Initial experience going 295x2 quadfire to 980Ti SLI at 4K

[Silverforce11]

This isn't about colors, gamma, blacks, vibrancy of colors on AMD vs washed out on NV (which I have experienced myself).

This is about short lod distance, poor texture filtering, missing details (like bricks on the pavement, long distance objects).

Possible reasons for the poorer rendering:

1. The guy fake his control panel, overriding settings. Such as disabling AF (which still won't explain the lod distance problem). <- possible, we can't trust randoms on the interwebz!
2. Youtube compression causes one-half of the video to be worse. <- unlikely
3. The guy actually have Titan X on High settings in-game and not Ultra. <- possible.
4. NV has a driver bug for some games. <- possible.
5. NV has a driver "feature" or "optimizations" for some games. <- possible.

 

[railven]

This isn't about colors, gamma, blacks, vibrancy of colors on AMD vs washed out on NV (which I have experienced myself).

This is about short lod distance, poor texture filtering, missing details (like bricks on the pavement, long distance objects).

Possible reasons for the poorer rendering:

1. The guy fake his control panel, overriding settings. Such as disabling AF (which still won't explain the lod distance problem). <- possible, we can't trust randoms on the interwebz!
2. Youtube compression causes one-half of the video to be worse. <- unlikely
3. The guy actually have Titan X on High settings in-game and not Ultra. <- possible.
4. NV has a driver bug for some games. <- possible.
5. NV has a driver "feature" or "optimizations" for some games. <- possible.

Show me screen shots to support your claim. Because if you use Gregster's videos you have to factor in the black crush which I've shown you is very clear. That video should not be used to represent IQ difference when the creator openly said he altered one side.

If you think textures are missing versus omitted due to black crush - you don't know what black crush is. You loose the bottom scale of white and the top scale of black. The so called "missing textures and details" are easily caused by black crush.

But since you claim it isn't a gamma issue - screen shot that isn't sourced from that video, thank you kindly.

 

[Headfoot]

I wouldn't be surprised if one was running High and the other Ultra. Like Shintai said, TX doesn't run that much faster than Fury X in BF4 per professional reviews.
But it would run that much faster if TX was running at High and Fury X at ultra....

That doesn't explain though why OP noticed the same thing.

 

[railven]

I wouldn't be surprised if one was running High and the other Ultra. Like Shintai said, TX doesn't run that much faster than Fury X in BF4 per professional reviews.
But it would run that much faster if TX was running at High and Fury X at ultra....

That doesn't explain though why OP noticed the same thing.

OP noticed something in GTAV which was explained already:

GTA V has an issue with the ingame Anisotropic Filtering on Nvidia cards; basically, it doesn't work right. Disable AF in the ingame menu and force 16x AF through the Nvidia control panel (make sure to choose "Override application setting"). Also set the filtering quality to "High Quality." That should fix the texture filtering issues (as shown in this comparison shot).

He actually never even mentioned Battlefield. That was, what I inferred a typo, from RS talking about Arma then ending mentioned battlefield. Which launched the conversation in that direction.

A quick Google search shows that in Arma 3 @ 4K even a single 970 with its 3.5GB of VRAM has superior frame times (I.e, it maintains a flatter frame time variance up to and including 99th percentile) than a 290X, despite lower FPS:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-9.html

...

The end result though is the OP could add a 3rd and a 4th 980Ti to his system and end up with more horsepower to push battlefield draw distance further at which point the benefits of > 4GB could manifest themselves. Also, he will most definitely have superior performance since even a single 980Ti OC is more or less as fast as a 295X2. Sounds like a good upgrade since 295X2s don't always scale well.

I've watched that video a few times. Reading the criticism. Everything criticised (minus the FPS, because frankly that can be related to other things such as the scene in the game) is easily explained by black crush. You need to understand how it works. I laughed when someone mentioned "the zebra crossing" and I was actively looking for zebras - he meant the crosswalk, and of course it was white, and with black crush the whites are more prominent thus more noticeable.

But the Fury X side lost so much detail seen in the Titan X side due to it. No one mentioned how you can't see some details on the Fury X side that are clearly visible in the Titan X side.

Oh, and the biggest "WTF" - the GUY EDITED THE VIDEO. Come on, how does someone even entertain the argument of image quality when one side is edited. Here, just look at this image:

One side of that image is edited. Which do you think is edited? Which do you think looks better? Is it a fair comparison to present it to someone and ask them to judge which side is better claiming one side is Fury X and one side is Titan X?

 

[Jacky60]

Points re this not being accurate test of memory usage taken on board I understand you need same cards etc with all variable other than memory volume the same. Cleaned drivers reinstalled 295x2s and in GTA 5 the middle distance vehicles have reflections from various light sources such as buildings and street lights. This could superficially be interpreted as jaggies at a distance although they don't crawl and if you approach on foot you see they're reflections seen at a distance. I don't see any of this with the 980ti x2. All the vehicles in mid distance are matt and appear blurred compared to the 295x2 mid distance cars. It's as if the 980ti s are occluding any reflections at mid range so they give similar if slightly less fps but cars don't look like they do at night in a city.
All this is anecdotal and please don't see this as scientific but the subtle difference between middle distance reflections and aliasing seems to have been literally blurred. I will try and take screens if I get time but the 295x2 GTA 5 4k experience is definitely better for me than 980ti with latest drivers from both camps. Will report back soon.

 

[Jacky60]

That said I could enable 2xMSAA with the 980ti s but again the cars and trucks 75-200m away didn't seem to reflect city lights in the same way.

 

[Jacky60]

Quad Hawaii to dual GM200 is a total downgrade. Sorry.

It's been like 5 years since people noticed an obvious lower Image Quality on Nvidia's side.

I noticed it when I went from Quad 7970 to tri GTX 780 to Quad R9 290x. Same thing when I went from HD 6970 trifire to Sli GTX 680.
I can't imagine N.

Well the benchmark numbers back you up and my GTA5 experience combining image quality with fps also does. Interestingly the Witcher 3 is completely unplayable with 295x2 quadfire but I can't imagine why that would be. In Arma 3 the level of detail seems to cut off way sooner with 980tix2 than with the 295x2s and as I play Arma 3 most I have to test further. Arma3 maps load quicker and flying has been smoother at similar draw distances but panning the camera in flight sideways with the 980ti x2 I can't see the same stuff. I zoom in frequently and smile to myself at the total realism and beauty of the 295x2 Quad and have yet to experience the same with the 'quicker feeling' 980ti SLI. I will test more in next two days but then 2 cards are going back or being sold.

 

[Hitman928]

Jacky, have you tried setting AF quality to 16x in nvidia control panel (application override) and texture quality to High? Curious to see if that clears up what you are seeing.

 

[Jacky60]

Jacky, have you tried setting AF quality to 16x in nvidia control panel (application override) and texture quality to High? Curious to see if that clears up what you are seeing.

Yes, I did this yesterday as soon as advised. It didn't look better and even online today middle distance was fogged as if a veil had been dropped about half way to where I wanted to see clearly. It's subtle but it's there.
I must admit I don't 'know' Nvidia control panel as well as catalyst. My initial impression of the 980ti SLI was totally positive looking at the numbers and smoothness,. Trying to replicate the 60fps 'beauty' of a scene on the 295x2s has been really difficult. Just less detail at any given range and noticeably so.

 

[amenx]

Seems its a common issue for many Nvidia users in GTA 5.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gta+5+nvidia+blurry

The AFx16 + very high quality texture filtering setting appears to no longer work after last patch (according to reddit link).

 

[hawtdawg]

Yeah, that's black crush. Objectiveness on the settings - black crush is notorious for creating "detail" where there is none. Examples of Black Crush:

A lot of people will swear the right side of that image looks "better." Going as far as saying it has more detail. It's sharped out of it's mind which makes edges look better, but then of course you loose a lot of detail.

Anyways, still reading the thread but that image from the BF4 run screamed black crush at me. You can't even see the lines on the column on the Fury X side.

EDIT: Someone else got a better screen shot, yeah dude the Fury X side is getting some serious black level crushes. It probably has to do with the guy who tweaked the color settings.

The PS3/PS4 got slammed until the consoler peasants learned what black crush was and how it adversely affected visual fidelity.

This might be the dumbest, most ignorant thing i've ever read on Anandtech.

For starters, The only difference between that XBOX/PS4 shot is that the xbox version has character shadowing. In addition, whether or not the game had "black crush" would be totally dependent on the developer making it that way, otherwise, it's just from ignorant plebs setting the video levels wrong in their console or TV. Unless you're suggesting that Microsoft is going back through and "black crushing" their games, not that you could explain to me what on earth that would do to make anything run better.

The video card thing is purely a gamma setting. There's no method by which to magically make rendering easier just because an area is darker than it should be. playing with the brightness/gamma in the BF settings menu would fix the issue.

This is a made up controversy centered on idiots not having a clue about gamma, contrast or video level settings. You think washed out looks better because you're used to crappy LCD screens that can double as a night-light with a solid black screen. Higher contrast is not "making up detail".

 

[railven]

This might be the dumbest, most ignorant thing i've ever read on Anandtech.

Updated video with no black crush, tell me my assessment of the original video is wrong. Go ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-VpCnexkU

For starters, The only difference between that XBOX/PS4 shot is that the xbox version has character shadowing. In addition, whether or not the game had "black crush" would be totally dependent on the developer making that way, otherwise, it's just from ignorant plebs setting the video levels wrong in their console or TV. Unless you're suggesting that Microsoft is going back through and "black crushing" their games, not that you could explain to me what on earth that would do to make anything run better.

Who said run better? I'm addressing the Image Quality issues raised up. I completely said "issue of settings aside."

Objectiveness on the settings - black crush is notorious for creating "detail" where there is none. Examples of Black Crush:

I don't even know if you follow consoles, but here:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Xbox+one+black+crush

Microsoft does have a black crush with their consoles. And people used that as a defense of better IQ in 360 vs PS3, but magically when it continued for PS4 vs Xbone and PC was included more often people realized "that don't look right."

The video card thing is purely a gamma setting. There's no method by which to magically make rendering easier just because an area is darker than it should be.

This is a made up controversy centered on idiots not having a clue about gamma, contrast or video level settings.

Wow, we said the exact same thing but some how you said this about me:

This might be the dumbest, most ignorant thing i've ever read on Anandtech.

Nice to meet you kettle, my name is pot

EDIT: Just saw your other post in the other thread. Not trying to come off as hostile.

 

[hawtdawg]

Updated video with no black crush, tell me my assessment of the original video is wrong. Go ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-VpCnexkU

This is purely a gamma setting issue, and could be fixed in 5 seconds in the game menu. Additionally, while the AMD video does look to have a higher gamma, there is no lost detail. What you're looking at is essentially the difference between a 2.2 and a 2.4 gamma power curve. You can call it black crush if you like, but on something like a plasma TV in a dark room, you'd be able to appreciate the higher gamma due to the display's ability to reproduce blacks/shadow detail.

I don't even know if you follow consoles, but here:https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...ne+black+crush

Microsoft does have a black crush with their consoles. And people used that as a defense of better IQ in 360 vs PS3, but magically when it continued for PS4 vs Xbone and PC was included more often people realized "that don't look right."

I'd suspect something like the MS consoles video levels being set to 0-255 by default, with the PS4 being set to 16-235. If there's one thing that the internet as a whole has no grasp on, it's video levels/contrast/gamma. I see constant ignorance when these things are discussed.

How the game looks is purely up to the developer. The console would not be able to crush the blacks unless the developer wanted it to be that way, it's a very simple gamma setting issue as far as the development itself. Otherwise, Id wager that most of these "black crush" retards have their video levels set incorrectly (that might be MS's fault due to default settings)

 

[railven]

How the game looks is purely up to the developer. The console would not be able to crush the blacks unless the developer wanted it to be that way, it's a very simple gamma setting issue as far as the development itself. Otherwise, Id wager that most of these "black crush" retards have their video levels set incorrectly (that might be MS's fault due to default settings)

You're wrong here.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-has-microsoft-fixed-the-xbox-one-scaler

If you want to call Eurogamer ignorant, by all means, but if you're going to say the same about DICE, then that's another story.

The pre-final code utilised the Xbox One hardware scaler and featured an unnatural gamma shift, while the release version saw the implementation of a software scaler created by DICE itself that resolved the colour balance issue in addition to removing the sharpening effect

TL;DR:
There are known issues with the Xbone and crushing black levels. So severe that a dev took it upon themselves to attempt to address the issue, which is contrary to what you just said.

 

[hawtdawg]

You're wrong here.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-has-microsoft-fixed-the-xbox-one-scaler

If you want to call Eurogamer ignorant, by all means, but if you're going to say the same about DICE, then that's another story.



TL;DR:
There are known issues with the Xbone and crushing black levels. So severe that a dev took it upon themselves to attempt to address the issue, which is contrary to what you just said.

They aren't being crushed, the gamma is simply being raised, crushed = clipping, there is nothing being clipped in any of the images of videos you've shown.

 

[railven]

They aren't being crushed, the gamma is simply being raised, crushed = clipping, there is nothing being clipped in any of the images of videos you've shown.

I don't know how you can this in the other thread but then this here:

Well yeah, in that video you would be right. clear black clipping. Still though, that's totally on the developer for releasing it that way.

The original ps4/XB1 image you posted however is not a case of black clipping. That is clearly character shadowing and ambient occlusion, and possibly a higher gamma. There are multiple shadows clearly being cast in the xbox pic that arent in the ps4 pic (grenades are most obvious, but the shadow being cast by his head onto the exo and left shoulder/arm is pretty obvious too.) There is nothing being clipped there.

What was happening in the before pictures I linked as an example is the same that happened in the video you said had clipping. It was a known issue, people reported it months. I still don't think it's been fully resolved.

I tracked down the image source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxLr0vcoFLk

Are you still going to say there is no black crush in that image? It's all over that source file.

Here is another source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkaWiEfZHoo

And it seems this game opt not to use the DICE scalar and used their own (thus reintroduction of the black crush):

First off, let's address some unfinished business on console; namely the resolution issue. For campaign only, a majority of the gun-toting action runs at 1360x1080 on Xbox One, while PS4 charges in with a full 1920x1080. However, courtesy of a dynamic frame-buffer, there are specific areas designed to render at a full, true 1080p on Xbox One - given the head-room. For example, the interior of a besieged Atlas control room runs at this lower rate in the Fission stage, while the bus-hopping set-piece, closing the Nigeria level, runs at the full value.

Even they see it:

However, on its default brightness setting (matched at 3.3 notches with the PS4 and PC), we notice a native black crush affecting visibility in dark areas. It can be rectified, to an extent, by cranking the in-game brightness up by four points in Advanced Warfare's menu, but the image begins to wash out if we go any further. Not ideal.

So either the XBone had issues with black crushing or it didn't. You can't say "yes" to one video but then no to another, [EDIT: derp, didn't finish my sentence] that exhibits the same issue.

 

[Silverforce11]

@Jacky60
So it seems GTAV has worse IQ on NV, and its a known problem.

This raises the question of whether benchmark numbers can be compared when AMD's GTA V is much better, with actual reflections in windows at a distant. That's extra rendering which doesn't happen for NV. Btw, [H] and a few other site reported that NV shadows in GTA V is broken, it only renders shadows from light sources in one direction, so if its a complex scene, it could be missing half of the shadows! Again that's a ton of rendering that isn't happening.

Arma 3's most demanding setting is actually view distance, so if its less on NV, it means they have a major advantage, whether its a bug or feature.

Definitely take some screenshots and clear the air.

As for the OCUK's video, here's the comparison where no colors/gamma were adjusted for Fury X (no black crush), everything as is default.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-VpCnexkU

Still poor lod distance for Titan X, and poor AF.

Edit: Well, the bug is found!
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=28267475&postcount=197

NVCP Default "let app decide" = crap. Must manually force quality.

 

[Udgnim]

[H] can't be bothered to investigate

This is a very old argument we've had many times in the past, when AMD or NV optimizes people were calling it "cheating" It is a very old and tired argument.

We use default driver settings, we stated our stance then, and now. Nothing more needs to be said, we used default driver settings, we will continue to use default driver settings.

Thank you for the feedback.

 

[jackstar7]

[H] can't be bothered to investigate

I find their answers rather disappointing. I asked them directly to consider changing their stance, but I doubt it will gather much steam over there.

 

[loccothan]

This isn't about colors, gamma, blacks, vibrancy of colors on AMD vs washed out on NV (which I have experienced myself).

This is about short lod distance, poor texture filtering, missing details (like bricks on the pavement, long distance objects).

Possible reasons for the poorer rendering:

Its calle Nv new Features = Optimisations = More FPS in Benchmarks and Game benchmarks = Nerds like it so they Pay $$$ ... Easy ;-)

 

[Piroko]

... black crush...

Some issues with your quadruple post about "black crush":
Video compression will inherently crush colors (and depending on playback settings, re-add dithering and noise to add pseudo detail). h.264 will also specifically crush blacks and whites, because there it is easiest to remove complexity without us humans noticing. This in turn means that you can't do detail analysis in very black or very white areas through videos. The only thing that you've managed to show is a weakness of h.264.

That is also something completely unrelated to game engines, I'm afraid, because those do not compress rendered images with a lossy compression. They do not crush blacks and kill detail in its process. The only thing such a game engine does, is, to change the gamma level of the displayed image to suit your liking. This does not remove detail, however, it only shifts the brightness level of said detail.

...Which is less of an issue the better your panel is. A 6 bit TFT will kill any detail *fullstop*. Dithering can reintroduce some fake detail, but a calibrated 8 bit panel is far superior in showing actual detail in what would otherwise be completely black areas.

Also, calling out these images as "black crushed" would assume that you know for a fact that the washed out look is the way it is meant to be played (no pun intended). That is kinda weird, considering that official launch videos are much closer to the gamma levels of the fury side. One could therefore assume that this is the correct setting.

 

[Tapoer]

[H] can't be bothered to investigate

[H] is now officially irrelevant...

AFAIK, [H] was one of the first sites to disable AI optimizations on the CCC, because of the textures shimmering with AF on the 5xxx series, and now they don't care about if AF is correct at all?

 

[Jacky60]

With some fiddling on Nvidia control panel the image quality on GTA5 is broadly similar with the quadfire overall a bit better than 980ti. I still feel like I need an additional pair of glasses to focus people 50-80m away with SLI whereas they seem much clearer in GTA5 with quadfire. In Arma 3 the 980ti SLI definitely has the edge giving less stutter and longer playable view distances by a good margin (500M-1.5k). I was going to send the 980ti s back but now I think it's the 295x2s. This is real world gameplay and Arma 3 benchmarks with both images looking pretty much identical the extra power/memory/less overhead of the the 980ti SLI has me sold so far. Don't like to flip flop but I hadn't spent much time in Nvidia control panel before now and I'm liking what I'm seeing.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

With some fiddling on Nvidia control panel the image quality on GTA5 is broadly similar with the quadfire overall a bit better than 980ti. I still feel like I need an additional pair of glasses to focus people 50-80m away with SLI whereas they seem much clearer in GTA5 with quadfire.

Could you post a screenshot?

 

[jackstar7]

I find their answers rather disappointing. I asked them directly to consider changing their stance, but I doubt it will gather much steam over there.

And the response I got was that it would mean more work, so they aren't going to bother.

Gotta say, it seemed like a chance for their reviews to bring more value to readers... but apparently they are willing to just be oft and basically keep doing what everyone else does.

I hope someone picks up on this and gives enthusiasts a better quality review.