Toms review on Ati's filtering....

[Jarred]

I'm kinda dissapointed they didn't show more stills and comparisons. but heres an interesting qoute.

"Even before ATI responded to this, we asked ID Software, on whose 3D engine the game Call Of Duty is based, about this topic and the different performance with and without colored mipmaps:

This is indeed a "cheat" that both major vendors now do. Instead of always sampling the two adjacent mip map levels and doing a full blend between them, they have plateaus where only a single mip level is sampled, reducing the average samples from 8 to about 6.
It is actually a pretty sensible performance enhancement, with minimal visual issues. However, having drivers analyze mip map uploads to hide the cheat is an unfortunate consequence.

The colored mip map option in Q3 should have absolutely zero performance impact in the absence of performance options like this."

John Carmack

[RobHague]

The best quote from the article...

ATi deserves credit for the fact that the image quality of the cards is not visibly compromised by this filtering; at least no example has yet been seen of this.

GameSpot just posted it up as news today too, with the earth shattering title ATI admits to same "tricks" as Nvidia which is rather a misleading title once u actually read it but there you go.

[Jarred]

The best quote from the article...



GameSpot just posted it up as news today too, with the earth shattering title ATI admits to same "tricks" as Nvidia which is rather a misleading title once u actually read it but there you go.

I thought this one was kinda interesting too

"All Filter optimizations discussed here aim to increase the performance of the graphics cards without materially reducing image quality. The word "materially" is, however, subjective - depending on the optimization used, a loss in quality is perceptible when taking a closer look. Even if the quality in screenshots is OK, a running game is often a different chapter. Annoying effects (moiré, flickering) can crop up that were not noticeable on screenshots."

[RobHague]

He seems to contradict himself dont he lol.

Thankfully i cant say ive noticed any of the problems he mentioned so far, but ive only been playing FarCry and BloodRayne... *shrugs*

[Jarred]

He seems to contradict himself dont he lol.

Thankfully i cant say ive noticed any of the problems he mentioned so far, but ive only been playing FarCry and BloodRayne... *shrugs*

this ones silly too

"ATi has not provided information about the way the driver works and has declared numerous times that it is offering true trilinear filtering. Only since the discovery was made has ATI admitted that the filtering is optimized. Hopefully this type of adaptivity is not being used in other places in the driver . "

lets hope.

i'm just disapointed he didn't compare the two cards more, like, heres a shot optimized, heres a shot not optimized, becasue they really didn't give a clear answer to the biggest question.

[cthellis]

The language is just going to get more and more complex. Both vendors offer "16x AF" as well, though their methods are adaptive and certainly not providin 16x everywhere (and most people won't know what they're getting where).

At some point people will just have to wonder what the words really MEAN to each other. The enthusiasts will just be making up their own... ;)

[Drumphil]

The idea of adaptive filtering itself isn't bad.. Having full 16xAF everywhere is stupid.. What does doing 16xAF on a surface thats facing the viewer achieve for IQ?? NOTHING!!. People need to remember what AF filtering is for in the first place. If there is no angle, there is no need for AF. Of course just to make it more confusing people mix up adaptive trilinear and adaptive AF, which are not the same thing.

[Ruined]

ATI's "adaptive" filtering was found to do the same percentage of bilinear filtering as Nvidia's "brilinear"... While I agree its good to have an optimization like this available to increase performance, on such a high end card that already gets ridiculously killer framerates in most games, the user should be able to disable the optimizations on the ATI card.

[Drumphil]

yes.

[dan2097]

ATI's "adaptive" filtering was found to do the same percentage of bilinear filtering as Nvidia's "brilinear"... While I agree its good to have an optimization like this available to increase performance, on such a high end card that already gets ridiculously killer framerates in most games, the user should be able to disable the optimizations on the ATI card.

That was when it was tricked into being non adaptive. i.e. the base fiiltering is comparable to Nvidias brilinear. What we dont know is whether if ixbt hadnt purposefully set out to trick the algorithm into using brilinear whether that test would of actually got trilinear :)

That basically means that ATIs adaptive filtering has to be the same or BETTER than Nvidias brilinear, although I think the article did say that there were some areas ATIs could theoretically make it more open to moire.

They've done an article (albiet only in russian currently) looking at actual games:
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/nv40-rx800-5-p1.shtml

[Bad_Boy]

http://techreport.com/etc/2004q2/filtering/index.x?pg=1
they seem preety mad about the subject ;x




What to make of all this?
Whatever the merits of ATI's adaptive trilinear filtering algorithm, ATI appears to have intentionally deceived members of the press, and by extension, the public, by claiming to use "full" trilinear filtering "all of the time" and recommending the use of colored mip map tools in order to verify this claim. Encouraging reviewers to make comparisons to NVIDIA products with NVIDIA's similar trilinear optimizations turned off compounded the offense. Any points ATI has scored on NVIDIA over the past couple of years as NVIDIA has been caught in driver "optimizations" and the like are, in my book, wiped out.

[astroguy]

The bad thing about ATI's brilinear filtering isn't that they are using it, but as mainly focused on the article, is the fact that ATI repeatedly denied the fact that it was using brilinear filtering, and even said competitors using brilinear filtering made it an unfair comparison for ATI and the competitor(nvidia).

Conclusion: ati is a cheater and liar.. :)

[911medic]

Hi all--new here (after lurking for some time). Just thought I'd post this link here as well. Seems this German site has been able to completely disable ATi's filtering optimizations, and then benched them against the 'trylinear,' and application-controlled settings. Sorry if this has been posted here before; I looked, but didn't see it.
http://www.guru3d.com/news.php#1568

[Skynet]

ATI's "adaptive" filtering was found to do the same percentage of bilinear filtering as Nvidia's "brilinear"...
How do you define percentage? % of rendering work done? Not sure what you mean by this, explain.