Quality vs. Quantity: ATI Radeon X1950 XTX against Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 with Maximum Quality. Page 3
[09/30/2006 11:25 PM | Graphics]
by Anton Shilov , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Alexey Stepin,
When acquiring a graphics card, the majority of gamers look at the benchmark numbers in the latest games and synthetic benchmarks to make their choice. But recently we have found out that graphics cards by two major graphics chip developers produce different image quality in games under default settings, meaning that some boards are faster and the other can produce better image quality. We decided to have a look, what is faster and what is more visually appealing on the examples of the GeForce 7950 GX2 and the Radeon X1950 XTX!
Anisotropic Filtering: Angle Off
To check out the best anisotropic filtering ATI’s and Nvidia’s solution can provide, we used the same screenshots from 3DMark as in the test of tri-linear filtering:
ATI Radeon X1950 XTX vs. Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 Trilinear Filtering Comparison |
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ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, Catalyst AI: Advanced | ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, Catalyst AI: Standard | ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, Catalyst AI: Disabled |
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| Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2, Texture Filtering: Quality | Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2, Texture Filtering: High Quality |
Easy to see, the ATI High Quality AF algorithm is beyond competition here. It provides the best anisotropic filtering available today, which you can’t have on an Nvidia GeForce 7-series card.

Half-Life 2, ATI Radeon X1950 XTX on the left and Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2 on the right.
The difference in anisotropic filtering quality on various angles is pointed at with arrows.
For your convinience we have included several clips too:
Battlefield 2 movie (download here)Half-Life 2 movie 1 (download here)Half-Life 2 movie 2 (download here)ATI High Quality AF ensures higher sharpness of textures at a long distance irrespective of the angle of inclination of a surface. This is most conspicuous in the first Half-Life 2 clip.
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