AMD Radeon 6000 Series Image Quality Analysis
Game Image Quality (HQ)
All game screenshots were done at HQ since anyone that cares enough about image quality will never be running Q. Also we’ve seen plenty of Trackmania examples so we don’t need any more of those. We need original research in other games to see just how widespread the differences between the cards are.
I couldn’t find any examples in-game where AMD’s angle invariance made a difference. That’s not to say there’s no difference out there somewhere, just that it was much easier to find instances of shimmering. I even fired up Descent 3 which allows full 360 degree freedom on all three axes, but I still couldn’t concoct an advantage for AMD.
Note that crawling and shimmering is readily apparent during in-game movement, but is very hard to capture in still screenshots. As an example, I was able to observe visible shimmering in Aliens vs Predator 3 on the 6850 compared to the other two cards, but screenshots failed to show differences. All shots were taken at 2560×1600 with 8xMSAA, and have been substantially zoomed.
5770 Doom 3
6850 Doom 3
470 Doom 3
Above are Doom 3 floor screenshots. The horizontally wide ‘C’ shaped wave patterns are shader aliasing. You can see the patterns are the most pronounced in the 6850 followed by the 5770 and then the 470. Thus the 6850 will shimmer the most in this area during in-game movement, while the 470 will shimmer the least.
5770 Far Cry
6850 Far Cry
470 Far Cry
Above are screenshots of a transparent grating in Far Cry 1. The broken yellow horizontal lines are caused by texture aliasing and also by shader aliasing from the nearby light. Compared to the 470, the 5770 has more such lines in the forward section while the 6850 has more in the back section.
5770 Half-Life 2
6850 Half-Life 2
470 Half-Life 2
The final screenshots are from a metallic wall in Half-Life 2. The dark diagonal lines moving leftward that run across the images are caused by shader aliasing. The 5770 has more lines than the 470 so it will shimmer more during movement. Also the gray door is noticeably blurrier on the 5770 compared to the 470.
The 6850 actually has perfect image quality with no discernible shader aliasing until you hit the watermark to the right of the image. There the shader aliasing suddenly appears again, and it moves with you during in-game movement creating a hard transition which is visibly distracting.
After looking at those images for a long time my head hurts *dizzy*
Great article.
Although “Both vendors degrade image quality at default driver settings” may sound a bit missleading. Because AMD lowered default IQ historicaly speaking. I mean compared to previous drivers and previous cards.
ysondurr, the comment referred to the fact that both vendors’ image quality increases when running HQ compared to their default settings.
excellent review
i’m translating another article from Rage3D regarding the same subject – image quality comparision between AMD & NVIDIA’s latest graphics. i read both articles, they are both great but i still feel something lacks. besides the AA & AF and few zoomed game image comparision, i think it better to add more games to compare the overall image feeling. because there are a lot of arguments in my country stating that AMD provides much better image quality in both games and video-playback than nVidia. but for my personal experience i think nVidia graphics provide much more natural images. so i search the web and found Rage3D’s article last month and translating it. haven’t finished the translation due to recently increased payload in work. the AA & AF quality comparision would be a great proof to “who’s better”, but people will have another quesion. it seems that sometimes AMD offers a more colorful image while nVidia’s is a bit flat, is this a type of image quality issue? i read some reviews but they never regard this as an image quality issue. however people in my country think it as an image quality issue. what’s your opinion dear Mr. BFG10K?
and finally, can i put this article in my translation works?
thx
kiss4luna,
Though I’ve seen many such claims over the years, I’ve never seen any evidence of this so called “extra vibrance”, aside from nVidia’s old digital vibrance setting. In 3D gaming the colors have always looked identical to me with both vendors. I think it’s a placebo effect similar to how some individuals keep stating that each new driver is “smoother” and has “better IQ” than the old one when in reality nothing has changed.
Feel free to translate the article but give full linkage and credit to ABT. We want the traffic coming here.
Thank you, BFG10K. You have my words 😉
What I find surprising is that you haven’t noticed that the 470 can’t render a circle!
Real Life, the term for the circle is “angle invariance”, and I mention it several times in my article.
I don’t recall AMD ever claiming MLAA to be faster than MSAA. I do recall them saying it offers performance that of edge detect aka CFAA.
If you reviewed this with the thought that MLAA was intended to be an end all AA feature, then you have the wrong mind set and your conclusion is going to reflect that.
In my finding thus far, it works brilliantly in games with half AA or no AA(differed render’s) AND with a limited color spectrum. High contrast color edges will give a nasty result like many of the games you tested.
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