![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, April 14, 2004
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
GeForce 6800Ultra Preview
We test the reference GeForce 6800Ultra (NV40) comparing it to a GeForceFX 5950Ultra and an ATI Radeon 9800XT. We focus on pure gameplay performance and image quality.
Anti-Aliasing:
Since NVIDIA is now using a new Anti-Aliasing method we need to compare it in a game. For this we are going to use Unreal Tournament 2004 in the Ons_Torlan map, as this engine has always shown to be a good challenge for NVIDIA and their AA technology.
In the screenshots above we have taken a section from the Ons_Torlan map in UT2004 and zoomed in 200% so that you can take a good look at what each card is doing. We do have non-zoomed in images in each game on the following pages, as we do understand you will not be playing games in Photoshop!
There are two things that we notice most with this comparison. 4XAA is greatly improved on the 6800Ultra vs. the 5950Ultra. 4XAA on the GeForce 6800Ultra looks very similar to the Radeon 9800XT 4XAA image. The second thing is comparing the 8XAA of the GeForce cards to the 6XAA of the Radeon 9800XT video card. They are very close, but upon very close inspection it appears that the 6XAA of the Radeon 9800XT is actually producing a better Anti-Aliased image on the top railing of the wall. However, along the side edge of the wall it appears there is no AA happening on the 9800XT where as the GeForce 6800U is AA’ing that edge. Both are very close though, and its interesting that ATI’s 6XAA is comparable to NVIDIA’s 8XAA quality in these screenshots.
Now we can go on and talk about AA beyond 4X all day long, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of people playing games very rarely use it. NVIDIA has undoubtedly stepped back up to the plate in terms of AA, and our following gameplay evaluations will show that.
Filtering:
The first shot above is comparing 8XAF on all of the video cards. We do notice a couple of things between the 5950U shot and the 6800U shot. When we flipped back and forth between the pictures on our computer what we see is that the floor is having better AF being applied to it on the GeForce 6800Ultra. Near to the camera and far from the camera the floor is sharper and less blurred on the 6800Ultra. However, on the two slanted walls to the left and right at the very end of them it appears to get slightly blurrier on the 6800Ultra compared to the 5950Ultra. When we flipped the picture back and forth between the 6800Ultra and the 9800XT we found the slanted walls to be rendered comparably between the two. However, the floor is slightly sharper on the GeForce 6800Ultra.
In the second picture above we compare 8XAF on the 5950Ultra to 16XAF on the 6800Ultra and 9800XT. When we flip the picture back and forth between the 5950U and the 6800U we definitely see an improvement in the floor textures with 16XAF. However, we still see the slanted wall slightly more blurred toward the far end. With 16XAF compared between the 9800XT and the 6800U, the images are extremely close. Only through flipping the static images back and forth do we see that the 6800U has a slightly sharper floor texture. In-game though AF IQ between the 6800U and 9800XT are comparable.
On the previous page we saw that turning Trilinear Optimizations Off did give us full Trilinear Filtering. Now let’s see if what we saw in that application test shows up in a real game. If you look at the screenshot above what you see is that we took a screenshot with the Mip-Map levels highlighted in UT2004. Though the image is JPEG compressed, you can still clearly see the difference in Mip-Map transitions between Trilinear Optimizations On and Trilinear Optimizations Off.