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Thread: ATI Driver Cheating???

  1. #1
    Ultimate Member CrazyCrusher's Avatar
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    ATI Driver Cheating???

    Just weeks after Nvidia was rumored to have cheated with their drivers the ball is now firmly in ATi’s court as they’ve been accused of doing exactly the same. Obviously neither manufacturer will tell you straight up that they reduced image quality in order to boost performance. Both will sugar coat their responses and come up with all sorts of excuses to soften the blow, at the end of the day any reduction in image quality to up the performance is regarded a cheat by most. As we mentioned before we’re not always against such optimizations or shortcuts as we’d rather call them, because sometimes it is utter nonsense to render every pixel fully. In this case the discussion is about trilinear filtering, let me quote ATi’s official response first before taking a closer look at what ATi has been doing with their filtering:

    Full story Below, draw you own conclucion.

    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1715/

  2. #2
    Hired Geek fishybawb's Avatar
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    Good find. I've stopped caring about this whole issue to be honest - microscopes to analyse screenshots? Don't these people have lives?

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    By Sander Sassen eh?

    Ati's response:

    ATI have given Driverheaven a response to recent claims which have been circulating on the internet

    There has been a lot of discussion about our trilinear filtering algorithms recently.

    The objective of trilinear filtering is to make transitions between mipmap levels as near to invisible as possible. As long as this is achieved, there is no right or wrong way to implement the filtering.

    We have added intelligence to our filtering algorithm to increase performance without affecting image quality. As some people have discovered, it is possible to show differences between our filtering implementations for the RADEON 9800XT and RADEON X800. However, these differences can only be seen by subtracting before and after screenshots and amplifying the result. No-one has claimed that the differences make one implementation better than another.

    Our algorithm for image analysis-based texture filtering techniques is patent-pending. It works by determining how different one mipmap level is from the next and then applying the appropriate level of filtering. It only applies this optimization to the typical case specifically, where the mipmaps are generated using box filtering. Atypical situations, where each mipmap could differ significantly from the previous level, receive no optimizations. This includes extreme cases such as colored mipmap levels, which is why tests based on color mipmap levels show different results. Just to be explicit: there is no application detection going on; this just illustrates the sophistication of the algorithm.

    We encourage users to experiment with moving the texture preference slider from Quality towards Performance you will see huge performance gains with no effect on image quality until the very end, and even then, the effect is hardly noticeable. We are confident that we give gamers the best image quality at every performance level.

    Microsoft does set some standards for texture filtering and the companys WHQL process includes extensive image quality tests for trilinear filtering and mipmapping. CATALYST passes all these tests and without application detection, which could be used if you wanted to get a lower-quality algorithm go undetected through the tests.

    Finally, ATI takes image quality extremely seriously and we are confident that we set the bar for the whole industry. We dont undertake changes to our filtering algorithms lightly, and perform considerable on-line and off-line image analysis before implementing changes. This algorithm has been in public use for over a year in our RADEON 9600 series products, and we have not received any adverse comments on image quality in that time. If anyone does find any quality degradation as a result of this algorithm, they are invited to report it to ATI. If there is a problem, we will fix it.
    As they say, the AA system/technique has been in use for years now.

    --Jakk

  4. #4
    Ultimate Member CrazyCrusher's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
    By Sander Sassen eh?

    Ati's response:



    As they say, the AA system/technique has been in use for years now.

    --Jakk
    and the point is?

    as I said draw your own conclusions.
    Last edited by CrazyCrusher; 05-18-2004 at 01:22 PM.

  5. #5
    Ultimate Member CrazyCrusher's Avatar
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    Originally posted by fishybawb
    Good find. I've stopped caring about this whole issue to be honest - microscopes to analyse screenshots? Don't these people have lives?
    I don’t think they do, to be honest, but hey, it happened to NVIDIA now looks like its happening to ATI, I honestly don’t care, but there is a point to this post, I am waiting to see who justifies.

  6. #6
    Ultimate Member Rugor's Avatar
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    The issue has been covered in much more detail in the forums at Beyond3D than in the Hardware Analysis article.

    As far as can be determined, it's an adaptive system and nobody has noticed before now, so at least it's much less obtrusive than the "brilinear" Nvidia first introduced.
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    Take it up with Ati, be quick about it though:

    http://www.ati.com/online/chat/

    --Jakk

  8. #8
    Ultimate Member CrazyCrusher's Avatar
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    As I said Before People draw your own conclusion. I said before people try to justify something when it’s someone else, me I could give a hoot. NVIDIA is no better than ATI as ATI is not better than NVIDIA I don’t care about who tries to Justify what, what I care about is ATI is in the same ship, NVIDIA tried to resolve that Issue with there drivers and the so called "cheat” but it didn’t work, its going to be the same as ATI is doing now, trying to Justify what they did to make there drivers better, me? I’m all for making the drivers and Video card work better, hell if it makes my game work better who cares, all I'm saying is ATI is going to get slammed just as NVIDIA did when they called it "Optimization" in there drivers and not a cheat. we will just have to see what happens from it shand we, its in early stages yet so who knows, it might not be called a cheat or it might be. if it makes there Video cards work better on games I dont think its a cheat, id still use it.
    Last edited by CrazyCrusher; 05-19-2004 at 08:26 AM.

  9. #9
    Ultimate Member Vampiel's Avatar
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    I really dont get all of this "cheating" talk. Some people take image quality and FPS to the level that it REALLY doesnt matter. For instance, take the 2 new cards from NVIDIA and ATI. The image quality that ATI offers over NVIDIA is such a small amount better that I can only tell if I were to stare at it with a magnifying glass (ive looked at the screen shots). Also the FPS performance difference is miniscule that it's irritating to see all of these reviews going bla bla blaa.. bla bla, bla bla bla bla, the difference is so small, ohhh I might get .01 FPS in more in microsoft word if I get this graphics card... oooooooooo. The fact is these "cheats" are just driver optimizations that both companies are doing and when they try to change something to make it better someone calls "foul"! The new cards are both excellent and the only thing NVIDIA has going for it is the SM3.0 and ATI has the magnifying glass better quality.

  10. #10
    Senior Member too_much's Avatar
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    Originally posted by fishybawb
    Good find. I've stopped caring about this whole issue to be honest - microscopes to analyse screenshots? Don't these people have lives?
    hell no.
    Eh?

  11. #11
    Member jamil5454's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Vampiel
    ATI has the magnifying glass better quality.
    Actually Nvidia's shader quality in a number of games is really noticeably worse than ATI's. FarCry is a great example of this.

    I don't think what ATI is doing is bad at all, I think they're very smart. They don't waste precision (and transistors) where it doesn't boost image quality. That explains their 24bit shader precision, 96bit FP precision, and finally their 5-7bit (texture?) precision. That's why their GPUs are more efficient. The original article said something to the effect that RV3x0 GPUs have been using this adaptive algorithm ever since they were made and that the R3x0 series haven't. Well, if that's true, then why can't we tell a difference between 9600 quality and 9800 quality? Because the difference is so small you can't. Now I know that there are people out there who have to have the best image quality there is, even if you can't tell a difference. That's ridiculous. Video cards would be rendering at a fraction of the speed they are today if they did everything "100%".

    I'm not putting Nvidia down at all. I think they're GPUs have very nice performance and compatability, especially with openGL and Linux.
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  12. #12
    Ultimate Member Vampiel's Avatar
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    I have to disagree, I do see how some people will say the image quality in far cry is better for ATI, but me, I really dont see it. Take a look at these two pics, there is obviously a difference, but the pipe in the ATI looks more like and intestine (it just looks greasy, metal doesnt look like that!), the one in the NVIDIA looks more like metal.
    http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=...ZfM185X2wuanBn

    Although the fence does look better in the ATI.. but the grey wall in the nvidia looks better..
    Last edited by Vampiel; 05-20-2004 at 01:25 AM.

  13. #13
    Ultimate Member Vampiel's Avatar
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    http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=...ZfM181X2wuanBn
    Notice they have to put a square around the difference... thats so you can notice it!

    note : these screen shots are using ps 1.1 for the nvidia and ps 2.0 for the ATI (is that fair?)

    Even in this shot the pipe looks like a living organism (ati), not metal, but the pipes are blinding me in the nvidia.
    Last edited by Vampiel; 05-20-2004 at 01:29 AM.

  14. #14
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    http://www.bjorn3d.com/_preview.php?articleID=464

    Log of the Q&A session with Ati yesterday

    --Jakk

  15. #15
    Ultimate Member CrazyCrusher's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Bigjakkstaffa
    http://www.bjorn3d.com/_preview.php?articleID=464

    Log of the Q&A session with Ati yesterday

    --Jakk
    still even after this Q&A ATI held, people still think there cheating, Nvidia tried justify it just as ATI are, to clean up the mess so to speak, but who cares, if it works it works.

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