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View Full Version : Anands cat 3.8 Performance review


Hellbinder
10-08-03, 05:25 PM
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1900&p=1

one specific thing from the Conclusion has me scratching my head..

Overall, these drivers offer some very good UI enhancements, and the overdrive feature does provide tangible speed improvements, and hopefully their VPU Recovery feature will save some people the trouble of blindly rebooting their systems when they lose video. Unfortunately, we didn't see the image quality fixes for TRAOD and Neverwinter Nights that we wanted. Hopefully ATI will not stand by and hope enough people think NVIDIA’s image quality is poor enough that the issue with their own product can go ignored.

WTF is he talking about IQ fixes in TRAOD??? Is this a Joke or what. Nvidia is the one with CONTINUOUS IQ issues in TRAOD not ATi.

From His origional review..

Even though we can't see it from these screenshots, the ATI card seemed to have problems rendering walls and water consistently. As Lara slides down the hill at the beginning of this demo, the walls flicker as they approach. I would have simply thought that this was due to AF not being enabled but for the fact that NVIDIAs card renders the walls smoothly and consistently giving a much better experience.

Also, at the bottom of the hill when Lara is running toward the water, the ATI card has some issues with the rendered texture on the water being consistent. The texture will turn off and on until she gets to a certain distance from the water. After this distance is reached, everything looks fine.

I really wanted to create some movies to show this, but time constraints and logistics have prevented us from doing so at this point.

Has anyone else from any of the other review sites observed anything like this???

:rolleyes:

Here is his comment about Neverwinter..

This time we have to point out that ATI has known image quality issues. There have been many complaints from problems with AA to missing/flickering shadows and a lack of shiny water.

When this game was released, it focused heavily on using NVIDIA hardware and even has an AA slider in the game featuring Quincunx. Obviously this won't work with ATI, and even though we got the 4x AA setting in the game to work a couple of times (if you toggle it on and off while the game is running), we got much better results when setting AA in the driver.

We didn't notice the problems with water that have been discussed online (though we didn't find a really good body of water at which to look), but we did see some shadow flickering occurring. There weren't any missing shadows as we can see from the screenshots. In reading some forums across the web, we have seen indications that there weren't any issues with ATI cards when Neverwinter was released, and that future driver versions broke functionality for the game. We aren't able to confirm this ourselves, but problems such as these have existed for ATI in the past, and we are very hopeful that this serpent won't again rear its ugly head.

This again is complete Bullocks. The Shiny water issue has been resolved for a LONG time. What the hell is this guy even bringing it up for?? Hell it was *fixed* by the developer/ATi in the Cat 3.4's AS for Flickering shadows and AA not working. I have NEVER seen a problem like this in my testing.

He is making this comment based on nothing but old Message board posts not his own observation. :rolleyes:

Hellbinder
10-08-03, 05:31 PM
I just really took notice of this part. Cant believe i missed it before.

we have seen indications that there weren't any issues with ATI cards when Neverwinter was released, and that future driver versions broke functionality for the game

Um.. HELLO The game was clearly NOT working when it was innitially released. No Shiny water other issues. Becuase Franky the Developer put Code in there that only worked correctly on Nvidia hardware. They Did it on purpose to.

Later Patches to the game and a Driver update from ATi fixed the issues.

Talk about completely screwing the story up.... :rolleyes:

surfhurleydude
10-08-03, 05:31 PM
Shut up about whining and moaning about trivial crap. You should be moaning about how the clockspeed the card ran at while using OverDrive was not mentioned anywhere in the article...

Some places say that the core will OC to 432 at the highest, but fails to mention how high the RAM OCs. If the only thing that OCs is the core, I think that the additional FPS accumulated aren't that bad for a mere 20 MHz increase. If I had the card and bumped the core and RAM up a little bit more, the increases could more than double the lead that the 9800 XT currently has over the 9800 Pro.

Hellbinder
10-08-03, 05:36 PM
Your right... sheesh.. ok slap me with Reality see if I care...

You are also right that the ram is not overclocked in this test. Actually Depending on the temp of the card it might have only been running at 419 not 432.

With a 1 FPS increase or less here and there I am thinking it looks like 419.

hmmm. This is a much better subject to get my nickers in a wad over.. Thanks man! :D

/hellbinder sneeks off to take his medication

ChrisRay
10-08-03, 05:45 PM
Originally posted by Hellbinder
I just really took notice of this part. Cant believe i missed it before.

Um.. HELLO The game was clearly NOT working when it was innitially released. No Shiny water other issues. Becuase Franky the Developer put Code in there that only worked correctly on Nvidia hardware. They Did it on purpose to.

Later Patches to the game and a Driver update from ATi fixed the issues.

Talk about completely screwing the story up.... :rolleyes:

Actually they have got this kind of messed up. Shiny Water was originally in the original NWN. But they had rendering issues with it and canned it and later reimplemented it.

The rendering issues I can verify with the game are small things like texture variations. For some reason textures look different on my Geforce 4 TI 4200 compared to my 9500 Pro. Not really worse. But different. Like Vases. Floors, Ect. All have different colors. I cant really explain it.

Shiny Water is working as intended now tho. The issues with its reflective surfaces has been fixed. And it's no surprise they could not find a problem with it. I must wonder why they would mention it if they could not find it.

Hellbinder
10-08-03, 06:08 PM
You know, the more I look through this new 3.8 performance review the more I just dont like it.

Why?

Becuase of the total LACK of showing different settings. For instance TRAOD shown 1600x1200 and 1600x1200 with 2x FSAA.

I mean.. WTH is that all about?? Is that really what settings people are going to be playing this game at? ATi says as much as a 20% increase in performance in TRAOD due to Z-Buffer optimizations. Well you sure as hell are not going to see that at 1600x1200 where other limitation are holding the card down, like Fill-Rate.

Every one of these Game tests should be shown at

1024x768 and 1280x1024 with 4xFSAA and 8x AF. These are clearly going to be the most common setings for cards like these. Especially 1280x1024 at 4x+8x.

Function5
10-08-03, 08:10 PM
Yeah really, everything is so tiny in 16x12 on my 17".

digitalwanderer
10-08-03, 08:12 PM
Meh, it's Anands...don't tell me you take that place seriously anymore? :eek2:

Rogozhin
10-08-03, 08:16 PM
NWN has always been a buggy mess and the fact that they didn't get the story straight (by asking the bioware boys themselves) reeks of unprofessionalism.

rogo

Sotos
10-09-03, 11:01 AM
Originally posted by Rogozhin
NWN has always been a buggy mess and the fact that they didn't get the story straight (by asking the bioware boys themselves) reeks of unprofessionalism.

rogo

The Neverwinter Nights runs great with 3.8 and latest patch
And faster from Geforce cards even with 4 samples enabled

I am sure he is wrong or probably not used the latest NWN patch for his review

Neverwinter runds GREAT with ATI CARDS and even better from the Geforce FX cards with Fsaa

digitalwanderer
10-09-03, 11:11 AM
Originally posted by Sotos
I am sure he is wrong
I think that sums up the review best. :)

Sotos
10-09-03, 11:25 AM
Originally posted by digitalwanderer
I think that sums up the review best. :)

I just tested

Neverwinter Nights shadows of the Undetride (latest Version 1.32)
with Catal 3.8

The game is played MAGNIFICENT EVEN with 1280x1024 with everything set High and Fsaa Nice 4 samples and is fully playable with only a very small lag in certain big populated areas (even in 1600x1200 is still playable with no big loss in speed)

NO Graphic corruption no slow motion speed with Fsaa
It is played excellent with latest ATI drivers

I have made some SCREENSHOT but it saved me at TARGA extension so it does not look High res

I can show you some screenshots with NWN(v1.32) with Catal 3.8 if i can take a proper screenshot non TARGA extension

Anyway ANANDTECH is surely wrong about these game and latest ATI drivers

Edit
Anyway can someone tell me how i will import a screenshot??? because it seems i do it wrong :D