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AMD claims its image quality is on par with Nvidia
FINGER POINTING has broken out again between the pixel pushers Nvidia and AMD over the image quality of their graphics drivers.
On Monday reports surfaced that Nvidia claimed its arch-rival, AMD, has lowered the image quality of default settings in its Catalyst drivers. Essentially the Green Goblin charged that AMD is cheating in order to attain higher benchmarking scores and thus garner more favourable reviews.
Nick Stam, the technical marketing director at Nvidia hammered home the point in a blog post, saying "Nvidia GPUs provide higher image quality at default driver settings, which means comparative AMD [versus] Nvidia testing methods need to be adjusted to compensate for the image quality differences."
It was a pretty serious indictment of AMD and not surprisingly it drew a response from Nvidia's competing GPU designer. In a statement sent to The INQUIRER, AMD said it takes the issue of image quality seriously, writing, "We are committed to the PC gaming community and take all feedback on image quality very seriously."
The firm continued, "To that end, we have recently revisited the current default image quality settings used in Catalyst drivers and found them to be on par with the default settings provided by our competitor. We take great care in determining the default settings of Catalyst drivers and believe current settings deliver a very good gaming experience."
Questions over image quality settings in drivers have been around for years, first hitting the headlines back in 2003 with Nvidia's decision to treat the popular 3DMark benchmark with disdain by lowering image quality and not rendering out of frame objects. Many INQUIRER readers still remember that saga and not surprisingly shouts of the pot calling the kettle black were heard in response to Stam's recent claims.
Nvidia has said that it won't go down a similar route of image quality reduction in order to seemingly perform better in benchmarks, however with AMD holding firm that it doesn't compromise image quality in its drivers' default settings, a race to Lego-esque image quality might be just around the corner. µ
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"AMD: Enemies of Freedom"
my troll-sense is tingling.
and how exactly are they enemies of freedom by making their GPU specs available... for free!
your claim was that nvidia, by definition, had better driver support. the nforce raid driver issue proves that's not the case, and was therefore relevant.
"Thank you for refuting your own arguments. There is no capable driver for AMD/ATI x-series cards for linux, only the deficient radeon driver which you call legacy."
you claimed support had been dropped, a clearly false statement. how was that refuted?
"I may despise nVidia for a whole bunch of reasons which aren't relevant to this discussion"
LINUX is what isn't relevant to the discussion (and i say that as a fan of Linux). do you think think nvidia was talking about linux in this statement? of course not! so how that it relevant?
"AMD has in fact NOT dropped support for the X series.
they have been moved to legacy to be sure, but a new drivers for them has been released every 3 to 6 months since then.
that's on par with some of nvidias drivers release cycles"
Thank you for refuting your own arguments. There is no capable driver for AMD/ATI x-series cards for linux, only the deficient radeon driver which you call legacy.
"any why would my raid problems not be related to a companies driver support?"
Reread the title of this article. You're arguing that because you have RAID issues with nVidia that your AMD/ATI gpu produces a better image quality? That's a sure sign of schizophrenia.
Back to reality;
Upgrade a Fedora system from Fedora 10 to Fedora 14 with an nVidia gpu and you have perfect image quality.
Upgrade a Fedora system from Fedora 10 to Fedora 14 with an AMD/ATI gpu and 90% of the time you have driver issues.
The only way AMD/ATI can compete with nVidia in a test is by omitting the majority of the installed AMD/ATI gpus from the test by forgoing any driver support for these systems. This is as artificial as the alleged manipulation of driver settings mentioned in the original article.
I may despise nVidia for a whole bunch of reasons which aren't relevant to this discussion, but if you ask any sane linux developer: "Who has better image quality on Linux?", the answer is invariably "nVidia".
@Vijay
AMD has in fact NOT dropped support for the X series.
they have been moved to legacy to be sure, but a new drivers for them has been released every 3 to 6 months since then.
that's on par with some of nvidias drivers release cycles
any why would my raid problems not be related to a companies driver support?
the whole discussion is already way off-topic of the actual news item.
@Jason
Many x-series solutions are perfectly capable of high fps, smooth HD playback and support power management features which are missing or deficient because AMD has been so reluctant and secretive, not to mention sluggish in supporting these gpus throughout their artificially short lifespan.
You're the object in P.T. Barnum's saying if you believe that some contract or agreement between a notebook vendor and a gpu supplier is the reason that you should forego otherwise capable hardware.
It's like buying a car that otherwise works if it weren't for the fact that the manufacturer has an option to shut off your dashboard after 2 years and has exercised and executed that option which Jason thinks is a great reason to go out and buy new hardware.
"...AMD should be concentrating on its newer (read developed/launched the past 3 years)."
As I pointed out, even the newer HD series gpus are rarely supported in Linux distros because AMD hates linux.
@Countess
AMD is notorious for being a very poor sport at supporting their gpus in linux. The infamous 'arrest' of Richard Stallman revolved around this issue and it's been getting worse since then.
AMD has explicitly dropped support for x-series gpus in their catalyst drivers. nvidia gpus from before most recent x-series gpus have always been supported.
I appreciate your reference to nVidia's support (or lack thereof) for its RAID solutions but lets limit this thread to the topic of AMD vs nVidia's (gpu) image quality.
"I have two laptops with ATI GPUs that have been passed by but I accept that."
If it's just because you can't get a decent driver while the hardware is otherwise perfectly capable of HD playback and 3D graphics then you (and Jason) have somewhat deficient logic and apparently practice something that forgoes the triangle inequality and the likes, or maybe you just work for AMD.
It's very sad that they are pointing fingers about quality in this manner. Sure these things can be measured by squints (err the smart types, as Boothe would put it), but on the whole, it is very subjective to the average consumer.
Those who have already taken a side will almost endure anything for their chosen brand, short of having a product literally explode in their face ACME style. Moreover, the people that don't know will take the advice of a salesmen or family member that needs to make a living or are coocoo for a brand too.
I pretty much buy Nvidia in my desktop, and usually find AMD in my portables (mostly Intel's fault being that it is hard to find a good Nvidia pairing at a reasonable price), but I must say it is getting a little embarrassing. Or it has been embarrassing for a while, but I’m just willing to admit it now…
like nvidia dropped support for the nforce4 chipset raid-controler? no proper working vista drivers were ever released while the chipset was only 3 years old when it was released.
the loops i have to jump through to get it working in vista or windows 7 are insane.
all you have to do is install the open source drivers and it works.
and you're mad at AMD for not making detailed guides for all linux flavors? you can find a guide in about 30 seconds with google.
and its a whole lot shorter then the guide i have to use.
One other thing to consider is that often driver support for laptop GPUs (not dasktop GPUs) often is the sole responsibility of the laptop manufacturer not the GPU maker.
A lot of laptops (for reasons unknown) have their firmware adjusted so only vendor supplied drivers will work.
Maybe write to Toshiba/Asus etc. and complain?
But I stand by the fact that the X series is obsolete and AMD should be concentrating on its newer (read developed/launched the past 3 years).
I have two laptops with ATI GPUs that have been passed by but I accept that.
You can always install XP on it and then maybe you could also play some games on it other than Quake and Doom.
I forgot to mention that even AMD's HD-series are systematically undersupported wrt driver development.
Fedora 14 is out and once again there's no decent driver for AMD, not for x-series, not for HD-series.
Just go to the Guides & Solutions forum @ Fedora Forums, and look at the difference between the guide for nVidia and the guide for AMD gpus.
For nVidia, there's a section
"For GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 200 & 300 series cards "
"For GeForce FX cards"
"For GeForce 4 and below "
For AMD, there's
"Sorry this guide doesn't support F14 yet."
Whether you have an HD- or an x-series AMD/ATI based graphics solution, AMD knows how to ruin your experience and their future sales.
It's been the same old sorry tune for AMD/ATI for quite some time now. They're reluctant to release drivers, then they drop support for x-series gpus and we've made up our minds already.
What works? nVidia does. Intel does. AMD doesn't.
This is coming from someone who's pitched AMD since 1997. Now it's going to be more like "Yeah, AMD, they may suddenly drop driver support so your big expenditure is your choice" or "I'm not sure about non-ecc memory for a server, I'd go with intel" or "what's gonna get you fired, an AMD purchase or an Intel purchase?"
Unless there's a physical law which prevents AMD from supporting hardware which hasn't even been economically written off, we won't be pitching AMD for the next 5 years.
If you want to feel happy about something that may potentially take place in the future, then good for you.
In the mean time, the final verdict is that AMD's gpu and corporate image quality suck big time.
I think you'll change your tune when AMD has drivers inside the kernel and all nvidia has is still a binary blob.
Nice insight, but it doesn't change the reality that AMD did release its own driver for linux and then ceased to release a driver for x-series gpus.
nVidia has maintained driver support for their cards from the same era, why can't AMD?
Intel gpus are better supported and work better than AMD gpus on linux with the radeon driver.
Investements from less than 2 years ago are killed because one chooses AMD. Not so with nVidia. Not so with Intel.
AMD seems to think that they can get customers to upgrade their gpu with their current gpu market position, just by making previous gpus obsolete.
The reality of this bad marketing is that we'll tip the scale to nVidia and Intel for all purchase decisions for the next 5 years.
Finally get some good gpus, finally win your EU court case and then the arrogance sets in.
But Jason would like to throw away otherwise capable hardware so I guess they have some market to target and P.T. Barnum was and remains right.
are telling porkies
@Ex HD5850 owner
if nvidia has conclusive proof they'd have release some screenshots or otherwise coherent proof. they didn't
the same goes for you, prove it.
@Vijay
AMD has released the specs for all their videocards so opensource programmers can create their own drivers without having to resort to revert engineering. that leaves nvidia FAR FAR behind in linux support.
for all the older then HD videocards the open-source drivers are already functioning very wel.
the only caveat is that they cant release all the specs for the videodecoder because that release on 3de partie licenced technology. in future cards they'll implement a split system so they can release those specs, even at the cost of additional transistors to make that possible.
nvidia isnt even close to that level of support. their binary-blod drivers are functional but thats all that can be said of them. they cant be modificed, nvidia decides when to support new technologies or alternatives to X-server, what happens when they go bust? what happens if they just happen to not support your card anymore en the tech in linux changes?
Why replace a 2 year old laptop which is capable of HD playback and 3D graphics? Because the GPU vendor doesn't want to release a capable driver?
AMD is bad economics.
A purchase from 2 years ago shouldn't be a write off because AMD wants to sell new hardware.
If a laptop can play HD content and has capable 3D graphics, why replace the laptop because some vendor doesn't want to release a driver for the GPU?
We're talking gpus, not spouses.
Yes...
AMD IS TELLING PORKIES!!!
1. They have reduced default image quality
2. Their anisotropic filtering sucks krogan quads
Signed,
Ex HD5850 owner
Since when did any review not compare like for like with specific resolutions and AA and AF settings.
This is just nVidia attention seeking and slagging off AMD/ATI running spoilers on the trouncing they know will shortly be forthcoming when AMD releases the top end next generation cards.
They are releasing something better than the "6870" right? They better be, as that is really just a 6770 with an identity crisis. If nVidia want to slag AMD off about something slag off their duplicitous misuse of naming conventions. Oh wait no then someone might remember nVidia's dismal record on that score (rebadgering), second thoughts better slag off driver cheats instead. Except wasnt nVidia well known for doing far worse than that themselves not so long ago? Maybe they hope we have forgotten.
We haven't.
:oP
Since when do ANY gamers use default settings?!
Why would they bother bringing out better linux drivers for the old X series?
The X series is now 5 generations behind and cant fight its way out of a paper bag.
Time to move on old chap, AMD has.
I don't know about you but I smoke "Pot"
I don't know about you but I smoke "Pot"
If AMD would release linux drivers for their x-series gpus we'd at least have some decent image quality and render speeds with recent linux gui environments.
nVidia clearly maintains a better image quality by updating their drivers for recent linux gui environments. AMD only supports HD series gpus and leaves otherwise capable gpus at the mercy of a deficient driver.
We've known for years that nVidia has cheated its way into the hearts and minds of the gullible classes.
Many of those have been exposed by The Inquirer (back in the days when it was a proper publication and not just an advertising vehicle).
nVidia had its image quality in the toilet for years and it was considered fine and dandy. Santa Clara used to tell us "But you can't tell the difference at full speed anyway".
Not it's doing more work that AMD, up goes the cry that life is not fair.
Let the nVidia PR bandit who is without guilt, agree to a side-by-side demonstration (blind) and they can tell us which one is Radeon 6000 and which is GTX.
NO CHANCE.
Put up or shut up chaps, put up or shut up.
was the statement "we have not reduced image quality at default setting compared to prior values".
The PR people can certainly teach Milton or Shakespeare a thing or two about the richness of the English language...
Now that ATI is 'no more' and Radeons are labeled AMD, we have TWO green video card companies and both have green eyes on each other.
Time for a significant third player in the industry. I hope it will be Intel. Revive the Larrabee project, while continuing R&D on Light Peak.
Or make on-board graphics solutions so good that discrete graphics cards are redundant, just like floppies nowadays.
You know nothing of computers, ignorant nVidia fanbois!
nvidia was able to lower the quality because AMD was already there!! AMD and nVidia quality has been basically equal for a decade now anyway. What sets nvidia apart is that after their driver issues from 10 years ago, the quality of their drivers has beaten the pants of AMD ever since.
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have a driver not crash during game play. That's why I stay far far away from AMD. Their drivers stink.
AMD was able to lower the quality because nVidia was already there!! AMD and nVidia quality has been basically equal for a decade now anyway. What sets AMD apaart is that after their driver issues from 10 years ago, the quality of their drivers has beaten the pants of nVidia ever since.
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have a driver not crash during game play. That's why I stay far far away from nVidia. Their drivers stink.