Image Quality – Doom 3
Our IQ Testing
Continuing on with the trend started in our Source Engine article last month, our IQ testing is formatted as you see below. We have included 4 total images this time for your comparison, each of them lableled with the card, resolution and image quality settings that they were run at. First, the thumbnail gives you a brief look at the area, though not with enough detail to make a IQ comparison yourself. The “Full Size” image is a link to full resolution image, in this case 500×500 pixels, in its origial form, just cropped for easy viewing. The “Enlarged 200%” image is jus what is says, the same image enlarged to 1000×1000 pixels to better show the detail. These images will show the faults of each cards rendering more easily but also more dramatically than you would see in-game. Finally, the last image is the “Original Image” at the 1024×768 resolution that we cropped the 500×500 pixel section from.
Doom 3 – Antialiasing Quality
With all the excitment about Doom 3 it made perfect sense to use it for some of our image quality testing. Gamers are expecting to see the best quality from Doom 3, and comparing the quality from the NVIDIA and ATI cards should tell us if they are providing gaming experiences on the same level.
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For judging the AA quality of the two cards, we are looking at this section of our benchmark run through. The spot to pay attention to is the area where the hand rail intersects with the light and surrounding areas. Here you can see the aliasing that takes place. On both the NVIDIA and ATI cards, without and AA enabled, there is a lot of aliasing taking place.
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From these images, both renderings are very similar, with a very slight “softness” lead going to the ATI X700 rendering. This is nothing that would really be noticeable during the gameplay of Doom 3.
Doom 3 – Anisotropic Filtering Quality
For our AF testing, I decided to utilize the same IQ functions that a gamer would use, and simple test the Doom 3 engine in Medium Quality mode versus High Quality mode.
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These shots are done in Medium Quality mode. Here, keep an eye on the area to the left of target icon as well as the floor area above it.
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Both cards are again doing very good jobs rendering the Doom 3 engine here even with their optimizations enabled. The X700 card shows to be just as sharp and clear on the AF testing as the NVIDIA screenshot.
