800 and 7800 are very similar in AF quality (since they use almost identical algorithms), and the X1800s can do it "right" (with correct angle-dependent calculations). Or do you mean the quality of regular bi/trilinear filtering?

As noted, you cannot compare between different texture quality levels. Low-quality textures with the best possible AF will still look much worse than high-quality textures with mediocre AF.

The X1800 has a way that betters Anisotropic Filtering. The "right" way that you mention. But with the filtering difference, I'm talking about the bi/trilinear Filtering bit, which affects AF image quality.

I had both textures on Auto and they both have 256MB of VRAM. Nevertheless, the texture aliasing is still there.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: VIAN
The X1800 has a way that betters Anisotropic Filtering. The "right" way that you mention. But with the filtering difference, I'm talking about the bi/trilinear Filtering bit, which affects AF image quality.

AF affects the way the texture samples are taken; you can't really separate it from the overall filtering technique. You're almost always using trilinear filtering with AF, and I don't think either ATI or NVIDIA has any real problems with their trilinear filtering right now (at least with AF enabled). There have been problems in the past with the drivers taking 'shortcuts' with the filtering (like NVIDIA's 'brilinear' filtering, and ATI's adaptive 'trylinear' filtering, both of which attempt to not use trilinear filtering when it is not necessary).

I had both textures on Auto and they both have 256MB of VRAM.

'Auto' may be choosing different settings on each card; try setting it manually to a specific detail level.

Nevertheless, the texture aliasing is still there.

I am unsure as to exactly what you mean by 'aliasing'. There will always be *some* level of 'blockiness' to textures if you are close to them, since all textures have a limited resolution. AF reduces/eliminates sampling artifacts like moire patterns, by taking more texture samples where necessary -- but it can't make low-res textures sharper.

 

[VIAN]

I'm just a little retarded today, so I guess I'm explaining things really. Bad. For some reason, I slept for about 12 hours. Idk why. Wasn't cause I missed sleep.

Anyway, I sort did see Trilinear as seperate from AF. As I have only a general idea of what AF does with each sample.I'm talking about exactly those ideas you mentioned:

Brilinear Filtering a.k.a Quality in the Image Settings in Nvidia Control Panel.

~and~

Trylinear Filtering a.k.a Adapative Filtering, or the highest Filtering ATI allows in the 420 series.

These "optimizations" cause bands of aliasing. That's what I've noticed from my observations. My question is if the 520 series cleared these bands of aliasing up compared to the 420.

 

[RobertR1]

Going from a x800xt pe, to a x1800xt pe, everything looks a lot more crisp and the colors looks more rich and deep, using same settings. When you turn up the Adaptive AA and HQ AF, the x800xt pe gets blown away in IQ.