Nvidia image quality?

A

Afterburntdw

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 26, 2004
Messages
171
I recently sold my X1900XT in hopes of getting an Nvidia card for a two-fold purpose - One, better compatibility in Linux, and Two, Kick-ass gaming in Windows. I ended up buying an eVGA 8800GTS from Newegg. Ordered Monday night, arrived Wed - Gotta love it.

Anyways, in playing around with it in Windows last night, I loaded the latest official drivers from Nvidia, along with nTune and coolbits. I have everything maxed out on quality settings over performance...But the thing I am noticing is that the picture is just somehow not as sharp as with my ATI.....It's almost slightly fuzzy, but not quite....I fired up Gothic 3 and while it does play very nicely now, it started to hurt my eyes after a couple of minutes. I loaded CS:S and while it did play exceptionally fast, the quality wasn't quite the same as with ATI again.

I'm not disputing the speed of the card...But what gives? Anyone else experienced something similar?
 
I dunno, but my 7900gt is beautiful. Maybe you have something set wrong.
 
They are 16X and 8X. Litterally everything is maxed out. I can't quite put my finger on it...Just not quite as sharp as the ATI...
 
Sorry, I think I posted the wrong numbers. I am not at the computer right now....All I remember is that I maxed out the settings as much as I thought I could. Did I miss something?
 
Supposedly 8800 series fixed the MIP MAP problems... I haven't tried the GTS so I don't know... Maybe you're doing something on the settings...

Play around with the settings and reinstall drivers and see what's up.. :)
 
A refresh rate issue with your monitor? I'm actually in the process of moving from X1900's to a 8800GTX. I don't really want to have issues.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I will try it out tonight and let you guys know. If not, I know where you can buy a slightly used eVGA 8800GTS :D
 
kirbyrj said:
Well, I'm not having much better luck with my X1900XT drivers :(. I have to reload them everytime I want to play a Source based game.
Click to expand...

Really? Wow. I never had one lick of trouble with my ATI card. I have never really owned an Nvidia-based card before, but I'm not really thrilled so far.
 
Afterburntdw said:
Really? Wow. I never had one lick of trouble with my ATI card. I have never really owned an Nvidia-based card before, but I'm not really thrilled so far.
Click to expand...

For me it's always been the opposite :). Go figure. I didn't have problems in single card config, but with CF, it's been a strange experience. Oh well.
 
Did you completely remove all the old drivers first? Might be causing some problem. But ya like others said go through all the settings and check the overlay settings.
 
I can guarantee you, unless something is defective with your 8800GTS, it is NOT the card. The 8800 series have the best image quality that Nvidia has EVER had......even compared to my 7900GT, on the same display, this is the best mip map transitions and text quality I have had to date.

Are you running an LCD?
 
Im pretty sure its the CVT problem. I had the same problem when i got my card.
 
post a screenshot, of a game we all would know well, maybe that would help
 
Yeah, it's a viewsonic LCD.

Now I'm having some slow down problems in-game. It's Gothic 3, if that matters. I think I will try completely removing the drivers and then re-installing.

To the person that asked about old drivers - This is the first install of Nvidia drivers on my PC. I had the ATI card before this.
 
There is absolutely no question that ATI has superior IQ versus the 7x series cards of all types.

There is absolutely no question the 8x series of Nvidia cards has better IQ quality than ATI. What you are seeing is either a result of a driver issue, incorrect settings, some kind of malfuntion, or your eye not being used to a different and superior representation of a similar image.

This is a very common occurence in audio and visual changes as the viewer or listener experiences a different and sublte increase in quality i.e. headphones, CRT - LCD, VHS to DVD, analog - digital.
 
I just returned 7950 gt because of the image quality especially in 2D. Back in went my ATI X850 XT. My XFX 8800 GT arrived this morning and I'm blown away by the image quality. ATI was better for a long time but NVIDIA has turned the tables.
 
Hey dude,

I know what your talking about, I went from a x1900xtx to a evga 8800gts and run on a 20" LCD. At first I had to change color quality setting to 32bits because for some reason the nVidia drivers set it to 16bit. Still the quality is not as good as my x1900xtx. I tried every possible adjustment. I miss just popping my 1900xtx into a computer and booting up to a nice looking picture and not having to play with any settings. I may be selling my 8800gts also. I'll wait for a couple months though and see if drivers can fix. But from what these nVidia users are saying. Its normal quality? I know its not a bum card cause I score 9000 3D marks in 06 with a Opteron 165 @ 2.3Ghz and videocard not overclocked. Don't get me wrong, its an awsome card, its just the image quality slightly falls behind ATI cards.

On a side note, has anyone tried the holdown kit for the MCW60 on a 8800 series and what kida temps are you getting?
 
If you bought it from someplace like Newegg, you should have 30 days to return it for a refund. At least that's what the customer service told me. I might do that and get an X1950XTX instead.

On the other hand, as someone pointed out, it might just be my eyes not being adjusted to the image quality yet. It just seems like the ATI cards are ready to go out of the box with little or no tweaking....And I've spent alot of time messing with the Nvidia card and I'm still not completely happy.

Stupid question, but I suppose running an 8800GTX at 1440 x 900 is not even close to taking advantage of its power?
 
I think it was my eyes needing to adjust. They don't hurt when I play any more. However, I am still getting generally choppy performance intermittently. As I mentioned, I have a 19" widescreen LCD at 1440 x 900. At that rez, is my 8800 really working or is most of the load on my CPU and that is the bottleneck? I would imagine that the 8-series cards have a massive amount of bandwidth being used.

So I guess what I am asking for those who have gone through something similar - Time to step up to a larger monitor? (of course we all want to!)
 
Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q4/geforce-8800/index.x?pg=6

The techreport does show that the AF is what it should look like, that is not-angle dependant. However, the angle dependant ATi and older Nvidia applies AF to more of the screen, with the ATi being slightly smoother.

If there were more "circles" in the 8800GTX, then for sure you could claim it is superior. But as is right now, some people find that the AF is a little *weak*, even though technically its perfect in shape its not applied strongly enough for some viewers.

IE: The less white you see the better, the 8800GTX should have pink covering all the way to the edges of the test pattern. And yes, I do slightly like the "old" ATi better (puts on flamesuit) even though its slighly less accurate, the quality enhancing AF does affect more of the image... To each his own.
 
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