3dmark03 On Nvidia Cards Redux

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by marcocom
AA and AF are math algorithms thus driver tweakable forever and ever. (stop talking like all of this is built in stone just because it has a name)

I'll agree that some of it is tweakable. but most of the stuff is done in hardware.

I don't think you're going to see Aggressive AF suddenly have full trilinear(or bilinear/trilinear) and retain the performance that it has now, for instance.

[AnteP]

Originally posted by GlowStick
3DMARK03

Parts of one of the four game tests in 3Dmark03 doesn't use multi texturing.
And it's not even a game.

Pointless brining it up.

Besides, Futuremark representatives already commented the issue and said that they did in fact tru using a dual texture sky but it didn't effect performance to any tangible degree nor did it do much for quality.

[AnteP]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
I'll agree that some of it is tweakable. but most of the stuff is done in hardware.

I don't think you're going to see Aggressive AF suddenly have full trilinear(or bilinear/trilinear) and retain the performance that it has now, for instance.

One thing that we probably will get is however good performance with the "Balanced" mode while maintaining the IQ of Application.

As I pointed out in my review:
GeForce4 (by its defaults) has quality that matches the FX Application mode.
So when benchmarking at default settings the GF4 actually looks a great deal better. (The FX doesn't even seem to perform real trilinear when using Balanced).

But when I talked to nVidia earlier today they said that a future driver, which will sonn be released (at least to reviewers), the FX will gain back the quality that matches GF4 but without any noteworthy performance hit. Which does in my ears make sense since the GF4 also suffers a performance hit by enabling Application but without any visable improvement. (So it seems as if Application is doin other crazy stuff that doesn't relate directly to texture filtering perhaps)

[marcocom]

ok this whole 'application mode' slider crap is totally confusing the issue now.

these sliders are just presets. user mipmap settings and LOD bias. AnisotropicFiltering/Trilinear filtering is toggled within the application software, and can only be over-rided to use trilinear mode from the driver level regardless of the applications request to run the algorithm and instead uses its trilinear blurring.

nvidia is totally screwing with disaster here, because now things are getting muddier. now theres a ENABLE TEXTURE SHARPENING option that does nothing more than over ride the trilinear (over ride the over ride, thats right) filtering and bump up the anisotropic filtering one notch (from 2x to 4x or from level0 to level1 it doesnt matter) - theres also a Anisotropic slider now that is unified for both DirectX and OpenGL - again, useless because it can be over-ridden by the 'texture sharpening' mode and guys...this is stuff nvidia pioneered!! total mismanagement!!

The Aniso filtering for nvidia is really too slow, bad math perhaps and totally optimizable with time, but certainly not something you want users or reviewers assumably toggling on when benchmark testing and thats exactly what they are doing! so now what was simple and black and white has actually become unclear through USER-FRIENDLINESS!!

nvidia can so piss me off sometimes. they didnt even really bother to document any of it either.

i rather often read a review and they say "we put the anisotropic to 4x and enabled 4xFSAA and of course enable texture sharpening" and just hold my head in my hands... they are now running it at 8x anisotropic.

Det 5.0 has alot of rethinking to be done in the user interface dept.