Image Quality: ATi 21 - nVidia 15

[impar]

Greetings!

Videocard Image-Quality Shootout

We rely mostly on objective benchmarks here at Maximum PC, especially when it comes to evaluating videocards. It’s just easier to defend a verdict that’s based on frames per second because—assuming you’re using a good benchmark and the same parameters—you’ll get pretty much the exact same number with every run.

Of course, frame rate isn’t everything, especially if your PC’s primary mission is something other than gaming. If you use your computer for editing video, watching movies, or manipulating digital photographs, you’re much more interested in visual quality. Judging image quality, however, is much more difficult because it’s necessarily a subjective task.

But we’ve been hearing whispers from sources (who wish to remain anonymous, although we can tell you they represent neither AMD nor Nvidia) that ATI GPUs deliver better image quality than what Nvidia has to offer. ATI product managers made a similar claim while rolling out their AVIVO technology initiative, but neither AMD nor Nvidia have had much to say on the topic for quite some time.

Never ones to let sleeping dogs lie, we decided it was time to settle this issue Maximum PC style: We gathered a bunch of our game-playing, movie-watching, photo-editing colleagues and challenged them to a blind taste test. Would the consensus opinion favor AMD or Nvidia, or would anyone be able to discern any differences at all?

[-RYknow]

I ussually pick up MPC every month. I did read through that artical. They do make a mistake (at least they did in the mag.) They say that no one chose the Nvidia config all the way accrossed the board, and 3 people had for ATI. But if you look at the graph they shoe, one person did infact chose Nvidia on all the tests.

Anyway, I'm not really surprised. I can remember running an ATI 9550, and my nvidia 7800GT's SLI'ed side by side (two machines), and the ATI looked better image quality wise in C&C Zero Hour.

But...my current rigs all have Nvidia...and my next will!

-RYknow

[Seawolf]

My next rig will prolly be all AMD, depending entirely on when I actually build it

[daglesj]

I remember reading an article several years ago when DVI ports were coming out that said you can improve the image quality from your graphics cards by removing the number of tiny filter caps just behind the DVI/VGA port. They are there for RFI/EMI regs but in actual fact dont really affect anythnig but image clarity.

The recommended iirc to nip/crush them off with long nose pliers.

Never tried it myself.

[flexy123]

i was with AMD/Ati for years and now got a 8800GTS 512MB.

i have to say (subjectively speaking) that ATI has a little better Antialiasing quality, eg. running 4xAA. maybe i am wrong. its just i have 4xAA + transparency AA on as default and i THINK that i still see more jaggies than what i saw with my old X850 and 4xAA.

g.