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Llama
High Emperor
Joined: 11 Oct 2001
Posts: 509
Location: Earth |
quote:
I will surely use it when I will upgrade my current GForce2 GTS (if I will upgrade it).
Don't forget to check out all your options though, make sure it's the right card for you.
Ati cards
Nvidia cards |
Wed Apr 24, 2002 1:56 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
What is AF? |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 1:58 pm |
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Hokum
Village Dweller
Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 11
Location: Manchester UK |
Hi, my second post, i like the 8500 (retail one here) and i thought that the game graphics where nice and Clean, ie no fancy features like morrowind (its gone gold yay, i think i'll have a heart attack from sheer joy) but i thought the low (1024x768) res was bad and looks blocky on my 21" trinitron.
May be it its lo res for an xbox version?  but with 2x AA and and anistropic filtering it looks sweet.
_________________
Sane: to know when your doing something crazy |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 2:01 pm |
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Hokum
Village Dweller
Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 11
Location: Manchester UK |
AF=anistropic filtering
_________________
Sane: to know when your doing something crazy |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 2:02 pm |
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Llama
High Emperor
Joined: 11 Oct 2001
Posts: 509
Location: Earth |
Anisotropic Filtering
Here is the defenition:
quote:
Anisotropic means "non-uniform shape" and it is because this filtering technique works on non-uniform, or uneven, shaped areas that it is more powerful, and takes much more processing power, than point sampling, bi-linear or tri-linear filtering.
One of the problems with these methods is that they rely on a square as their sampling area and are, therefore, only effective on surfaces at right angles to the viewer. The sampling area used by these methods is, in fact, circular but, as they all base their calculations on a 2 x 2 pixel area within that circle, the area they work on is effectively square. When a surface is at an angle to the viewer, an area on the surface that appears to the viewer to be circular is, in fact, elliptical in shape if the viewpoint is moved so that the surface is seen square on. Anisotropic texture filtering calculates the shape of this ellipse, maps it onto the required texture and then takes an average of the colours from up to 32 texels within the ellipse to decide what colour should be plotted onto the target surface. Since the ellipse can have any ratio between its height and width, depending on the angle it is tilted at with respect to the viewer, the arrangement of the texels to be sampled can only be calculated at runtime and will rarely consist of rows or columns of an equal number of texels. It is from this variable arrangement that the label "anisotropic" comes.
The Radeon cards and GeForce 4 cards do AF very differently but get the same looking results in the end. The only difference is, ATi has made their cards so the performance hit is so small you can't tell.
Nvidia claims that ATi's approach is not accurate and say that ATi cheats on their AF technology because they only do bilinear AF, and the GeForce Ti cards do bilinear AF, the silly thing is, like I said, the end result is identical in terms of visual quality but one is playable, the other suffers too badly in certain cases.  |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 2:04 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
quote:
Originally posted by Hokum
Hi, my second post, i like the 8500 (retail one here) and i thought that the game graphics where nice and Clean, ie no fancy features like morrowind (its gone gold yay, i think i'll have a heart attack from sheer joy) but i thought the low (1024x768) res was bad and looks blocky on my 21" trinitron.
May be it its lo res for an xbox version? but with 2x AA and and anistropic filtering it looks sweet.
Hi Hokum,
it is possible to encrease resolution. You must manually edit config files but it is not difficult or dangerous. So if you have PC that is strong enough and when you have such BIG monitor, try this: (as Incidium said in one previous post):
edit your system_details.gas file
add a
[1280x1024] { max_back_buffers = 2; }
line or the res u want to the appropriate [resolutions] section... then use the DSVideoConfig.exe to select it as your resolution... |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 2:17 pm |
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Hokum
Village Dweller
Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 11
Location: Manchester UK |
yeh i noticed that but i'm at work so there aint much i can do till i get home
_________________
Sane: to know when your doing something crazy |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 3:10 pm |
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TheSmJ
Village Dweller
Joined: 22 Apr 2002
Posts: 15
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Llama,
Where have you heard about the 8500 having the ability to run DX9 with nothing but a driver upgrade? I have been reading about the card for a week, and never read anything about it being DX9-able, and on the ATi message boards, they are all talking about the ATi300 (I think that was the name....) and how that will be faster, as well as DX9 compadible, and so on.
Could you post the link/links where you heard this? Also, where you have heard the GF4 not supporting new 8.1 features.
Thanks |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 4:56 pm |
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Llama
High Emperor
Joined: 11 Oct 2001
Posts: 509
Location: Earth |
I don't keep a list of links around, but I remember reading it on the rage3d forums a while back.
One of the highly respected members at the forum who always got his hands on the "new drivers" and leaked them for the fans was talking about the stuff behind the scenes.
It's not full DX 9.0 support, but ATi can release driver updates designed specifically to give the 8500 users extra longevity by adding partial 9.0 support. Engine specific cycles will have to be done in software, but he was commenting that some aspects of the DX update can be written into ATi's drivers since Microsoft is using the R250 engine (the one that powers the Radeon 8500 series) to make DX 9.0
Regarding the G4, umm...the press releases and reviews. There are a few that mention lack of 8.1 support, others don't bother, but in 99% of the 8500 series reviews you'll notice that 8.1 support is mentioned.
You realize that the G4 is not a new card don't you? It's just a G3 on crack. The G4 has an extra pixel shader in their "new" nfinite II engine. Since they used the G3 tech they kept the 8.0 support only, with 8.1 drivers, big difference.
If you think about the performance of the G4, it's honestly rather sad. Look at the Ti4600 versus a Radeon 8500. Look at the frame rate difference of ~30-50 fps. While that may seem all grand, it's not that big of a deal because when you turn on anisotropic filtering the g4 performance goes through the floor.
Now look at the memory clock speeds. The 8500 retail is at 275/275 and the 8500LE is at 250/250. The Ti4600 is at 300/650 for it's memory, with speed like that you would assume it would be able to blitz anything rated at 250/250 or 275/275 but it doesn't...
The way I see it, nVidia doesn't truely have any revolutionary ideas, they simply make a card, stream line it for basic benchmarks without all the bells and whistles turned on and throw it to the market knowing that people will blinded purchase it because it scored a 11,000 on 3dmark. Because of this blind ignorance from consumers, nVidia gets even more powerful in the market due to earnings and they are able to "donate" large sums of money to developers to "push" them to develop a game that utilizes the one decent feature the card has (the programable vertex shading engine). Then you have powerhouses like Microsoft that develop the software for these developers to program using ATi because they know ATi has the technological power to create new features.
Just look at what each card offers, remove the mindset that 3dmark scores mean everything, then realize that the human eye/brain cannot distinguish anything faster than 60fps.
The GeForce4 Ti cards are powerful, but they aren't worth it. They offer nothing new to the graphics scene IMO. |
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Wed Apr 24, 2002 8:39 pm |
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TheSmJ
Village Dweller
Joined: 22 Apr 2002
Posts: 15
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Well, while I admit the 8500 has better quality graphics compared to the G4, every test I have seen, EVERY test, the higher G4s (the upcoming 4200, and up) beat the 8500 hands down on all tests, every single one.... If you could show me a site that shows the 8500 beating any of the G4 TIs, when using AA, AF, whatever... please post it.
Also, I checked around, and all the reviews I have read state that the G4 Ti series are FULLY 8.1 COMPLIANT... so I dunno... |
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Thu Apr 25, 2002 4:25 am |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
I have here another way how to run this game in higher resolutions
"....DungeonSiege.exe" height=1200 width=1600
place this or anything you want after your shortcut. |
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Thu Apr 25, 2002 8:32 am |
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JadeDragon
Village Dweller
Joined: 21 Apr 2002
Posts: 19
Location: Netherlands |
| Re: What's up with the meager graphics? |
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quote:
Originally posted by Steel
Am I blind or do the graphics just plain suck? At 1024x768x32 w/ max'ed Object Detail, the textures look like any other game would when you pick the lowest detail! I'm using an ELSA Gladiac GF2, so it's not like I have some left-wing video card or anything. Does anyone else feel that the textures are quite lame?
Hi. I had the same problem you're having (I have an GF2 GTS too): blurry graphics and meager facial animatios. This can be corrected by going to the options-tab for your videocard, then to DirectX options, and then by selecting the "Best Image Quality" from the performance list. |
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Thu Apr 25, 2002 9:52 am |
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Llama
High Emperor
Joined: 11 Oct 2001
Posts: 509
Location: Earth |
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/radeon_8500aiw(5).shtml
Scroll down to the anisotropic only (no FSAA) benchmark you'll see the 8500 wipe the floor with the G4 Ti4600. With AA on the 4600 gets a lead back because of its quicker RAM, but I've already touched on that subject in a previous thread.
If you've ever seen AF in all its glory, you'd understand why it's such a cool feature. I'll be running Morrowind with max AF on just to get all the beauty out of the game. |
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Thu Apr 25, 2002 1:12 pm |
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Hokum
Village Dweller
Joined: 24 Apr 2002
Posts: 11
Location: Manchester UK |
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm morrowind..........just counting the days till it pops through my door..... 
_________________
Sane: to know when your doing something crazy |
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Fri Apr 26, 2002 12:12 pm |
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