Nvidia TRAA vs ATI ADAA

Which is a visually superior Antialiasing Method

  • Nvidia TRAA is Superior IMHO

    Votes: 32 30.8%

  • ATI ADAA is Superior IMHO

    Votes: 41 39.4%

  • They both look the same to me.

    Votes: 22 21.2%

  • I could care less about IQ differences

    Votes: 9 8.7%
  • Total voters
    104
L

Lord_Exodia

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 29, 2005
Messages
7,008
Derek Wilson of anandtech said something in a recent article that caught my eye. and I quote

"The introduction of the GeForce 7900 GS has certainly tightened up the competition between the $200 and $250 marks: there really is no hands down winner in this match. The X1900 GT did manage to at least edge out even the overclocked XFX 7900 GS in most benchmarks, which is hardly surprising considering the X1900 GT was already competitive with the 7900 GT. ATI does get points for the inclusion of a high quality AF mode and the capability to perform AA on fp16 render targets, but NVIDIA's Transparency AA is higher quality than ATI's Adaptive AA. With the X1900 GT costing only slightly more than a modestly overclocked 7900 GS, the value of these two cards is very close."


I thought I'd run it by some of the [H]ard readers and see what everyone's opinion was about this. I deal with ATI and Nvidia cards on a daily basis not limited to gaming cards. This includes professional cars such as Quadro and FireGL cards. I have an opinion on this topic but wanted to share it at a later time. Please vote and then state why you feel the way you do. Also if you have images to back up your statement that would be most welcome as well.

Warning!!!! I do not want this to turn into a flame war. Violators will quicky be reported to the moderator. I want to keep this debate civil therefore, if you can't state your opinion without making it someone elses fact then dont bother posting. Remember everyone is entitled to their opinion but not everyone is entitled to their own Fact.
 
Personally, I feel that the ATI visual quality is, indeed, above Nvidias. More than just the TRAA vs ADAA... Texture crawling etc. is virtually unexistant on the ATI platform. I am, however an Nvidia !!!!!! (cmon, Nvidia and AMD's colours go well togther) as irrational as it is. I think TRAA looks better than ADAA under certain conditions, where ADAA edges out the competition in others.

Ultimately, however, my pocket is not won over by features, but by price. The small quality difference between the two makers, IMO, didn't offset the value I was getting by going to Nvidia. Not to mention the limitied availability of watercooling accessories.
 
If you set nVidia to HQ mode it looks as good as ATi and it's only a 5% drop which you won't notice in games anyways. Then it's just wheather you want nVidia's OBVIOUSLY superior TRAA (look at HL2 fences) or ATi's better AF.
 
firewolf said:
If you set nVidia to HQ mode it looks as good as ATi and it's only a 5% drop which you won't notice in games anyways. Then it's just wheather you want nVidia's OBVIOUSLY superior TRAA (look at HL2 fences) or ATi's better AF.
Click to expand...

I didn't want to get into this again but since you brought it up, No, your wrong, nvidia IQ does not even come close to being the same.

I did direct comparisons on my own video cards, trust me, you HAVE to set HQ plus you have to set LOD Bias of nvidia cards to -2 or beyond using one of the tweak applets like coolbits in order for nvidia textures to look like ATi's. Then you really get texture crawling...and I mean bad texture crawling that gets amplified with ANY FSAA.
 
IQ is subjective, people appreciate it, some don't, those that done (which seems to be most) like the cheaper solutions which is nvidia right now

how ever i think ATI does set the standar, i appreciate them taking us to a different section of gaming which is so subjective to, i like ADAA, i like TRMSAA, both are good for what they do, they slightly do different operations but both give off very pleasing effects

i have to say both companies are giving us what we want, a push in the right direction
 
I have no experience with TRAA, but from my setup, I know ADAA is very very nice to look at, especially for games like HL2.
 
It's game over for 7900GS come next month... when 1950pro comes in retail price of $200, 512meg version for $240... It's faster than 1900gt and dongleless crossfire support... Built on 80nm and high memory speed.... looks to be a champion overclocker...

I think Nvdia has notch on transparency AA but I think it loses in everything else in image quality from AF filter, to textures sharpness...

Is it just me but Geforce 7 series get better performance when AA is applied than Radeon 1900 series?

It is evident here... Look at raw frames of 1900gt than compare after AA with the 7900gs or GT...

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2827&p=10
 
Marvelous said:
It's game over for 7900GS come next month... when 1950pro comes in retail price of $200, 512meg version for $240... It's faster than 1900gt and dongleless crossfire support... Built on 80nm and high memory speed.... looks to be a champion overclocker...

I think Nvdia has notch on transparency AA but I think it loses in everything else in image quality from AF filter, to textures sharpness...

Is it just me but Geforce 7 series get better performance when AA is applied than Radeon 1900 series?

It is evident here... Look at raw frames of 1900gt than compare after AA with the 7900gs or GT...

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2827&p=10
Click to expand...

the X1950pro seems to be a really good possibility of being one of those "memorable" cards...

as far as the AA performance goes, i'll agree that nvidia seems to get better performance at 2xAA but honestly? i think Nvidia 2xAA looks like horse shit (put nicely), when i can turn on the option I never do, can't tell if its even being applied, compared to my other ATI cards I could tell, but Nvidia's support and optimizations they've had set in since the FX series seems to still be screwing with the lower lvl's of AA.
 
nVidia's transparency multisampling is somewhat better quality than ATi's adaptive antialiasing. I'm not aware of any scenarios in which ADAA looks better.

The OP is not concerned with other aspects of image quality between the two brands, so I won't comment on the other aspects of IQ.

Stay on topic people. This poll/topic is not about anti-aliasing performance, angle-independent anisotropy, texture crawling, shimmering, etc.
 
ATI does have the superior Image Quality all around. I do have plenty of friends that run there rigs with an X19** branded card & I can certainly se a difference when directly compared to my 7900GT. Trimlock hit it on the nail somewhat however. Its not really that people don't care about it, but ATI's superior Image Quality has not been a huge deciding factor in terms of sales. If it was, they would be neck to neck with Nvidia in terms of sales, which obviously they are not ^^. Not since the 9x days anyways. Superior performance seems to be the selling point as well as market support from software developers. It is kind of odd however cus a majority of the Current Gen ATI cards do outperform the Nvidia cards when in a direct comparison, its just that SLI seems to be the strongpoint with Nvidia. Crossfire is good to, just still hasnt taken off as to that level that SLI is currently at. On the marketing side, alot of games you'll see on a store shelf that is branded to a certain company. MANY that carry the " Plays best on Nvidia GPUS" or some sort of ad like that on the pacakaging. Even in your favorite PC related Magazines, you'll see a whole lot more Ad's carring showing support for Nvidia rather than ATI. Little things like that seems to make the difference in sales. Image quality has only been a deciding factor to thsoe that make it so.

-DarkLegacy
 
DarkLegacy said:
ATI does have the superior Image Quality all around. I do have plenty of friends that run there rigs with an X19** branded card & I can certainly se a difference when directly compared to my 7900GT. Trimlock hit it on the nail somewhat however. Its not really that people don't care about it, but ATI's superior Image Quality has not been a huge deciding factor in terms of sales. If it was, they would be neck to neck with Nvidia in terms of sales, which obviously they are not ^^. Not since the 9x days anyways. Superior performance seems to be the selling point as well as market support from software developers. It is kind of odd however cus a majority of the Current Gen ATI cards do outperform the Nvidia cards when in a direct comparison, its just that SLI seems to be the strongpoint with Nvidia. Crossfire is good to, just still hasnt taken off as to that level that SLI is currently at. On the marketing side, alot of games you'll see on a store shelf that is branded to a certain company. MANY that carry the " Plays best on Nvidia GPUS" or some sort of ad like that on the pacakaging. Even in your favorite PC related Magazines, you'll see a whole lot more Ad's carring showing support for Nvidia rather than ATI. Little things like that seems to make the difference in sales. Image quality has only been a deciding factor to thsoe that make it so.

-DarkLegacy
Click to expand...

I agree SLI has taken off... But I think it's because of the Nvidia motherboards... They just seem better and you don't need an expensive master card to go SLI...

However I like single card solutions and I like image quality if they are around the same price... So Radeons for now...
 
I experienced ADAA back with my X800XL, used the registry tool to turn it on and it worked very well in HL2. Then I got SLI 7800GTs and ran TRAA.. very similar, but what stuck out the most was the thicker lines. With ADAA, fine lines were very fine lines. Sometimes, almost transparent. TRAA had fuller lines (with some exceptions) and just looked better, to me. Completely subjective.

I will continue to go back and forth between ATi and nvidia, probably stay on nvidia 2/3 of the time.. mostly because I'd like to support an American brand. :cool:
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I will continue to go back and forth between ATi and nvidia, probably stay on nvidia 2/3 of the time.. mostly because I'd like to support an American brand. :cool:
Click to expand...

Well, now that AMD has bought out ATI...
 
Trimlock said:
I guess they are still an american brand, just with German benefactors?
Click to expand...

AMD is an American company. ATI was a Canadian company, but they just got bought out by AMD. I was responding to SPARTAN VI's comment that supporting nVidia was supporting an American brand, and I was pointing out that support ATI, too, is now supporting an American brand because of AMD's buy-out. Blah. :(
 
Having owned a 7800GTX I would say there is a noticable difference. From the desktop 2d to gaming (AF way better with ATI IMHO), ATI pwns Nvidia in IQ. That could change next generation but don't believe NV cares enough about IQ to sacrafic speed. I hope I am wrong though.
 
thin things such as fences dissapear with Adaptive AA, while they dont with TRAA. nvidia wins in that department
 
I would have to say Nvidia has the better picture quality right now. I use to be an ATI fan but once they started coming out with the Raedon series on up ATI is now blurring the image like Nvidia use to do. Nvidia is now making nice crisp picture quality like the old ATI use to do. I like being able to look at a wall and see definition around bullet rounds that went into a wall instead of seeing black dots representing the bullet in the wall. I have also noticed the brick walls and roads in call of duty have alot more definition on the Nvidia cards than the ATI cards. I personally like definition to the image. Blurring the image to me takes away from the quality of the image.
 
dcds1 said:
I would have to say Nvidia has the better picture quality right now. I use to be an ATI fan but once they started coming out with the Raedon series on up ATI is now blurring the image like Nvidia use to do. Nvidia is now making nice crisp picture quality like the old ATI use to do. I like being able to look at a wall and see definition around bullet rounds that went into a wall instead of seeing black dots representing the bullet in the wall. I have also noticed the brick walls and roads in call of duty have alot more definition on the Nvidia cards than the ATI cards. I personally like definition to the image. Blurring the image to me takes away from the quality of the image.
Click to expand...

wrrrrrrigggght..
 
PWMK2 said:
AMD is an American company. ATI was a Canadian company, but they just got bought out by AMD. I was responding to SPARTAN VI's comment that supporting nVidia was supporting an American brand, and I was pointing out that support ATI, too, is now supporting an American brand because of AMD's buy-out. Blah. :(
Click to expand...

way too confusing, i was just making a crack at what you said before, need smileys i guess

also just realized how bad my spelling was in my original post, vodka'n'cran ftw!

I would have to say Nvidia has the better picture quality right now. I use to be an ATI fan but once they started coming out with the Raedon series on up ATI is now blurring the image like Nvidia use to do. Nvidia is now making nice crisp picture quality like the old ATI use to do. I like being able to look at a wall and see definition around bullet rounds that went into a wall instead of seeing black dots representing the bullet in the wall. I have also noticed the brick walls and roads in call of duty have alot more definition on the Nvidia cards than the ATI cards. I personally like definition to the image. Blurring the image to me takes away from the quality of the image.
Click to expand...

I heard crack is one hell of a drug.

btw ATI's been making Radeon around the same time NV's been making GeForce cards, too lazy to look up who came out with what first

no one blurrs their image, thats up to the game designer, no idea where you got this, infact i'd love to hear where you did get this

definition and crispness has been ATI's department since the R300, Nv had a good run against then with the NV40's, but I would still say ATI had better color and AF then as well (again subjective, stop argueing about it! :D ), Nv right now isn't any worse, nor are they any better, and ATI definetly has the leg up on that one

either way, enjoy the crack and enjoy your Nv card.
 
Well since I don't own any of the current ATI cards I cannot do screenshots myself but here is an addy for an article that shows exactly what I am talking about.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_image_quality_showdown_august06/
As for the last card I bought that was ATI was a Hercules 9000 pro. That is when I first noticed that change in ATI sharpness.
And as for the name calling and the crack bs, well I am not going to even get involved with that BS with you. I have given you just 1 articles with screen shots where they are talking current line up. Do a search and you will find many more. Anadtech has even done an article about it.
 
dcds1 said:
Well since I don't own any of the current ATI cards I cannot do screenshots myself but here is an addy for an article that shows exactly what I am talking about.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_image_quality_showdown_august06/
As for the last card I bought that was ATI was a Hercules 9000 pro. That is when I first noticed that change in ATI sharpness.
And as for the name calling and the crack bs, well I am not going to even get involved with that BS with you. I have given you just 1 articles with screen shots where they are talking current line up. Do a search and you will find many more. Anadtech has even done an article about it.
Click to expand...

Name calling? Wright... We don't need payed/fanbased Web-sites to tell enthusiast gamers which video card has better IQ... We already know...
 
IMO Nvidia Transparency Super Sampled AA makes games like BF2 look 10x better, where all the grass and vegetation ACTUALLY looks good for once, lets face it, it's never been done well and up until TSAA it only looked good in high res, especially at a distance.

From the screenshots I've seen Nvidia clearly beat ATI when it comes to AA of transparent textures. I always play with High Quality settings with all the optimisations turned off which In my opinion increases the IQ of Nvidia cards close to that of ATI, i would consider it a negligable difference.

I can't wait for the day we can run Oblivion with high levels of Super Sampled TSAA, I've tried it high res outside with all the settings max and it runs like a dog (I guess performance of TSAA is more or less directly proportional to the number of textures using transparency on the screen) but the IQ was so nice it was unbelieveable, definitely worth trying out even if it does kill HDR.
 
And now (cue drummroll) Allow the OP to take the podium. :)

I voted that Nvidia TRAA is superior to ATI ADAA, since the 7800GTX has been on the market I've felt it's definitely been a huge leap in AA Image Quality over the previous generation and even during the X1800 series debut I felt the TRAA is superior. However where nvidia leaped in one area, they took a step back in the other. For whatever reason there is more texture crawling and shimmering due to moire in certain games, I mean more so than even the 6 series. It's like they fixed one thing and broke another.

Overall ATI has better image quality but comparing only the 2 Antialiasing methods I think Nvidia has the edge. Even most Professional cad designers lean towards nvidia because of the AA difference. In this and most generations ATI does everything (Image Quality wise) well whereas nvidia trades off and does only 1 or 2 things well and everything else so-so. I feel that they have been lagging in IQ since the FX series even up until now.

Hopefully G80 will be a godly powerfull beast and they can address their IQ issues. If things will repeat themselves, more than likely nvidia might back off on the AA quality this next gen and reduce texture crawling and shimmering. Hopefully they'll suprise the world and get everything right. Not just for nvidia fans but for the industry as a whole, this way we can all bennefit. Gotta love competition.
 
ATi has had the best AA quality since R300. nVidia's 2x is a waste of time (Quincunx was good tho), although at 4x I'd put them equal. The lack of a 6x mode is annoying, as only old games or SLi allows 8xS (mmm, no jaggies anywhere) to be of any use.

Transparency AA is much the same: nV's performance mode is basically useless, whereas ATi's works fine as long as you're not using 2x. Quality modes are basically tied, which makes sense as they are both using supersampling. nV gets a tip of the hat for bringing it to the table first.
 
Overall ATI has better image quality but comparing only the 2 Antialiasing methods I think Nvidia has the edge. Even most Professional cad designers lean towards nvidia because of the AA difference. In this and most generations ATI does everything (Image Quality wise) well whereas nvidia trades off and does only 1 or 2 things well and everything else so-so. I feel that they have been lagging in IQ since the FX series even up until now.
Click to expand...

I would say most cad designers pick Nv because ATI's workstation cards blow, the high end openGL support is very shotty on them, something ATI does need to work on
 
PWMK2 said:
AMD is an American company. ATI was a Canadian company, but they just got bought out by AMD. I was responding to SPARTAN VI's comment that supporting nVidia was supporting an American brand, and I was pointing out that support ATI, too, is now supporting an American brand because of AMD's buy-out. Blah. :(
Click to expand...

Yknow that rock I was living under? It was really comfortable!
 
Marvelous said:
wrrrrrrigggght..
Click to expand...

As only Dr. Evil could say it. ;)


Having just done a crap load of gaming on an SLI rig with two 7900GTs and now am on a CrossFire rig with two x1900 series cards, the sharpness and general quality of the image rendering on these ATI cards is quite noticable.. It's not a farse or "too small to mention" type of thing.. seeing is believing! I have not had time to play with the ADAA modes yet, but I am sure they will not dissappoint.
 
baddog121390 said:
thin things such as fences dissapear with Adaptive AA, while they dont with TRAA. nvidia wins in that department
Click to expand...


You obviously did not compare the fence links on the screenshot links I posted or you would notice they disapear with nvidia traa as well.
 
I think ATI as a whole provides a higher quality image, but anyone with eyes can see NVIDIA's TRSAA looks nicer than ATI's Quality ADAA in almost every case, if you debate this you need a vision check
 
You need to check your vision...and you can start with the image links I posted.

The nvidia traa is pretty much the same as ati adaa.
 
BBA said:
You need to check your vision...and you can start with the image links I posted.

The nvidia traa is pretty much the same as ati adaa.
Click to expand...

I can't really tell the diffference TRAA or ADAA but most web sites try to zoom in 500% and tells you Nvidia is better I have to take their word for it...:confused: But what I do notice right away is that Radeon has better textures and better Aniso...
 
TRAA is not as good as TSAA or is it as good as ADAA and TSAA is better then TRAA and ADAA, only when you have very thin objects, ADAA tends to blend more around the edges so thin objects tend to disappear. The jagies TSAA and ADAA do a equally good job depending on which angle you look at the objects from, both algos are very similiar, just that the sample arragement is opposite on ATi and nV cards.
 
I agree with razor1, TRAA is NOT as good as ADAA. The only reason I'm sticking with nVidia is because it's easier to install the drivers for linux. (Gentoo)

-Jeff

-----------------------------------------------------------
iPwnThe.Net

1337 Mods
 
BBA said:
You obviously did not compare the fence links on the screenshot links I posted or you would notice they disapear with nvidia traa as well.
Click to expand...

they disapear a lot more with the ATI card than with the nvidia card.

:confused:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top