Image quality GTX570 vs HD6970

[Brakner]

I keep seeing hundreds of threads and reviews about the FPS difference between these 2 cards and nothing about gaming image quality. Is there any difference with or without AA's? I remember back a few years ago ATI's were a little nicer looking with max AA's, has this changed?

I am buying a new system and chose Evga GTX 570HD ( with display port ) as I heard it was good enough for 1080P gaming. If the ATI/AMD product has better image quality even at a loss of a few FPS I would rather have that.

Thanks in advanced

Brak

 

[Castiel]

I've always found that Nvidia has had better image quality but thats just an opinion.

 

[badb0y]

It's impossible to tell the difference unless you specifically looking for it and take screen shots and zoom in.

 

[Elfear]

Both have their pros and cons. At default AF quality, the 6000 series looks a little worse in Trackmania. Nvidia currently lacks Morphological AA like AMD has. There are a few other differences but that's what I could remember off the top of my head.

 

[BFG10K]

I keep seeing hundreds of threads and reviews about the FPS difference between these 2 cards and nothing about gaming image quality.

My last IQ article compared the 6000 vs 5000 vs Fermi. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to link to it in forum posts.

 

[Arkadrel]

In 3D nvidia has a tiny egde, in 2D ATI has a tiny edge.

Not enough really to pick one over the other.

 

[Firestorm007]

My last IQ article compared the 6000 vs 5000 vs Fermi. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to link to it in forum posts.

I certainly can. Great article BFG!

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=23098

 

[thilanliyan]

Keep your 570...you're not going to notice much difference.

 

[MrK6]

My last IQ article compared the 6000 vs 5000 vs Fermi. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to link to it in forum posts.

You're going to have to test games that were made in the last five years if you want your articles to have any relevance, BFG, and you're going to have to test a lot more of them. Also, you tend to generalize way too much in your conclusion based off your very limited testing.

To the OP, you probably won't notice a difference TBH. AMD's high-end AA is still superior, but at 4xMSAA there really isn't any difference. For AF/IQ, if I had to characterize the two, I'd say AMD offers more "sharpness" while NVIDIA offers smoother transitions at the expense of blurring. I'm not sure you can say which is better, just which you prefer. I've found I much prefer AMD's sharpness at 2560x1600, as it really brings games to life. However, these differences may be reduced at lower resolutions to the point where they're insignificant.

 

[Wreckage]

I've always found that Nvidia has had better image quality but thats just an opinion.

I agree. Many reviews point out their superior AF implementation. I also like Transparency AA and they have not had the same problems supporting AA in games that AMD has had. PhysX and CUDA also add to the overall image.

 

[BFG10K]

You're going to have to test games that were made in the last five years if you want your articles to have any relevance, BFG, and you're going to have to test a lot more of them.

Deficiencies in AF are deficiencies in AF regardless of the age of game. We’ve also long moved past the theory that it’s a simple driver bug.

Also, you tend to generalize way too much in your conclusion based off your very limited testing.

I did the same thing last time and AMD then later admitted the 5000’s AF implementation was faulty. So I think I’m doing okay with my testing methods.

But thanks for the constructive feedback - I appreciate it! :thumbsup:

 

[MrK6]

Deficiencies in AF are deficiencies in AF regardless of the age of game. We’ve also long moved past the theory that it’s a simple driver bug.

I'd doubt it, since most websites don't even comment on it. Three screenshots doesn't show anything, no matter how much one would love to believe it. And it's nice to dismiss drivers in some attempt to validate said testing :thumbsup:.

I did the same thing last time and AMD then later admitted the 5000’s AF implementation was faulty. So I think I’m doing okay with my testing methods.
But thanks for the constructive feedback - I appreciate it! :thumbsup:

There was only fuss made when a few German websites ran Trackmania demos that showed a definite transition in filtering when using a simple texture instead of fading out. AMD said the algorithm was updated in the 6000 series, noted. What's funny is you didn't mention that those tests also showed that AMD's AF was overall far superior to NVIDIA's, especially in "sharpness," since NVIDIA blurred the heck out of most textures to give the illusion of uniform transition. Interesting.

Either way, sorry to derail your thread OP, just wanted to make sure you aren't reading poor sources :thumbsup:.

 

[Mistwalker]

In most cases the difference is small enough that you won't notice anything without zooming in on uncompressed screenshots. There are a handful of specific cases where one side or the other has a slightly better rendering method or AA implementation, but overall I'd say it's a wash.

Keep your 570, it should give you a fantastic experience at 1080p both performance- and visual-wise.

 

[Jacky60]

I've always found that Nvidia has had better image quality but thats just an opinion.

ATI/AMD has always been better. My Nvidia Geforce TI4600 didn't render the textures in large parts of the screen in a cheat to try and match the 9700 Pro's performance.

 

[Jacky60]

ATI/AMD image quality has been consistently good, Nvidia chose to prevent their hardware on the Geforce TI4600 from rendering textures to increase fps to compete with the Radeon 9700 Pro. This was very noticeable as huge areas of grass had no texture in games whereas the ATI card rendered it beautifully.

 

[Aristotelian]

My last IQ article compared the 6000 vs 5000 vs Fermi. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to link to it in forum posts.

I'm not trying to be pedantic here but: is the IQ in the Nvidia 4XX and 5XX series identical? The article linked shows a 470 being tested.

 

[Anarchist420]

Nvidia has way better IQ because ATi uses some z-range optimization and because textures are blurry (they don't shimmer) on nvidia GPUs.

 

[Wreckage]

By default AMD has "optimizations" that sacrifice image quality in order to gain a few fps.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/exploring-ati-image-quality-optimizations/

:thumbsdown:

 

[biostud]

if you notice any difference when playing a game, the game cannot be very interesting.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm going to say that youre not going to notice the difference unless youre playing specific games under specific settings.

Generally AMD image quality = Nvidia image quality

Batman AA with full physx Nvidia image quality > AMD image quality
Borderlands with MLAA AMD image quality> Nvidia image quality.

As two examples.

 

[evolucion8]

While nVidia's AF might be slightly superior, AMD's AF tends to sharper the texture more, exposing more details, but also can show some shimmering, but I prefer sharpness over blurryness anyday, plus MLAA is so beautiful for games that can't support native AA like DeadSpace 2 and Mafia 2 that the quality is amazing, plus the colors are more vivid and AMD cards tends to be steady in performance as eye candy raises up along with resolution, unlike nVidia solutions.

CUDA might be useful if you are developing in such language, but there's too little applications that can take advantage of it, plus video encoding with CUDA sacrifices a lot of image quality to match performance with competition like Intel's QuickSync or AMD's APP, making it unfeasible if you are a video quality enthusiast, specially with Cyberlinks MediaShow Expresso, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/video-transcoding-amd-app-nvidia-cuda-intel-quicksync,2839.html and PhysX is still a mimick with less than 10 GPU accelerated PhysX tittles in which only two of them are good like Batman AA and Mirrors Edge http://www.anandtech.com/show/2761 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-physx-hack-amd-radeon,2764-9.html but is a nice addition in Batman AA which is the only game that shows some nice eye candy. ( I hope Batman AA 2 comes with more!!)

But in fact doesn't worth the change anyways unless if you can sell your GTX 570 and get the HD 6970 with no investment. Your GTX 570 is an amazing card.

 

[kat.]

I had similar questions to you, I have used ATI cards always, until now. I do a lot of graphic design, photoshop, web design as well as gaming.

Stay with the 570, don't worry about the image quality, I had a Gigabyte ATI 4890oc give up the ghost recently and after reading extensive research and reading reviews I decided to try Nvidia. I upgraded to a EVGA GTX 570sc and honestly the image quality is exquisite. Crisp and clear. The color is amazing. Wouldn't even think of going back to ATI for image problems. No knocks to ATI, love their cards, but love the 570 more.

I used to stay away from Nvidia because of the 2d. I honestly felt Photoshop just looked better with ATI. I was wrong. So far in both Photoshop and gaming the 570 is phenomenal!

Don't worry, it will blow you away with how beautiful and fast it is! Evga is a great company, just don't forget to register the card.
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CM Haf X, Sabertooth x58, Core i7 950, Evga GTX 570sc, 6GB Mushkin 998826 1600Mhz DDR3, Corsair TX 750w, Win7 64bit Professional

 

[Qbah]

You won't notice any difference, unless you will start looking for it. Keep the card and enjoy your games

Me? MLAA is epic in so many games I play, I can't see myself using a Geforce now. nVidia has announced that they will implement something similar in the non-to-distant future.

 

[load81]

Watching movies looks better on my 6870. But my 570 looks better in games except GTA4 and Borderlands due to mlaa.

 

[3DVagabond]

By default AMD has "optimizations" that sacrifice image quality in order to gain a few fps.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/exploring-ati-image-quality-optimizations/

:thumbsdown:

Old news. You need to find an article that's using current drivers. This doesn't apply any more.