Before you buy 7900, did you read the part about shimmering?

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Eastcoasthandle

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 27, 2006
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I like the 7900 series as it a fast card and by it being competive with ATI overall price structure will remain affordable over time. However, one thing that no one wants is shimmering. I found this aspect of the article
worth noting. Some maybe able to deal with the shimmering, I cannot. Is there a way to reduce the shimmering through the use of 3rd party programs like rivertuner, etc?
 
I'm on an x1900xt right now and there IS shimmering on it, so let's please stop pretending this is an NV-only issue.
 
ECM said:
I'm on an x1900xt right now and there IS shimmering on it, so let's please stop pretending this is an NV-only issue.
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Yeah, that is true. It happens more often on the NV cards at default quality though. In either case, there are far more games with no shimmering than with shimmering.

It's a minor concern until it happens in a game you play. ;) There are ways of reducing or eliminating it without the drastic HQ step.
 
I don't believe I've ever seen shimmering based on how people describe it. Maybe that's a good thing?
 
Here are some quotes I found doing a search:

shimmering is when the AF on the textures look shiny and appear to move in sync with you
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The "shifting" effect in BF2 is because it uses low-detail geometry for terrain in the distance. As you get closer it slowly changes into the higher detail version. Normally it shouldn't be noticeable, but sometimes you see the textures moving.
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i beleave what your discribeing is called level of detail, the video card adds in polygons to make objects appere more complex as you get closer to them, usually used in moutains and such to help with frame rate so its not drawing millions of littel polygons you cant see at that range any way as you get closer they tend to POP up and move as polygons are added you notice because the location of the texture changes

its a good feature, but needs a littel work if they can figure out how to make the polygone *morph* it to the more complex shape rather than just saying here it is (they would have to do it with textures as well) then the effect would be alot better (think of it sorta like AF for polygons and not just textures ) however, it would require alot of power for just that feature,i could see a ppu comeing in very handy for the geometry work here, in small scenes its possible now but in big wide open terrain, not so much.
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galdoes16 said:
Can someone give me a good verbal, or better, a visual explanation of shimmering?
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I see your on a large 37" LCD and you can't see don't go out of your way to get rid of it. Back in the day when I had my Tbird 850, Kyro II card I did not care how games look, as long as they ran and were playable which to me would not be today. Then i found out bout O/Cing, AA, AF, HQ modes, 3dmark 2k1, and now look at me today. Buying HQ Heatsinks, PSU, O/Cing the shit out of everything, wanting every last drop of prefromace. My point is, if you are aware of what it looks like you start looking for making you A want to fix it by upgrading, or B dealing with it and be un-happy.
 
Vengance_01 said:
I see your on a large 37" LCD and you can't see don't go out of your way to get rid of it. Back in the day when I had my Tbird 850, Kyro II card I did not care how games look, as long as they ran and were playable which to me would not be today. Then i found out bout O/Cing, AA, AF, HQ modes, 3dmark 2k1, and now look at me today. Buying HQ Heatsinks, PSU, O/Cing the shit out of everything, wanting every last drop of prefromace. My point is, if you are aware of what it looks like you start looking for making you A want to fix it by upgrading, or B dealing with it and be un-happy.
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true...ignorance is bliss and what you dont know cant hurt you ;) :p :D
 
Mayhs said:
true...ignorance is bliss and what you dont know cant hurt you ;) :p :D
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Hehe I wonder if I never got into the custom sence. Would I be happy with 1024-768, 6600GT, and med details :eek:
 
my 7900GT exhibits no shimmering in FEAR, Quake 4 or Half Life 2, at least, not to my eyes. please pardon my ignorance if these games aren't prone to the phenomenon anyway. btw, i've run them at various settings, from medium to high (or ultra in the case of Q4).
 
I could care less if there is shimmering in a game. It dosen't distract me from the game experience and I have just as much fun playing if it does it or not. It's just a matter of perspective. :)

I've seen it in games and you know what? I got over it.
 
AppaYipYip said:
I could care less if there is shimmering in a game. It dosen't distract me from the game experience and I have just as much fun playing if it does it or not. It's just a matter of perspective. :)

I've seen it in games and you know what? I got over it.
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Ok, well, I was just posting it for those who were inquiring, including my self.
 
that battlefield shimmering was before nvidia put the texture clamp in its drivers. enable the texture clamp and theres no shimmering in bf1942.
 
pandora's box said:
that battlefield shimmering was before nvidia put the texture clamp in its drivers. enable the texture clamp and theres no shimmering in bf1942.
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I think you mean the "Negative LOD bias clamp", right?

Personally, I like the ATi approach of using a more intensive AF method in hardware (for the X1 series), rather than the "hacks" you have to use on nvidia hardware.
 
AppaYipYip said:
I could care less if there is shimmering in a game. It dosen't distract me from the game experience and I have just as much fun playing if it does it or not. It's just a matter of perspective. :)

I've seen it in games and you know what? I got over it.
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well good for you. some people dont enjoy spending hard earned money on gaming computers to look at shimmering :mad: . its an issue for thousands of people and needs to be completely fixed.
 
all of that beside, the author of the article "Brent Justice" didn't seem to know a lot about what he was talking about

he didn't even understand what ghosting was, and if he didn't see ghosting using a 2405, then I dont know how much of his word I can truly trust based on what you can see

nothing personal or trying to be a jerk, it's just so

anyway, I hope not too much shimmering....doesn't truly effect me though as I'm waiting for DX10 to upgrade

although all that aside, I believe the article and about shimmering and texture crawling, and I'm not doubting what he's saying or that it isn't happening
 
PikachuMan said:
I think you mean the "Negative LOD bias clamp", right?

Personally, I like the ATi approach of using a more intensive AF method in hardware (for the X1 series), rather than the "hacks" you have to use on nvidia hardware.
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yeap, i meant negative lod bias clamp. thanks
 
personally, i will never buy technology asap it comes out,



it is a known fact that overhyped products are bad, a example of this was the nvidia 5 series, all for dx9 compatibility lol
 
Personally I have never seen shimmering. That's the first time I've seen it in that video.

It's either too small for my eyes to pick up, or I just haven't noticed it.

I think it's the first option though, I've never seen any shimmering to that effect (battlefield) in any games I have ever played.

So, I'm one not to complain, mostly because I haven't seen it :)
 
winston856 said:
Ok, well, you might hate me for this but I found a video that has shimmering in it.

Battlefield Shimmering

Right Click - Save As.

There's a LOT of shimmering in that vid as well.
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Thats honestly didnt bother me. Now that I know what shimmering is Ill probably notice it more. Curse this video. :p
 
Yeah tell me about it, ignorance is a bliss.

I was perfectly happy with my projector untill I went berserk in hunt for jammed/dead pixels. Luckily I got over it in time :D
 
Well, the 6 series and 7 series arguable have some of the worst shimmering. The IQ is just bad, however many don't notice so it doesn't really matter. I can tell the diff between an ati card and nv card rather easily though. So if you like IQ, just go ati, if it doesn't bother you, and you want nv , go nv.
 
i have to say, ive played most of the latest games out, FC, HL2, FEAR etc you name it. shimmering can be found in all of them....if you look. if you play the game instead then its like its not there.

the only game i have played where the shimmering was so bad it was actually the first thing i noticed was Riddick. the shimmering in that was horrendous.

thats the only game where i dont have to actually put effort into looking for shimmering, because its just so blatant
 
I spent all day yesterday playing Doom 3, HL2 (CS:S) and FEAR on my new 7900GTX and never once saw anything out of the ordinary. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for, but I would swear there was no shimmering.
 
Ok, you know, i've been through 2 past nvidia cards and I have yet to see this "shimmering" effect everyone is having a hissy fit about. I think the Placebo effect is in full force here. People are seeing it because they "want to" see it.
 
Coldtronius said:
Ok, you know, i've been through 2 past nvidia cards and I have yet to see this "shimmering" effect everyone is having a hissy fit about. I think the Placebo effect is in full force here. People are seeing it because they "want to" see it.
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That could be true. When I watched the shimmering in the video, I just realized I've been seeing this all the time and I thought it was normal.
 
You know what shimmering is turning out to be a good thing. I am thinking NV next gen it won't be so noticeable.

FPS in the next generation shouldn't be as big of an issue . From the 9700Pro to the present card x1900's is just unreal.

I really believe the R600(R620) is going to be like comparing P4 to Conroe. Its going to be that good. and with Vista API taking over the complete operation of the GPU in DX10 games its only going to be better . ATI and NV should appear IQ wise exactly the same The only differance will be performance.

2006 is a year that will be remembered in the forums for decades.
 
I have never seen shimmering. Ever. Therefore, I do not even consider it an issue.

Coldtronius said:
Ok, you know, i've been through 2 past nvidia cards and I have yet to see this "shimmering" effect everyone is having a hissy fit about. I think the Placebo effect is in full force here. People are seeing it because they "want to" see it.
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You said it.
 
Cript said:
That could be true. When I watched the shimmering in the video, I just realized I've been seeing this all the time and I thought it was normal.
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I can't recall whats its called but Z overlay does exist also. I think some are confusing them . But that video was shimmering
 
winston856 said:
Here are some quotes I found doing a search:
Click to expand...


The "shifting" effect in BF2 is because it uses low-detail geometry for terrain in the distance. As you get closer it slowly changes into the higher detail version. Normally it shouldn't be noticeable, but sometimes you see the textures moving.
Click to expand...

Thats lod bias, less polygons at far range more polygons at close range, nothing to do with textures i wouldn't say.
 
InorganicMatter said:
I have never seen shimmering. Ever. Therefore, I do not even consider it an issue.


You said it.
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False, it's very visibile, many can tell it right away and have to up settings to reduce it, just some people aren't as sensitive to it
 
You know, I just watched that video of the shimmering and can honestly say video cards have been doing that for ages. It's not something new that you need to be worried about.

I started noticing it more when using AA and AF. It really amplifies the boundry between the AF filtered background and the unfiltered areas.

I remember playing Everquest back in 99 on my GeForce DDR (the original) and it had shimmering. You could really see the individual layers of AF back in those days.

My current ATI X800XL shimmers like crazy in WoW. My settings are 1280x1024 4xAF 16xAA, HQ AF. After playing games as long as I have I really don't even notice it or care that much.

This is not an Nvidia only issue.
 
winston856 said:
Ok, well, you might hate me for this but I found a video that has shimmering in it.

Battlefield Shimmering

Right Click - Save As.

There's a LOT of shimmering in that vid as well.
Click to expand...

What shimmering? I've played BF1942 for 4 years on 5 different cards and thats just plain normal. Jesus people, are are so fucking paranoid your making the Placebo Effect theory turn into a full fledge fact. Get a life.
 
The only game it has ever really gotten to me in was WoW, I had a 6600GT when I first started playing and the "marching ants" effect when on certain paths was very annoying. I haven't really noticed it in any major way in other games, but WoW definitely exhibits this issue. I don't play the BF series so I cannot comment, but I don't find it to be common in Guild Wars, Quake IV, HL2, etc...
 
winston856 said:
Ok, well, you might hate me for this but I found a video that has shimmering in it.

Battlefield Shimmering

Right Click - Save As.

There's a LOT of shimmering in that vid as well.
Click to expand...
The shimmering in that video is mostly from the FRAPS compression. I just tried making my own video with FRAPS and the resulting videos look horrible, just like that video. The frames are pixel resized, no AA is applied even when it's turned on in the game and the compression introduces additional artifacts. That is not a fair representation of what the game looks like in full quality.

I'm not saying that there isn't some shimmering in BF2. But with AA, 16xAF and LOD bias set to clamp it's not noticeable on the ground at all.
 
pxc said:
The shimmering in that video is mostly from the FRAPS compression. I just tried making my own video with FRAPS and the resulting videos look horrible, just like that video. The frames are pixel resized, no AA is applied even when it's turned on in the game and the compression introduces additional artifacts. That is not a fair representation of what the game looks like in full quality.

I'm not saying that there isn't some shimmering in BF2. But with AA, 16xAF and LOD bias set to clamp it's not noticeable on the ground at all.
Click to expand...


same thing here. made a fraps video of bf2 yesterday. had 8xssaa 16xaf and a clamped lod bias. the video had no aa applied, and there was shimmering everywhere, yet in the game there was none at all.
 
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