Image quality
Image qualityThe benchmark numbers on the following page will show you, relatively speaking, which card produces the higher numbers or framerates. What it can't tell you is just how well the respective cards' drivers render the games. We'll take a look at 3D rendering quality in both DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2. Further, as it's not a game that's normally used in benchmarking various graphics cards across the WWW, we've also included images from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005. Both cards' settings were identical in each case, that is, the driver defaults or 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering (8x for DOOM 3). We've used these setting to obtain the numbers that you will see on the next few pages. Please also note that ATI's regular anisotropic filtering was used, rather than the checkbox-activated HQ mode. In comparison, the GeForce 7800 GTX's AF setting was also left to the driver default of quality as opposed to the selectable high-quality mode.
DOOM 3
The first set of images are with the game set to high-quality mode but with no added antialiasing. Click on the smaller pictures to open up .png files at the native resolution of 1280x1024. Please be warned that the larger images are over 1MB in size.
High-quality, 0x antialiasing, 8x anisotropic filtering
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
High-quality, 4x antialiasing, 8x anisotropic filtering
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
The antialiasing performance tends to be similar on both cards but, if you enlarge both sets of images and compare then side by side, NVIDIA's driver appears to offer more detail in the foreground than ATI's.
Half-Life 2
0x antialiasing and 0x anisotropic filtering
SAPPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
Pretty similar outputs from both cards.
4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
NVIDIA's rendering tends to be just a touch clearer with 4x AA and 16x AF activated (remember, both are set to driver defaults for AF filtering). Look at the aerials on top of the buildings in the distance, for example.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005
0x antialiasing and 0x anisotropic filtering
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
Whilst the two images above aren't identical, you can clearly see that something funky is going on with the basic trilinear filtering for the NVIDIA card. ATI's output is markedly better here.
4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering
SAPPHIRE RADEON X1800 XT 512MB
Leadtek PX7800 GTX TDH MyVIVO Extreme 256MB
Add in 4x AA and 16x AF and the outputs become similar enough.