ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup

The differences between zero anisotropic filtering and 8x filtering is small, but not too subtle. If you look along the walls of the stairs, you will notice that the gaps between the bricks become more vivid with each level. Comparing the samples of the 3 different chipsets against each other, I can say that there appears to be little difference. Perhaps the distance between the viewer and the sample is too great to create a substantial difference between the cards.

Anisotropic filtering quality (mid-ground details)

Setting	Ti4800SE	FX5600	R9700
0AF
2AF
4AF
8AF
16AF

• Ti4800SE and Radeon 9700
  The quality of anisotropic filtering between the Ti4800SE and Radeon 9700 are nearly identical. However, the cracks/gaps on the floor tiles and at the base of the statue look more defined on the Radeon 9700. It also appears that the Radeon benefits from a richer color which gives the anisotropic effect more impact (my own subjective opinion, your’s may be different). The differences between 16x AF and 8xAF on the Radeon are negligible, makes me wonder if it’s even worth running 16xAF at all.

• FX5600
  The real surprise is the sample of the FX5600. Looking at the floor tiles at the bottom-right corner of the sample, you can see that it is very blurry. Actually, if you look at the samples of the FX5600 from 0x to 8x you can see that the floor tiles never get sampled at all, whereas the same corner on the Ti4800SE and Radeon 9700 sharpen respectively. Only the textures in the circular pattern ever get filtered. Is anisotropic filtering broken on the FX5600? (Update: (see here).

  Let’s see if this happens with the foreground textures as well.

Anisotropic filtering quality (foreground details)

Setting	Ti4800SE	FX5600	R9700
0AF
2AF
4AF
8AF
16AF

• FX5600
  Here we see again that the FX5600 has problems filtering textures. For some reason it does not appear that anything is getting filtered. Could it be that the current implementation of anisotropic filtering on the FX chipset is partially broken? How can it be that the FX would selectively filter the circular pattern texture in the previous sample, and yet not filter the textures on the floor or on the stairs in the foreground?

• Ti4800SE and Radeon 9700
  Comparing samples at the 8x sampling level, we can see there is a substantial difference between the results of the Ti4800SE and Radeon 9700 when compared to the FX5600. The foreground textures look much sharper and more vivid on the Ti4800SE and Radeon, whereas the textures on the FX5600 look muddy and blurry.

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