Image Quality Comparison

1280x1024, Anisotropic Filtering 16x

Before we proceed with tests, as usual, we compare image quality on top offerings from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp.: the RADEON X800 XT and the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Since it is impossible to make saves in Counter Strike: Source, we cannot guarantee any pixel-by-pixel type of comparison, though, brief image quality still can be examined using our screenshots.

As in the majority of today’s games, NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800-series and ATI’s RADEON X800-series produce more or less equal image quality. The same cannot be said about the GeForce FX product: it uses extremely aggressive texture filtering optimizations and works in DirectX 8.1 mode producing less-detailed or even noisy images.

1280x1024, Anisotropic Filtering 16x, Full-Scene Antialiasing 4x

In order to determine which of today’s graphics chips provides the best image quality n eye-candy mode we also enabled FSAA 4x.

ATI RADEON X800	NVIDIA GeForce 6800	NVIDIA GeForce FX
ATI RADEON X800	NVIDIA GeForce 6800	NVIDIA GeForce FX

The GeForce 6800 and RADEON X800 visual processing units deliver true candy for your eyes with FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled.

In spite of some reports and earlier information, full-scene antialiasing worked on the GeForce FX hardware too, moreover, its quality was absolutely great!  The ForceWare drivers disabled extreme filtering optimizations we saw in the previous case and image quality was just fine with exception of the fact that the GeForce FX 5900-series functioned in DirectX 8.1 mode and some things were less detailed. Still, because of angle-independent anisotropic filtering the image quality produced by the GeForce FX 5900-series is sometimes even better compared to the latest visual processing units from NVIDIA and ATI.