Nvidia caught "over optimising" with 6000 series and up

GrayFox

The chaps from 3D Center, a very talented in-depth site, spotted and tested and proved that Nvidia is using a lower anisotropic filtering quality than any other card available.

Those guys noticed a texture shimmering problem when you are using normal driver settings. This was the case with NV40 cards but you could resolve this flickering by using high quality driver settings. This won't work on G70 based cards, so the guys well known for its thorough benchmarks went digging a little deeper into the chip.

It turns out that Nvidia is not doing anisotropic filtering the way it should and that the picture quality is the one to suffer. You will get the shimmering effect on your textures whenever you are using Geforce 7800GTX cards but you won't see this using Radeon cards.

The guys claimed that all NV40 and G70 cards will suffer from the same flickering problem and that these cards have "by far worse AF quality". They also add that Nvidia got the flickering because it was using general under sampling and as a result is getting the flickers. It's interesting to note that older Geforce 5800 Ultra won't suffer from this, just the new cards that 6800 or 7800 based.

Another German web site Computerbase , went a step further. It made a custom driver by changing the inf, where the driver could not recognise 7800GTX and use its optimisations. The card was listed as unknown but was working just fine. But when the guys went testing they noticed a massive performance drop when using those drivers, close to 30 percent and related it to anisotropic filtering. Nvidia has a lot to explain.

Source The Inquirer

ryko

ha ha...i knew their new stuff seemed too good to be true. nvidia has lost my respect. this is like the 3rd time they have been caught "cheating" in their drivers. :shakehead

i have always leaned towards ATI, and this article reminds me why....

jradmin

I've never noticed any shimmering, and I'm using 2 of em. Maybe its just THEIR cards.

GrayFox

ryko wrote:

ha ha...i knew their new stuff seemed too good to be true. nvidia has lost my respect. this is like the 3rd time they have been caught "cheating" in their drivers. :shakehead

i have always leaned towards ATI, and this article reminds me why....

Exactly what I think. (I was very close to getting a 7800).

jradmin wrote:

I've never noticed any shimmering, and I'm using 2 of em. Maybe its just THEIR cards.

Could just be your not good at noticing it.

entropy

As much as I'd like to believe it, I'm not sure. I'll wait for a video and detailed descriptions of what it is and how it works.

Nosferatu

I have no preference toward any card, I've been through Intel, 3DFX, ATI, and NVIDIA cards/chips. I only bought NVIDIA this time around because they had the fastest cards at the time and because their linux drivers out-perform ATI's by far. However, remember that both ATI and NVIDIA have been caught "cheating" with their drivers in the past. I personally don't use AF (or AA for that matter) because I always choose FPS over quality, so I could care less. Though I do frown upon it by any company, if it proves to be true.

Nightwolf

is this with all their drivers?

ryko

entropy wrote:

As much as I'd like to believe it, I'm not sure. I'll wait for a video and detailed descriptions of what it is and how it works.

follow the linkage...

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/g70_flimmern/index2_e.php

or if you can read german...

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2005/bericht_nvidias_g70_texturen/6/

djstubbs

This is definitely a problem I hope they fix.

GrayFox

djstubbs wrote:

This is definitely a problem I hope they fix.

If you read the links you would see the card slows down 40% when a home brewed patched driver was used.

test_tube_tony

its barely noticable with my 6600gt. frankly, it doesnt bother me that much. i like nvidia because of the driver interface and windows enhancements with effects and what not. i built a system with a 9800 pro 128 bit card, and it just didnt seem right. maybe because i have always liked nvidia cards better, and it was bugging me mentally.

CB

I'm with Tony. If it's not a problem that I could even notice (either because I don't care, or because I don't have the skills) Then it doesn't bother me.

Reminds me of how the guys always used to try to convince me that I needed better speakers for my car. I could see the stats. I knew that the speakers they showed me were 'better' for performance, but when it came down to it, my ears can't tell the difference among Bose, Pioneer, Klipsh, or Genaric.

Frankly, I feel that it is a blessing that I can't tell the difference, cause then I don't have to spend so much...

GHoosdum

Dude, you had 4" paper cone buzzers in your doors, and the cone was seperated from the frame - we were trying to convince you to get speakers that at least reproduced sound in a way that didn't cause the human ear to bleed!

Tony - unless I'm reading the description of the problem incorrectly, the issue does not appear with the 6600 series, just the 6800 and 7800 series cards, so you shouldn't see it at all.

On the topic of the performance hit, I'm not certain that the homebrewed driver is 100% accurate in reproducing the performance that a non "over optimised" nVidia driver would produce...

djstubbs

The problem is noticeable for me in BF2, but it's along the lines of artifacting more or less.

It's flashing textures of all kinds.