Radeon versus Geforce: Visual quality compared in nine games

LoadsaMoney · 17 Dec 2008 at 16:07

Catalyst 8.12 vs. Geforce 180.48: Visual Quality compared: Conclusion
As the comparison reveals, the performance benefits of the Catalyst 8.12 WHQL and the Geforce 180.48 WHQL don't negatively affect the visual appearance.

But in the direct comparison between a current Geforce and a current Radeon differences cannot be dismissed. While Call of Duty: World at War, Fallout 3, Need for Speed: Undercover, Left 4 Dead and Race Driver Grid look almost identical, other titles reveal small differences. In Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 2 and especially Crysis Warhead the textures are sharper on the Radeon indeed, but they also flicker more than on a Geforce if the player is moving. Furthermore it seems like the Radeon renders more shadows in Far Cry 2 since the 8.12 driver was applied.

So which producer offers the better visual quality in current games? AMD has sharper, but flickering textures by trend and Nvidia has the more settled textures. But since a Geforce has the option to force superior HQ anisotropic filtering, the AF is better.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,670510/Reviews/Radeon_versus_Geforce-_Visual_quality_compared_in_nine_games/?article_id=670510&page=1

Rroff · 17 Dec 2008 at 16:10

I love the way you just quote the article any more without putting in any opinion in either direction

LoadsaMoney · 17 Dec 2008 at 16:42

My opinion is that i can't see much difference between them, if any, both are as good as each other, if there are differences, then im not going to spot them while actually playing, as im not going to go right up against every object, and analyze the details of them.

Rroff · 17 Dec 2008 at 16:57

Aside from the extra incidental shadows on the ATI in FC2 and a couple of minor areas with better contrast on ATI - I can't see any differences in most of the images myself.

Chimerical · 17 Dec 2008 at 16:59

The difference seem too small, so no difference really and irl you would notice even less.

Rroff · 17 Dec 2008 at 17:07

the flashlight cast shadows seem smoother on the ATI in left 4 dead as well tho hard to see if its just that one angle or if its the whole game.

AWPC · 17 Dec 2008 at 17:20

Always found ATI gives slightly sharper textures but overall both give very similar IQ anyway. NV are slightly more consistent as they do seem to get less texture flicker.

Fire Wizard · 17 Dec 2008 at 17:26

Image quality is horses for courses in my opinion. If you had a dozen machines setup with 6 being powered by a ATI Radeon graphics card and the other 6 with an Nvidia Geforce card in, I don't think anyone would be able to say, without guessing, which machines have which particular card in.

Devil_Spawn · 17 Dec 2008 at 17:28

texture flicker? cant say ive ever noticed any...

mmj_uk · 17 Dec 2008 at 18:49

The ATI texture flicker is probably down to the angle dependent AF, I have no idea why they went back to that it was a bit of a step backwards really.

Rroff · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:08

I'd have thought it was shimmer rather than flicker...

Geckovich · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:08

The difference between the two on half life 2 seemed massive to me.

Going from ATI 9000 series (if I remember correctly) to ATI x1300, Gefore 8500, 8800 and then back to ATI 4780 the quality always seemed better with the radeons.
For example when you first start in the train the hand rails are silver and reflective on ATI but just flat grey on nVidia and throughout the whole game the shadows seemed crisper and darker on the red team's card.

psychas · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:13

does it say what cards it uses as i can see it ? anyway ati iq is much better

w3bbo · 17 Dec 2008 at 20:19

Prefer NV IQ although I can't really tell that much difference especially not to make me buy one over the other.

CaptainRAVE · 17 Dec 2008 at 21:04

Rroff said:
Aside from the extra incidental shadows on the ATI in FC2 and a couple of minor areas with better contrast on ATI - I can't see any differences in most of the images myself.

+1

Reality|Bites · 17 Dec 2008 at 22:57

the cards drivers probably have different brightness contrast defaults, and what ever else there is? gamma?

arc@css · 18 Dec 2008 at 01:47

Geckovich said:
The difference between the two on half life 2 seemed massive to me.

Going from ATI 9000 series (if I remember correctly) to ATI x1300, Gefore 8500, 8800 and then back to ATI 4780 the quality always seemed better with the radeons.
For example when you first start in the train the hand rails are silver and reflective on ATI but just flat grey on nVidia and throughout the whole game the shadows seemed crisper and darker on the red team's card.

One of the relatively few optimised games of the red team (at time of release of games a lot are optimised for nvidia first then later ati release updates too).

With current models out I would say that ati has better and richer colours, the image can be a little softer - more console like in some games, some lovely lighting but its very close. With nvidia I sometimes notice that you get a slightly better feel of a 3 dimensional image, darker and bolder lines etc. Remember seeing an online match on sky, COD 4, on 360 and PS3 - thought the nvidia graphic looked more realistic but a little more dreary, less game like. Probably why I thought it looked better on the PS3.

VortexA1 · 18 Dec 2008 at 02:36

Well I've gone from an hd3700 to a Nvidia 260-216 and on a crt tv the text looks sharper definitely.

p0rks0da · 18 Dec 2008 at 06:14

The two things that i immediately noticed when i switched to my current 4850 were the lack of digital vibrance control and the inferior transparency antialiasing. After some fiddling in CCC my games didn't look so bad (they were REALLY washed out at first) but i'm still not completely happy. The transparency aa is still good on the Ati cards when set at the highest level, but i think the nVidia implementation looks smoother.

I'm not saying that either of those things make Ati cards a bad buy, i just think nVidia are slightly ahead in those respects.

One thing i am curious about is the water in Fallout 3, on my card i get all kinds of nasty effects around the edges where it meets the land at certain angles. I'm wondering if this is an Ati driver issue, or a problem in the engine itself. Also i get a lot of visible seams in world geometry, but this could be down to bad modeling work.

Anyone with an nVidia card care to comment?

Axil · 18 Dec 2008 at 06:36

Funnily I found exactly the opposite
Having compared a x1900xt, 8800GT , 260GTX (192) and HD4870 - I've alway found the nvidia card to be less precise in the way it renders - the image always looks slightly blurred when compared to the ATI

In oblivion (btw the water issue in fallout is a problem with the engine itself), I far prefer the HDR+AA quality of the ATI card compared to the nvidia (mind you the fact that it works consistently on the ATI card whereas it's flaky as hell on the nvidia card helps there as well.
Both cards have issues in Oblivion - ATI cards seem to have a bug in the way they render refraction shaders whereas the G80 and iterations have serious issues when rendering certain fog/lighting conditions (the nvidia infamous black screen bug - actually it's 3 rendering errors doing the same thing)