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Skyrim, NVDA vs AMD IQ?

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blade52x

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Hey everyone. Today I tested out a 480 GTX in my computer to see it compared against my 6950 (unlocked). The only games I was concerned about - Skyrim, and BF3. Since I have a special custom made bracket for the H60 cooler, I'll be able to mount it on either card. So whichever performs better, I will mount on that. In Skyrim, I used the same settings on both cards, that is 4xAA and 16xAF via the game launcher. Both cards ran stock. Both cards ran on their respective latest drivers.

I was almost shocked at how much smoother the 480 ran. It wasn't just 10%, but more like 25%. Where the 6950 could only pull frames in the 40s, the GTX 480 was capping at 60. But something seemed off... Up close everything looked perfect on the 480, but then it hit me - the distant foliage seemed different, and for the worse.

Below is a screenshot taken in same area, 480 at the top, and 6950 at the bottom.

GTX 480

HD 6950

Does anyone have any idea of what might be turned on with my 6950, or what might not be activated on the 480? Otherwise I can't really seem to get a fair comparison between the two.

BF3 more or less looked and felt the same.

===

Update : 5/1 - Super Important!!!

OK everyone. I found out what the issue was.


When I put in the HD 6950, the video settings would always default to Ultra. For the GTX 480, the video settings would default to High. So what I did previously was just adjust everything manually to the maximum settings they could go to... well apparently that doesn't give you the maximum detail. I didn't know you had to click the "ultra" button first to set maximum settings.

So, sorry for leading everyone down this path. I didn't intend for this thread to turn into what it did. It's pretty stupid and embarrassing.

At identical everything, THEY LOOK THE SAME!
 
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Make sure you're using Nvidia driver version 296.10 or later.

Open up Nvidia Control Panel.

Select "adjust image settings with preview"

Select "use the advanced 3D image settings"

Click "apply"

Select "manage 3D settings"

Select the "global settings" tab

Set "ambient occlusion" to quality

Set "anisotropic filtering" to application controlled

Set "anti-aliasing - gamma correction" to on

Set "anti-aliasing - mode" to application controlled

Set "anti-aliasing - setting" to application controlled

Set "anti-aliasing - transparency" to 8x (super sample)

Set "texture filtering - negative LOD bias" to clamp

Set "texture filtering - quality" to high quality

Click "apply"

Setting "maximum pre-rendered frames" to 0 can help reduce input lag (mouse & keyboard lag) in games like Payday: The Heist and other games where less input lag makes a noticeable difference.

Another thing to try is:

Launch Skyrim.

Click on "options"

Click on "ultra"

This will set all video settings to "ultra high quality"

You also have the option of enabling FXAA by clicking on "advanced" and clicking on "FXAA"

There's a Skyrim: High Resolution Texture Pack available for free to those who own the game.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485

There's also custom mods available on the internet that greatly enhance certain elements of the game.

One example is the Static Mesh Improvement Mod:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8655

Let me know if this helps.
 
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As a long time AMD user I was shocked as to how much worse the image quailty is with Nvidia.

I used dual 4870s for 3+ years and recently upgraded to a 680.

I can definitely tell that image quality is worse with Nvidia.

So that's how they make the "faster" card. Cutting corners.
 
I don't think one is better or worse, its all in what your eyes are accustomed to. Especially in a game where you've spent maybe a hundred+ hours looking at the same stuff, then switching cards. I switched from Nvidia to AMD, and Skyrim looked worse to me, but I think it was just different, not actually worse.
 
blade52x said:
Hey everyone. Today I tested out a 480 GTX in my computer to see it compared against my 6950 (unlocked). The only games I was concerned about - Skyrim, and BF3. Since I have a special custom made bracket for the H60 cooler, I'll be able to mount it on either card. So whichever performs better, I will mount on that. In Skyrim, I used the same settings on both cards, that is 4xAA and 16xAF via the game launcher. Both cards ran stock. Both cards ran on their respective latest drivers.

I was almost shocked at how much smoother the 480 ran. It wasn't just 10%, but more like 25%. Where the 6950 could only pull frames in the 40s, the GTX 480 was capping at 60. But something seemed off... Up close everything looked perfect on the 480, but then it hit me - the distant foliage seemed different, and for the worse.

Below is a screenshot taken in same area, 480 at the top, and 6950 at the bottom.

GTX 480

HD 6950

Does anyone have any idea of what might be turned on with my 6950, or what might not be activated on the 480? Otherwise I can't really seem to get a fair comparison between the two.

BF3 more or less looked and felt the same.
Click to expand...

I go back and forth between amd and nvidia a lot, and have used both 7970 and 680s. First off, i'll say that IQ is the same to my eye at application preference settings.

major offtopic rant incoming The main qualm I have with nvidia control panel is that it ignores your input a lot of the time. For instance, if I want override AA with AMD most of the time it will follow your instructions even if it degrades performance. With nvidia, you have to go through a lot of hassle to ensure that your override settings are obeyed, a lot of the time you have to use nvidia inspector or nothing will override application settings. Whereas AMD's override seems to work a lot more frequently (subjective, but MLAA / SSAA works most of the time) Thats the main thing I noticed. Application preference IQ was pretty similar, but once you factor in override settings nvidia ignores control panel settings a LOT more than i'm comfortable with - the only way to guarantee anything is with nvidia inspector and even then its sometimes not followed. Just annoying. I guess nvidia control panel is more idiot proof.

Anyway, this is a tangent rant of mine about override and nvidia CP. At application preference I don't notice a difference in IQ.
 
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So much fail in this thread, especially posts 3 & 6.

OP, you have Adaptive MSAA enabled by the looks of it.
 
The only fail I see is the post above this one :) For what its worth, I think IQ is the same between the two and said as much.
 
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If you say so.. to say settings through Nvidia CP are ignored more often than through AMD's CCC is pure fantasy. I think you just dont know how to use the Nvida control panel correctly, as in enhance or override modes, or the SSAA tool.
 
demowhc said:
If you say so.. to say settings through Nvidia CP are ignored more often than through AMD's CCC is pure fantasy. I think you just dont know how to use the Nvida control panel correctly, as in enhance or override modes, or the SSAA tool.
Click to expand...

I know how to use nvidia control panel, nvidia inspector, and ssaa tool. Thanks for trolling me, this is completely my opinion after using both sets of hardware extensively. As far as your opinion, i'm pretty sure you have only used nvidia, but my opinion is that AMD override works more frequently - not that it matters because most of my games use application settings.

Toms found similar findings: Override AA surprisingly unreliable:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/anti-aliasing-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon,2868-7.html

Nvidia override:

The GeForce Override setting only works in two of the 14 game scenarios we tested. This isn’t as bad as it might sound, since the primary purpose of Override is to force CSAA, and as you can see, four of the games that don’t work with Override already support CSAA in the game’s native menu. That means that CSAA works with six of the 14 game scenarios we tested. Different DirectX versions aside, five out of nine games support CSAA in one way or another.

The Enhance setting is meant to add CSAA support to games that don’t support Override, but have an in-game anti-aliasing setting available. In this case, 11 out of the 14 scenarios work, meaning that CSAA can be used in any game that supports anti-aliasing or that can work with Nvidia’s Override setting. Note that in DirectX 10 and 11 titles, Enhanced mode will only be able to force a CSAA mode if it uses the same number of multisamples as the MSAA mode set within the game’s menu options. For example, if 4x MSAA is set in-game, the Enhance setting will only work with the CSAA modes that call for four multisamples—8x CSAA will work because it uses 4x multisamples and 4x coverage samples, and 16x CSAA will work because it calls for 4x multisamples and 12 coverage samples. But 32x CSAA will not work because it calls for eight multisamples and 24 coverage samples.

What’s the significance of this? For those of you who hope to use Override as a set-and-forget mechanism for controlling the anti-aliasing level in all of your games, that obviously isn’t going to work. Similarly, if you fancy using CSAA by forcing it through the driver, you need to understand the relationship between the CSAA mode you plan to use and the level of MSAA you set in-game. This information is not provided in the driver, so you need to understand the Nvidia anti-aliasing level designations (see the Coverage Sampling Modes page in this article for that information).
Click to expand...

AMD override:

The Radeon Override controls work in five of the 14 gaming scenarios, with five of nine games. This is better than what the GeForce cards offer, but we need to point out that in three of those games the Override only works with DirectX 9 and not the newer DirectX 10/11 code paths. This means that if you want to Override the DirectX mode on your Radeon, you’re making a tradeoff in many cases by losing DirextX 10/11-based enhancements.

For Radeon HD 6900-series board owners who are interested in EQAA, we have good news: the enhance feature always works in our tests, the only exceptions being when anti-aliasing is not available at all. The conclusion is that Radeon HD 6900 owners can employ EQAA with confidence when using the Enhance setting, and do not have to concern themselves with matching coverage sample levels with the appropriate MSAA level as Nvidia owners have to do in DirectX 10 and 11 games.

We’re also impressed with the Radeon’s edge-detect mode, as this feature works in all the viable scenarios except one: Metro 2033 in DirectX 11 mode. However, it does work in Metro 2033 using DirectX 9, strangely enough.

How about morphological anti-aliasing? Whether you're talking about DirectX 9, 10, or 11, MLAA just plain works (that wasn't the case when AMD first exposed the feature). This makes it an attractive option for folks who’d like to set it and forget it, although MLAA can cause visual artifacts on the edge of text, making it less desirable in games that have a lot of small type, like MMOs.
Click to expand...

My opinion after using both sets of hardware, you're welcome to yours. Like I said, this is an offtopic tangent...I think they both have similar IQ at application preference settings so i'm not sure why you're so eager to argue with me.
 
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Dont pull the fanboy card on me, I've seen many of your posts around here.. those in glass houses..

I like both Nvidia and AMD, and I can tell you from my experience using both that Nvidia's CP settings are far more reliable, and that better IQ can be produced with Nv.
 
demowhc said:
Dont pull the fanboy card on me, I've seen many of your posts around here.. those in glass houses..

I like both Nvidia and AMD, and I can tell you from my experience using both that Nvidia's CP settings are far more reliable, and that better IQ can be produced with Nv.
Click to expand...

Only the objective data (regarding override) proves otherwise. My experience was different. Anyway, like I said, IQ is similar at application preference settings. I'm done, peace.
 
Sure IQ is similar at app settings, I never stated otherwise, nice ninja edits btw. I can safely say I have had far more success forcing various modes of AA, trAA, SSAA and vsync through Nv CP.
 
xoleras said:
I go back and forth between amd and nvidia a lot, and have used both 7970 and 680s. First off, i'll say that IQ is the same to my eye at application preference settings. The main qualm I have with nvidia control panel is that it ignores your input a lot of the time. For instance, if I want override AA with AMD most of the time it will follow your instructions even if it degrades performance. With nvidia, you have to go through a lot of hassle to ensure that your override settings are obeyed, a lot of the time you have to use nvidia inspector or nothing will override application settings. Whereas AMD's override seems to work a lot more frequently (subjective, but MLAA / SSAA works most of the time)

Thats the main thing I noticed. Application preference IQ was pretty similar, but once you factor in override settings nvidia ignores control panel settings a LOT more than i'm comfortable with - the only way to guarantee anything is with nvidia inspector and even then its sometimes not followed. Just annoying. I guess nvidia control panel is more idiot proof - if your'e stupid and set crysis 2 to SSAA, AMD ccc will allow you to do so. Nvidia doesn't have SSAA in the control panel, and if I remember right it ignores override settings in crysis 2 , so you have to use nvidia inspector (and no, Transparency SS isn't SSAA..)

Anyway, this is a tangent rant of mine about override and nvidia CP. At application preference I don't notice a difference in IQ.
Click to expand...

This simply isnt true. Of all the Manage 3d options, some are openGL only. Some are D3D only.

And things like AA are never "ignored". They apply the AA to your back buffer which is the right thing to do when the game is a forward renderer and the wrong thing to do when the game's rendering is deferred or made more complex in some way (i.e. Rendering takes place on some resource other than the back buffer). However AA you set is always applied.. Just not always where it will work properly. Thats not something that can be detected algorithmically because of the freedom developers have, hence the existence of the profiling mechanism and AA profiles are defined by NVIDIA.

There are cases where the override AA option is removed when the override AA is causing corruption and the game has in game AA support anyway (which is always more efficient).
 
BlueStorm said:
This simply isnt true. Of all the Manage 3d options, some are openGL only. Some are D3D only.

And things like AA are never "ignored". They apply the AA to your back buffer which is the right thing to do when the game is a forward renderer and the wrong thing to do when the game's rendering is deferred or made more complex in some way (i.e. Rendering takes place on some resource other than the back buffer). However AA you set is always applied.. Just not always where it will work properly. Thats not something that can be detected algorithmically because of the freedom developers have, hence the existence of the profiling mechanism and AA profiles are defined by NVIDIA.

There are cases where the override AA option is removed when the override AA is causing corruption and the game has in game AA support anyway (which is always more efficient).
Click to expand...

They are most definitely ignored in some cases. You can load nvidia inspector and it will show you application settings for all game executables, and many games are flagged to "treat override as application preference". I'm not in front of my home PC at the moment, but memory serving Dead space 1/2 / dead island and many others are flagged to treat override as application preference, thus ignoring override. Feel free to look in nvidia inspector to verify.

SSAA and vsync through Nv CP.
Click to expand...

There is no SSAA in nv CP. Its transparency SS which only covers transparency textures, which does much less work than SSAA. A lot of people think that TrSS is SSAA, thats a common misconception. Anyway, If you want SSAA, you need ssaa tool as you mentioned earlier or nvidia inspector.
 
I didn't want to turn into a AMD vs NVDA war. I don't believe one will display a noticeably better picture than the other, given all settings are identical.

Anyway, I'm going to try this again later will all AA/AF disabled, and then go from there (I will attempt thundermitty's settings and try to duplicate those on the AMD, minus the ambient occlusion). As demowhc suggested, I may have adaptive AA on, even though I can't see that enabled anywhere. Just for the reference I am using RadeonPro on the 6950, and NVCP on the 480.

If only stupid work wasn't in the way for 8+ hours now. :(
 
xoleras said:
There is no SSAA in nv CP. Its transparency SS which only covers transparency textures, which does much less work than SSAA. A lot of people think that TrSS is SSAA, thats a common misconception. Anyway, If you want SSAA, you need ssaa tool as you mentioned earlier or nvidia inspector.
Click to expand...

Yes you're right, the official SSAA tool. Its still an official tool, so is valid.

Yes some game profiles have treat as ignore, for the reasons the poster mentioned above.. you cant force AA with AMD in dead space either last time I tried, so moot example.
 
Here's an example of what i'm talking about from when I was using 580s last year:

http://chattypics.com/files/CapturePNG_9t8abkg7mu.png

A lot of games are flagged as such. Anyway, I regret going on this tangent because this is just turning into a typical AMD vs nvidia war, that is not what I intended. This is 100% my opinion regarding override, which may have a lot to do with the type of games I play. You said you had a different experience and thats cool, I can respect your opinion, I have mine you have yours :cool:
 
darkangelamd said:
Having just switched from Nvidia to AMD, I think the colors on AMD are much more vivid.
Click to expand...

That I would agree with, and simply tweaking digital vibrance brings them both on par.

I would also like to say this, since its on topic.. with each vendors hardware, using 3rd party apps, you can produce significantly better IQ on Nvidia, which is what really matters to the end user imo. However with both at default app preference theres really notrhing between them.
 
xoleras said:
Here's an example of what i'm talking about from when I was using 580s last year:

http://chattypics.com/files/CapturePNG_9t8abkg7mu.png

A lot of games are flagged as such. Anyway, I regret going on this tangent because this is just turning into a typical AMD vs nvidia war, that is not what I intended. This is 100% my opinion regarding override, which may have a lot to do with the type of games I play. You said you had a different experience and thats cool, I can respect your opinion, I have mine you have yours :cool:
Click to expand...

That's what I said... It's been profiled as such explicitly to avoid corruption... feature, not a bug. When you say it's "ignoring" your setting you make it sound like its buggy/flakey software that acts randomly. This should manifest itself as the AA override control being grayed out for that specific app. That said... I'm pretty sure that Dead Space has a working override AA profile doesn't it?
 
demowhc said:
That I would agree with, and simply tweaking digital vibrance brings them both on par.

I would also like to say this, since its on topic.. with each vendors hardware, using 3rd party apps, you can produce significantly better IQ on Nvidia, which is what really matters to the end user imo. However with both at default app preference theres really notrhing between them.
Click to expand...

How do I tweak "digital vibrance"?

Which 3rd party apps should I use to "produce significantly better IQ" on Nvidia hardware?
 
darkangelamd said:
Having just switched from Nvidia to AMD, I think the colors on AMD are much more vivid.
Click to expand...

I have never understood how this happens to people. Using VGA? Placebo? Screwing with the settings and forgetting about it? I dunno.

I've used a number of both cards, at home my recent progression was GTX 260 -> HD5870 -> GTX 570 -> GTX 680 and at work it was 7950GT -> HD 5770 -> GTX 560. Never have I noticed any difference in the colours, at all. Nor has my calibration hardware. At home I have a hardware calibrated screen, so a colorimeter takes measurements and then programs corrections in to the display's LUTs. The resulting correction curves are the same regardless of if it is an AMD or nVidia card driving the display. If the cards were outputting a different signal, the correction curves would be different since the target is always the same.

Also unless you've mucked with the settings it shouldn't be doing anything with the output for a digital signal. DVI only supports 8 bits per channel. So when the OS wants, say 250,0,0 displayed, the card should be outputting that. Only if you've changes the LUTs on the card either with software calibration or mucking with the colour controls in the menus would that be different.

Basically I think if you are seeing a colour difference between nVidia and AMD, you are either imagining it or doing something wrong.
 
thundermitty said:
How do I tweak "digital vibrance"?

Which 3rd party apps should I use to "produce significantly better IQ" on Nvidia hardware?
Click to expand...

Digital vibrance is in the control panel, under colour settings.

Use inspector for more IQ settings.
 
im getting a 560 and a 580 soon when/if they go on nice sale, and comparing to my 6850/6950 unlock, thanks for making this post, whether it'll be accurate for others or not. it's something to watch out for and now I will, thanks!
 
Sycraft said:
I have never understood how this happens to people. Using VGA? Placebo? Screwing with the settings and forgetting about it? I dunno.

I've used a number of both cards, at home my recent progression was GTX 260 -> HD5870 -> GTX 570 -> GTX 680 and at work it was 7950GT -> HD 5770 -> GTX 560. Never have I noticed any difference in the colours, at all. Nor has my calibration hardware. At home I have a hardware calibrated screen, so a colorimeter takes measurements and then programs corrections in to the display's LUTs. The resulting correction curves are the same regardless of if it is an AMD or nVidia card driving the display. If the cards were outputting a different signal, the correction curves would be different since the target is always the same.

Also unless you've mucked with the settings it shouldn't be doing anything with the output for a digital signal. DVI only supports 8 bits per channel. So when the OS wants, say 250,0,0 displayed, the card should be outputting that. Only if you've changes the LUTs on the card either with software calibration or mucking with the colour controls in the menus would that be different.

Basically I think if you are seeing a colour difference between nVidia and AMD, you are either imagining it or doing something wrong.
Click to expand...


Nope, its been this way for years, AMD/ATI has always had a slightly more colorful picture and more accurate gamma. I don't know why its the way but everytime I've ever changed from an Nvidia to ATI card or vice versa, I see the difference right away and I'm always slightly let down with Nvidia's IQ so I always tend to find ways to justify buying ATI again even if gaming performance is slightly inferior. And please spare us all the explanation that we're doing something wrong. I've got a great eye for detail and I'm quite the home theater fanatic myself with a calibrated screen as well and I'm sorry to tell you that the difference is there. ATI simply has a better picture to my eyes and to many others which is why this always seems to come up.

The irony of it is that it always seems to be the same response from people that report it, ATI just looks better, I've never heard of anyone going from ATI card and saying wow the picture just looks better now with Nvidia! Its not placebo when it only works one way and its always people that report ATI just looks better not vice versa. And like clockwork, there's always some Nvidia fanatic jumps into to defend Nvidia and say I've never noticed a difference and yours eyes are defective. Give it a rest already, people do see the difference, its there, some notice, some don't. If you don't see it, that's fine too, your eyes are happy with the picture you got so be happy.
 
Except that unless you are talking an analogue connection, or you have something configured in the settings to alter the colour, that just isn't possible. Understand that on a regular computer desktop, all your stuff is encoded in 8-bit per channel colour, 256 steps for each channel. You can see it in HTML colours, a photo editor, all that kind of thing. Ok then understand that DVI is the same way. It is an all digital link, and it is again 8-bits per channel. There's no room for extra data and indeed the processors and displays on most monitors only handle 8-bits per channel (some pro displays can do 10 bits per channel, but only over DP and only fairly recently).

So if the card is accurately passing the data from the OS on to the display, there is no room for it to make it "more colourful" or anything. It can't add information. It does a 1:1 passthrough, unless it has been specifically changed not to.

Then there's the whole measurements thing. Get yourself a colorimeter and measure the things yourself. If there were some kind of built-in difference between the cards, a colorimeter could easily measure and quantify it. So you should be able to show some measurement and documentation of it. It would most certainly be of interest to professionals.

Now if you are talking about some specific subset of things, like say video playback, then yes there can be differences because of how the decoders are set up to handle things like colour range and so on (which you can change in the contorl panel) and they may be different by default. However if you are talking general display, then I'm sorry but I'm not buying it without some evidence. It flys in the face of what I know about how the signal chain works, and my measurement with my gear.
 
blade52x said:
Below is a screenshot taken in same area, 480 at the top, and 6950 at the bottom.

GTX 480

HD 6950
Click to expand...

NV obviously culling tree branch entity mesh for performance. AMD either too stupid/lazy to care about doing the same thing for some boost in fps. I could care less about branches, I like the NV approach.
 
I'm inclined to believe the guy with hardware-calibrated displays. :cool:

I've also used both brands recently (5770 & 570) and have not noticed a difference.
 
demowhc said:
Digital vibrance is in the control panel, under colour settings.

Use inspector for more IQ settings.
Click to expand...

I see "digital vibrance" in the Nvidia Control Panel under "adjust desktop color settings"

It seems to look best on its default setting of 50%.

I downloaded the latest version of Nvidia Inspector from the offical website:

http://blog.orbmu2k.de/tools/nvidia-inspector-tool

I opened up Nvidia Inspector and clicked on "driver profile settings"

I don't see any settings that would further enhance the image quality of games beyond what I've already described in post # 2 of this thread.

Perhaps you could elaborate?
 
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I think some of you are talking about different things. 3d image quality vs 2d image quality. In the late 90s early 2k's ATI was always regarded as having the best 2d quality, one thing I notice when using ATI cards is that the monitor tends to stay cool and colors are vibrant. I don't have any objective data but some other cards seem to make the monitor "warm" faster, which dilutes colors sometimes in 2d windows. Especially true with MSI lightnings, the monitor got warm real fast (which causes super small font text to blotch), i'm just not sure how to objectively quantify such findings. So my personal theory is it depends on how well the AIB maker builds the card and what components they use, in addition to how much power they're pushing through it. The MSI lightning is power hungry (more than reference) so perhaps that is why.

As far as which has better 2D quality currently, I really don't know. I'd say they're probably close enough to each other that it doesn't matter in that respect..
 
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xoleras said:
So my personal theory is it depends on how well the AIB maker builds the card and what components they use, in addition to how much power they're pushing through it. The MSI lightning is power hungry (more than reference) so perhaps that is why.
Click to expand...
It makes no difference given a digital output. The digital output bypasses all digital-to-analog conversion (RAMDAC).
 
jaredpace said:
NV obviously culling tree branch entity mesh for performance. AMD either too stupid/lazy to care about doing the same thing for some boost in fps. I could care less about branches, I like the NV approach.
Click to expand...

LOL...

it wasn't until post #28 that someone looked at the pictures - Jaredpace gets the prize


hehehehe this place is starting to turn into a circus lol..



Looking at the 2 screenshots you can see there is an obvious hardware detection and culling/setting going on.

the real question issue here is who is doing the detection and alteration? Nvidia or Bethesda..

Its either A) Bethesda has culled the distant trees to increase performance/compatablity with nvidia cards are B) Nvidia is culling to gain performance.

Makes me wonder if any of the reviewers have picked up on this yet, considering its a heavily reviewed game in hardware reviews really makes you go Hmmmm..

Maybe Kyle or Brent can chime in since they've been using Skyrim pretty heavily in the video card reviews.
 
H-street said:
LOL...

it wasn't until post #28 that someone looked at the pictures - Jaredpace gets the prize


hehehehe this place is starting to turn into a circus lol..



Looking at the 2 screenshots you can see there is an obvious hardware detection and culling/setting going on.

the real question issue here is who is doing the detection and alteration? Nvidia or Bethesda..

Its either A) Bethesda has culled the distant trees to increase performance/compatablity with nvidia cards are B) Nvidia is culling to gain performance.

Makes me wonder if any of the reviewers have picked up on this yet, considering its a heavily reviewed game in hardware reviews really makes you go Hmmmm..

Maybe Kyle or Brent can chime in since they've been using Skyrim pretty heavily in the video card reviews.
Click to expand...

Maybe Kyle or Brent could shoot an email to nvidia and ask them?
 
H-street said:
LOL...

it wasn't until post #28 that someone looked at the pictures - Jaredpace gets the prize


hehehehe this place is starting to turn into a circus lol..



Looking at the 2 screenshots you can see there is an obvious hardware detection and culling/setting going on.

the real question issue here is who is doing the detection and alteration? Nvidia or Bethesda..

Its either A) Bethesda has culled the distant trees to increase performance/compatablity with nvidia cards are B) Nvidia is culling to gain performance.

Makes me wonder if any of the reviewers have picked up on this yet, considering its a heavily reviewed game in hardware reviews really makes you go Hmmmm..

Maybe Kyle or Brent can chime in since they've been using Skyrim pretty heavily in the video card reviews.
Click to expand...

It could be entirely settings-based, though. Taking one screenshot with one setting doesn't really prove anything.

That said, I would like to hear more about this in a more official capacity (Kyle, Brent, nVidia/AMD) so we can stop the speculation.
 
H-street said:
LOL...

it wasn't until post #28 that someone looked at the pictures - Jaredpace gets the prize


hehehehe this place is starting to turn into a circus lol..



Looking at the 2 screenshots you can see there is an obvious hardware detection and culling/setting going on.

the real question issue here is who is doing the detection and alteration? Nvidia or Bethesda..

Its either A) Bethesda has culled the distant trees to increase performance/compatablity with nvidia cards are B) Nvidia is culling to gain performance.

Makes me wonder if any of the reviewers have picked up on this yet, considering its a heavily reviewed game in hardware reviews really makes you go Hmmmm..

Maybe Kyle or Brent can chime in since they've been using Skyrim pretty heavily in the video card reviews.
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Well, obviously since NV scores significantly higher in Skyrim benchmarks and 7970 looks a lot slower in them, I think it's pretty obvious who is behind it.

If I crank up the settings, I want to see the full game. I don't want NV to decide that ultra settings on NV should have less pretty things than on and AMD so it can win at benchmarks. For all you people saying that you'd rather have missing polygons for higher FPS, are you retarded? If you want to have lower polygon counts in your scenes, lower your fucking settings. Seriously, if I spent $500 on a video card so it could disable parts of the game to get faster FPS at ultra settings, I'd be pissed off. That's why you have settings that are lower than ultra in games.
 
Sycraft said:
I have never understood how this happens to people. Using VGA? Placebo? Screwing with the settings and forgetting about it? I dunno.

I've used a number of both cards, at home my recent progression was GTX 260 -> HD5870 -> GTX 570 -> GTX 680 and at work it was 7950GT -> HD 5770 -> GTX 560. Never have I noticed any difference in the colours, at all. Nor has my calibration hardware. At home I have a hardware calibrated screen, so a colorimeter takes measurements and then programs corrections in to the display's LUTs. The resulting correction curves are the same regardless of if it is an AMD or nVidia card driving the display. If the cards were outputting a different signal, the correction curves would be different since the target is always the same.

Also unless you've mucked with the settings it shouldn't be doing anything with the output for a digital signal. DVI only supports 8 bits per channel. So when the OS wants, say 250,0,0 displayed, the card should be outputting that. Only if you've changes the LUTs on the card either with software calibration or mucking with the colour controls in the menus would that be different.

Basically I think if you are seeing a colour difference between nVidia and AMD, you are either imagining it or doing something wrong.
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I use DVI, and I use a spyder 3 elite to calibrate the displays. In games the colors are different, on the desktop there isn't a difference. I wouldn't have believed it but it's true.
 
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