Image Quality

3D Image quality. Once we started testing the GeForce FX I took good note of the fact that that the new Detonator drivers that had been optimized for at least 3D Mark 03 might have a performance increase due to lowering 3D Scene image quality. I recall to have read this in an earlier review from another site. A good example would be that in previous drivers of the Radeon at the Performance AF setting (Bilinear AF) would be better than GFFX Balanced AF setting.

To be able to do the benchmarks objectively image quality needs to be the same as it's competitor Radeon 9700 Pro. To see if the image quality is/was the same as Radeon 9700 Pro we started comparing them by making a few screenshots, zoom in and simply see if there was noticeable loss if image quality on either one of the graphics cards. Both Detonator driver 42.68 and Catalyst 3.1 drivers from ATI seem to produce the exact same quality. At least as far as we can see with the naked eye. To demonstrate this to you I suggest you start looking and comparing the enlarged images below.

You tell me .. which one is the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra you think ? I'll tell you in a little while. The images above have no AF enabled, all settings are at default on both graphics cards. Now let's crank up 8x Ani Sotropic filtering on both cards and do the same thing again.