Radeon MR9600 Image Quality - Anistropic Filtering
The image quality differences between ATI and NVIDIA hardware is well trodden ground, but I'll include it here for completeness, since it helps to explain performance. Anistropic filtering to start us off, using Georg Kolling's FilterTest and Serious Sam: SE with coloured mip levels turned on.No Anistropic Filtering
FilterTest - Click the image for the full size .png version (~1MB)
Serious Sam 2 - Click the image for the full size .png version (~660KB)
The base images show full trilinear filtering on all texture stages, something to be mindful of when we analyse the NVIDIA GPU.
2x Anistropic Filtering
FilterTest - Click the image for the full size .png version (~1MB)
Serious Sam 2 - Click the image for the full size .png version (~660KB)
The first anisotropic filtering level available on MR9600 displays the same trilinear filtering across all mip stages, along with angle dependant anisotropic filtering, as expected.
4x Anistropic Filtering
FilterTest - Click the image for the full size .png version (~1MB)
Serious Sam 2 - Click the image for the full size .png version (~660KB)
The expected angle dependancy and quality from ATI filtering hardware on M10 shows its face again.
8x Anistropic Filtering
FilterTest - Click the image for the full size .png version (~1MB)
Serious Sam 2 - Click the image for the full size .png version (~660KB)
Here you can see the 22° angles getting the full 8x filtering with the rest sitting at 2 or 4x.
16x Anistropic Filtering
FilterTest - Click the image for the full size .png version (~1MB)
Serious Sam 2 - Click the image for the full size .png version (~660KB)
The 16x mode is barely different to 8x, emphasising the ATI GPU's angle dependant nature. It's a scheme that NVIDIA have adopted for NV40.
Let's take a look at how NV36 does it.
