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Image Quality Screen Captures - Wolfenstein ET,
UT2003 and X2 |
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Finally, on par with ATi it seems... |
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As we discovered
in our coverage of the Radeon 9800XT, Wolfenstein ET, an
OpenGL based, highly modified Quake3 engine game, showed
well for the Detonator 51.75 release we were using at that
time. Let's have a look at what the Detonator FX 52.16
drivers can deliver.
Wolfenstein Enemy
Terrritory
In Game Screenshots -
1024X768
Detonator 52.16 Vs. Catalyst 3.8
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
No Aniso Filtering, No AA |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
No Aniso Filtering, No AA |
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
Once again,
NVIDIA's new drivers show excellent image quality versus the
ATi card. Without AF enabled, the 52.16s show even
perhaps better texture detail, with default "application
preference" settings applied. Turn on Anti-Aliasing
and 8X Aniso Filtering and we were hard pressed to see any
real discernible difference between the two competitive
image renderings.
In prior
Detonator FX releases, we've not only noticed lesser Aniso
Filtering image quality for NVIDIA cards in UT2003, but also
Anti-Aliasing hasn't been as sharp, setting for setting
versus ATi. Have the Detonator 52.16s closed the gap
here as well? Let's have a look.
Unreal Tournament 2003
In Game Screenshots -
1024X768
Detonator 52.16 Vs. Catalyst 3.8
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
No Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
No Aniso Filtering |
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
No Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
No Aniso Filtering |
ATi Radeon 9800 XT
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
In order to view any of our
screen shots best here, it's advisable to set your desktop
resolution to 1024X768 at 32 bit color, which is how these
shots were taken natively. We've taken screen captures
with HyperSnap, post filtering capture enabled, in two
different map areas. The bottom set of shots are from
the "Phobos" map, one of the maps we used to benchmark with,
in the following pages. Download the images if you
like folks and break out your favorite magnification utility
and then draw your own conclusion. NVIDIA's Detonator
52.16 drivers are looking superb in both Aniso Filtering and
Anti-Aliasing. It is surprising to see just how far
they have improved their image quality in this game.
Whatever form of AF NVIDIA is doing in this game engine,
with the slider set to 8X, things look as good as ATi 8X, in
our humble opinion.
We also
knocked NVIDIA pretty hard in our NV35 launch article
for their less than crisp AA in UT2003. This seems to
be a thing of the past as well now, for the Detonator
drivers, in this game engine. That's a total of 4
rendering scenarios, 3 DirectX and one OpenGL, where we've
seen NVIDIA's rendering output improve significantly with
the Detonator 52.16 release. We'll touch on one more
data-point here and also come back to this just a bit more
in with some of the benchmark numbers later.
X2 - The Threat - Rolling Demo
In Game Screenshots -
1024X768
Detonator 52.16 Vs. Catalyst 3.8
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ATi Radeon 9800 XT
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
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NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950
4X AA, 8X Aniso Filtering |
It's difficult
and really not completely fair to criticize image quality or
performance of a given graphics product, with a game that is
currently unreleased. However, the new Space Combat
and Multi-Role sim, X2 - The Threat, is looking so
impressive graphically, we just had to throw it in the mix
here. In the side by side comparison shots, you can
see that NVIDIA has some work to do currently with
Anti-Aliasing in X2. The bottom shot is just for
eye-candy effect. This game looks schweet...
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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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Mainstream Monster |
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How We
Configured Our Test System:
To coin a phrase from my
Boxing Fanatic colleague, business partner and brother-like,
life-long friend Marco "BigWop" Chiappetta, "let's get ready
to rumble!"
Unreal Tournament 2003, Custom And Canned Fly-By Runs |