Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 2: High End Shootout
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 7, 2003 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Neverwinter Nights: Shadow of Undrendtide IQ no AA/AF
This time we have to point out that ATI has known image quality issues. There have been many complaints from problems with AA to missing/flickering shadows and a lack of shiny water.
When this game was released, it focused heavily on using NVIDIA hardware and even has an AA slider in the game featuring Quincunx. Obviously this won't work with ATI, and even though we got the 4x AA setting in the game to work a couple of times (if you toggle it on and off while the game is running), we got much better results when setting AA in the driver.
We didn't notice the problems with water that have been discussed online (though we didn't find a really good body of water at which to look), but we did see some shadow flickering occurring. There weren't any missing shadows as we can see from the screenshots. In reading some forums across the web, we have seen indications that there weren't any issues with ATI cards when Neverwinter was released, and that future driver versions broke functionality for the game. We aren't able to confirm this ourselves, but problems such as these have existed for ATI in the past, and we are very hopeful that this serpent won't again rear its ugly head.
NVIDIA 45.23
NVIDIA 52.14
ATI Catalyst 3.7
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Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
yea I agree with what #3 said..hardly any commentary on the IQ... and If I'm not mistaken, aren't the new cats going to be out tomorrow???? If so, you might as well do the whole thing over again...Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
#3, go away you fanboy. There was absolutely no IQ difference between the CAT 3.7 and 52.14 drivers.Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
i'm sure intel will be happy to hear that you 'upgraded' your prescott to an FX.dvinnen - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
errr, a lot of the piture links aren't wrking, like teh halo iq one and TR:AoDAnonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
Um...Why was there nothing noting the difference between nVidia and ATI's in the IQ section? nVidia looks absolutely horrid compared to the ATI.
AgaBooga - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
I saw more opinions in this article leaning towards Nvidia, especially around the Tomb Raider benchmarks. More specifically, starting with the page regarding compilers. I liked this articles, but there could have been less opinionated viewpoints on this. Also, it might be better if we get names of authors with what they typed, so we know who typed what, because some of this sure didn't sound like something Mr. Shimpi has written in the past...Anonymous User - Tuesday, October 7, 2003 - link
i'm still reading..............