ATI 5xxx texture filtering problems

[saaya]

http://www.semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762

damn! :mad:
texture filtering is supposed to be 100% angle independant now, but the biggest problem... textures still flicker... :stick: god! cut the damn optimizations already! nobody wants hundreds of fps with flickering textures! :mad:

[saaya]

8aa perf has been imrpoved notably as well in 5xxx, i really hope it didnt happen at the cost of image quality! :/
http://www.semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=750

[flopper]

None spoke of that after the demo day when games run in 3 screens, etc..
if it was present people would have noticed.

its not an issue.

[saaya]

None spoke of that after the demo day when games run in 3 screens, etc..
if it was present people would have noticed.

its not an issue.
not good enough...
almost nobody talks about texture filtering on current cards either and its there and really annoying...

and its not exactly what you do on a launch event... point out problems and be a party pooper... :D

[Bradan]

not good enough...
almost nobody talks about texture filtering on current cards either and its there and really annoying...

and its not exactly what you do on a launch event... point out problems and be a party pooper... :D

Yeah. I hate this so much, especially in crysis and mirror's edge.

Everybody either doesn't notice or ignores it. It drives me nuts in large open spaces and you see some little flickering things in the background.
:down::down::down:

[Jamesrt2004]

never ever ever noticed anything like this lol

[Smartidiot89]

Only really noticed this is older games with my card but it didn't bother me... In newer games such as Crysis, HawX Fallout 3 etc. nothing

[ajaidev]

@saaya were you lurking around in semiaccurate forums the whole day :P

[zalbard]

Hope that's not really true.

[Andrea deluxe]

Hope that's not really true.

in this period a lot of money run in more (web-people) pockets :D

[LordEC911]

Hope that's not really true.
Not even close.

The source from that news clip came from Konkort over at B3d who, to put it nicely, doesn't completely understand the discussion.

The actual source is people who have the card and asked a software maker, he created a filter test, on how to use his program. After explaining how to use it he conversed a little more with them and supposedly confirmed that textures still flicker due to under-sampling...
This guy came out of nowhere and no-one can verify his claims, so this is still unconfirmed.

Don't know why this is news and why it isn't posted in the 5xxx thread...

[eleeter]

Well we shall find out soon enough right?

[saaya]

@saaya were you lurking around in semiaccurate forums the whole day :Pall day lol, no, only 30mins or so :P

[gOJDO]

semiaccurate = FUDzilla = the_INQ = BS;

[ajaidev]

semiaccurate = FUDzilla = the_INQ = BS;

I think u mean BSN :ROTF:

[RaZz!]

[...]
Don't know why this is news and why it isn't posted in the 5xxx thread...

i more and more get the impression saaya has become some sort of desperate sensationalist :D;)

saaya, wait just a few more hours and you can finally see what the 5800 series is about :up:

(no offence intended, just messin around ;))

[Mechromancer]

i more and more get the impression saaya has become some sort of desperate sensationalist :D;)

saaya, wait just a few more hours and you can finally see what the 5800 series is about :up:

(no offence intended, just messin around ;))

+1 :yepp:

I usually skip over Saaya posts now, but had to see where he was coming from with this.

[SKYMTL]

Everybody either doesn't notice or ignores it. It drives me nuts in large open spaces and you see some little flickering things in the background.
:down::down::down:


Fallout 3 does the same thing. It is annoying as heck.

[Particle]

In all seriousness, flickering isn't a problem I've noticed. When I'm playing games, I think I'm pretty insensitive to most visual things we've had past and present such as:

- Ghosting on LCDs back when I used an 8/16ms panel
- This "flickering" thing
- "Microstutter" in crossfire

About the only things that I notice are:

- Frame tears [very occasionally] when vsync is off
- Too low of frame rate
- Texture detail [in context of developer decision, not card processing]
- [Many] years ago when for a while edges of triangles weren't done properly and there would be thin white gaps between polys at the edges. It was a driver thing that has seemingly since been solved.

[saaya]

The actual source is people who have the card and asked a software maker, he created a filter test, on how to use his program. After explaining how to use it he conversed a little more with them and supposedly confirmed that textures still flicker due to under-sampling...
This guy came out of nowhere and no-one can verify his claims, so this is still unconfirmed.

Don't know why this is news and why it isn't posted in the 5xxx thread...if somebody who knows enough about texture filtering to write an app that tests it says it flickers, i tend to believe him... he might exaggerate and its not that visible... but if that guy says its there, im pretty sure its there...

and yeah, i wanted to post this in the 5xxx thread but... where is it? :D


i more and more get the impression saaya has become some sort of desperate sensationalist :D;)i didnt make this up, i just read it on sa and posted a link here :P


saaya, wait just a few more hours and you can finally see what the 5800 series is about :up:oh yeah the launch is soon, right? the paper launch at least...

particle, you never noticed micro stuttering when 2 cards get out of sync? at some points its far from MICRO stuttering, in far cry2 its close to unplayable at times, it feels like the main character is having a seizure or something and is shaking like crazy :D

[ubuntu83]

and yeah, i wanted to post this in the 5xxx thread but... where is it? :D



Here it is -----> http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=233621

[Bgriffs]

I think u mean BSN :ROTF:

Same thing? :ROTF:

[flopper]

Saaya the new fudzilla in xtreme forum?
Its like stating, Nvidia cards broke down due to bad cheap parts, and Apple now dont want any nvidia parts due to Apple use quality.
Cant buy Nvidia then.

its a none issue.
If it is, you be hearing from people all around.
Internet is kinda small place.

[SKYMTL]

I still think it is a valid argument no matter what the source is. With the power of today's GPUs versus the requirements for currently and even upcoming games, downsampling should have been put to bed. People can go on and on about a card's AA capabilities and anisotropic filtering, but (IMO) all that is for nothing if there are issues with the textures themselves.

I've noticed the issue in nearly every game I've played over the past year.

Fallout 3: Rocks in the Capital Wasteland and the Washington monument are the worst
HawX: Buildings in some levels
Company of Heroes: Rubble and some infantry weapons on the night levels

I could go on and on. However, there are some games that I haven't noticed it in. Batman, Dawn of War II and Call of Duty: WaW don't seem to have any problems that I have seen.

[Eastcoasthandle]

Not even close.

The source from that news clip came from Konkort over at B3d who, to put it nicely, doesn't completely understand the discussion.

The actual source is people who have the card and asked a software maker, he created a filter test, on how to use his program. After explaining how to use it he conversed a little more with them and supposedly confirmed that textures still flicker due to under-sampling...
This guy came out of nowhere and no-one can verify his claims, so this is still unconfirmed.

Don't know why this is news and why it isn't posted in the 5xxx thread...

^^This
When asked to show proof of his statement he couldn't provide it and said that he was told that was the problem by someone else. All this after he chimed in. So I would wait and see 1st instead of fueling what looks like fud so far.

[saaya]

I still think it is a valid argument no matter what the source is. With the power of today's GPUs versus the requirements for currently and even upcoming games, downsampling should have been put to bed. People can go on and on about a card's AA capabilities and anisotropic filtering, but (IMO) all that is for nothing if there are issues with the textures themselves.

I've noticed the issue in nearly every game I've played over the past year.

Fallout 3: Rocks in the Capital Wasteland and the Washington monument are the worst
HawX: Buildings in some levels
Company of Heroes: Rubble and some infantry weapons on the night levels

I could go on and on. However, there are some games that I haven't noticed it in. Batman, Dawn of War II and Call of Duty: WaW don't seem to have any problems that I have seen.yes, whats the point in being able to run 8aa 16af with max details at huge resolutions if the textures flicker and are blurry...

batman is based on UT3, and yes, its hard to see it in there, and actually its even dificult to see aliasing in ut3 based games, cause they used polygones in a very smart way... the geometry they avoid using sharp edges and certain angles... pretty smart :)


^^This
When asked to show proof of his statement he couldn't provide it and said that he was was told that was the problem by someone else. All this after he chimed in. So I would wait and see 1st instead of fueling what looks like fud so far.hmmm so its a case of he said she said then...
well thx for the headsup... nobody would be more happy to hear its not true than me, trust me :D

the day a new card comes out that has no texture flickering at all and notably improved texture sampling, possibly even UPsampling like in video and texture apps, id upgrade immediatly...

[Particle]

particle, you never noticed micro stuttering when 2 cards get out of sync? at some points its far from MICRO stuttering, in far cry2 its close to unplayable at times, it feels like the main character is having a seizure or something and is shaking like crazy :D

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure other people have experienced it. I just personally haven't yet had that kind of thing happen, even on Far Cry 2.

[saaya]

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure other people have experienced it. I just personally haven't yet had that kind of thing happen, even on Far Cry 2.if i play fc2 at 1920x1080 4xx 16af in sli and quickload to load another savepoint every 1/10 there is some notable flickering that slowly dissapears within a few seconds as soon as i move and look around .
every 1/50 times it flickers really bad and the whole game stutters really bad and it doesnt go away for a minute or so...

[Just learnin']

if i play fc2 at 1920x1080 4xx 16af in sli and quickload to load another savepoint every 1/10 there is some notable flickering that slowly dissapears within a few seconds as soon as i move and look around .
every 1/50 times it flickers really bad and the whole game stutters really bad and it doesnt go away for a minute or so...

I get the same on a GTX 295 at 1920 x 1200.

[blindbox]

^^ Well, SLI isn't exactly Crossfire, is it?

[RVWinkle]

Surely unreleased hardware with beta drivers won't have any bugs. Also when people talk about rendering issues in Fallout 3 you should probably take into account that the game engine is a buggy trainwreck that shouldn't be blamed on hardware vendors. Lets stick to blaming AMD for real issues like world hunger and swine flu!

[saaya]

^^ Well, SLI isn't exactly Crossfire, is it?actually, it pretty much is :P

and winkle, fa3 is just one example...

[jaredpace]

This is about as valid as "microstutter"

[Manicdan]

id think with all these power in a single card, they can sacrifice a little framerate to give unbelievable eye candy. or add a new option on CCC to let you decide which you prefer, i dont see it being too hard.

[STaRGaZeR]

This is about as valid as "microstutter"

Then we're doomed.

[MirageSys]

We need an "Xtreme Speculation" forum.

Also, Saaya is better than FUd by a factor of 5, whoever suggested that.

[FischOderAal]

Maybe I'm blind, but I've never seen any flickering in any game with my HD4870 :shrug:

[DilTech]

id think with all these power in a single card, they can sacrifice a little framerate to give unbelievable eye candy. or add a new option on CCC to let you decide which you prefer, i dont see it being too hard.

They don't because they know reviewers will turn off the optimizations when reviewing...


Maybe I'm blind, but I've never seen any flickering in any game with my HD4870 :shrug:

I've seen it playing crysis on my 4850... It was one of the first things I noticed as crysis was the first game I played once I got the card.

[oohms]

flickering i see only in GRID and microstuttering i have only ever seen in Flatout: ultimate carnage

[saaya]

Also, Saaya is better than FUd by a factor of 5, whoever suggested that.what does me linking to and talking about news articles have to do with fudo writing news articles?

[largon]

It took me quite a bit of time to detect the proverbial texture flickering in Crysis (SP demo) using my 4890. Can't see how that's a huge issue. The flickering happens only within a couple dozen pixel narrow band quite far away in the FOV.

[MirageSys]

Saaya the new fudzilla in xtreme forum?

what does me linking to and talking about news articles have to do with fudo writing news articles?


That's about it really. I was just saying your great compared to fud (because your not the source)

[jmke]

you're <> your ;)
and I don't even speak English :p

[Calmatory]

It took me quite a bit of time to detect the proverbial texture flickering in Crysis (SP demo) using my 4890. Can't see how that's a huge issue. The flickering happens only within a couple dozen pixel narrow band quite far away in the FOV.

Seconded.

O'well, I guess it ruins the experience. Like if there was flickering walls in a movie, "Omg not real!". The same people who whine about small things like this, probably whine about the small inlogical issues in movies. "Omg flew 2 meters when shot with shotgun, not realistic, complete garbage!".

[RaZz!]

you're <> your ;)
and I don't even speak English :p

it's the same with their <> there. it's misspelled very often as well, especially by people whose mother tongue actually is english :p:

[MirageSys]

you're <> your ;)
and I don't even speak English :p

touché. Poor grammar on my part.

[Beefy22]

Seconded.

O'well, I guess it ruins the experience. Like if there was flickering walls in a movie, "Omg not real!". The same people who whine about small things like this, probably whine about the small inlogical issues in movies. "Omg flew 2 meters when shot with shotgun, not realistic, complete garbage!".

I think you're missing the point...


I still think it is a valid argument no matter what the source is. With the power of today's GPUs versus the requirements for currently and even upcoming games, downsampling should have been put to bed. People can go on and on about a card's AA capabilities and anisotropic filtering, but (IMO) all that is for nothing if there are issues with the textures themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 4890 and believe that the flickering is tolerable. However, that's no excuse if it can be removed altogether.

[boredtodeath]

I've been playing RE5 at my friend house and I haven't seen the flickering or z-fighting yet on that game and he has a similar system to my own. We both have the same video card xfx gts250 and his system so far hasn't shown any flickering so now I am more interested in getting RE5 lol.

How could capcom get it right and others can't? or is it a driver issue? Strange to me and before this I was thinking that maybe it's just nvidia sucks now but no even ati users get flickering.

[jmke]

touché. Poor grammar on my part.

no biggie, I make plenty of horrible mistakes everywhere :D

[Jamesrt2004]

it's the same with their <> there. it's misspelled very often as well, especially by people whose mother tongue actually is english :p:
I agree i mean my mum teaches english to degree levels and she constantly goes on at me for it I ALWAYS get it wrong without fail :ROTF:

[annihilat0r]

flickering i see only in GRID and microstuttering i have only ever seen in Flatout: ultimate carnage

You do not "see" microstuttering. There's a reason it's called "micro" stuttering and not regular stuttering.

Microstuttering makes the game appear that its running at about half the FPS. I've experienced it in my 8800 GT SLI setup, and it really sucked. FRAPS numbers showed crazy FPS but the game (you lost it) wasn't really smooth.

It was only when I timedemoed and saw exactly which frame was rendered at which microsecond; that I was able to understand why my gaming experience wasn't what I was seeing at FRAPS.

Basically, if you render 5 frames at the same exact time but fail to render another frame in the next 20 milliseconds, you'll appear to have 250 FPS but will feel 50 FPS.

[STEvil]

annihilator - it is plainly visible in flatout ultimate carnage

[Sly Fox]

annihilator - it is plainly visible in flatout ultimate carnage

Same for Crysis.

8800 GTS = Low FPS but it feels fairly smooth

3870X2 = Higher FPS but it feels like a nightmare

Although I'm sure newer cards are better about it.

[Lightman]

Same for Crysis.

8800 GTS = Low FPS but it feels fairly smooth

3870X2 = Higher FPS but it feels like a nightmare

Although I'm sure newer cards are better about it.

I had 3870CF and 4870CF. There is BIG difference between the two in Crysis regarding micro sutter! Really HD4870CF was smooth while 3870CF was showing 25FPS+ and still game could be choppy ...

[saaya]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,695689/Radeon-HD-5870-Review-of-the-first-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/?page=5

there we are, its improved in 5xxx but its still there...
and its still worse than in gt200! :mad:

so they did not only NOT fix it, they didnt even get it done better than nvidia... sigh...
so nvidia doesnt have a reason to improve it and they wont... great...

[zalbard]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,695689/Radeon-HD-5870-Review-of-the-first-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/?page=5

there we are, its improved in 5xxx but its still there...
and its still worse than in gt200! :mad:

so they did not only NOT fix it, they didnt even get it done better than nvidia... sigh...
so nvidia doesnt have a reason to improve it and they wont... great...
Can be hopefully resolved via driver updates... :(

[Heinz68]

The Hard|OCP (http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/6)
In the second screenshot we have enabled 16X AF. Once again we find the Radeon HD 5870 produces the best 16X AF out of the bunch. It is a perfect circle, with no dependencies on angles like the Radeon HD 4890. I would say ATI has succeeded in providing the absolute best filtering
quality in a gaming graphics card.

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1082/1253589355ycmpekvjfn62l.png (http://img19.imageshack.us/i/1253589355ycmpekvjfn62l.png/)

[RaZz!]

mh, am i the only one who notices the pretty sharp-edged gradient in the grey area (respectively: there's no gradient at all)?

i don't know, but the gradient of the gtx285 in the grey area looks more appealing to me.
what's the way it's meant to be? i have no idea.

check the attachment for a quick comparison i did to illustrate what i mean:

[Manicdan]

i think ingame screenshots will be needed to determine whats really going on.
it could be ATI decided that those areas do not ever blend anyway, and designed it to ignore them completely.

[jmke]

I thought this was about the "flickering"

[Manicdan]

it seems the quality, flickering and performance all go together. to fix or perfect one, the other two may be sacrificed.

[Final8ty]

mh, am i the only one who notices the pretty sharp-edged gradient in the grey area (respectively: there's no gradient at all)?

i don't know, but the gradient of the gtx285 in the grey area looks more appealing to me.
what's the way it's meant to be? i have no idea.

check the attachment for a quick comparison i did to illustrate what i mean:

If you look at the 4980 shot there is even more detail in the grey area than the gtx285.

[Manicdan]

im not sure what the picture should look like, it could be that solid gray is perfect, and the details show where blending isnt exact. i think seeing a screenshot of a tile floor or brick walls, or something with a pattern that we can recognize would help understand what is happening. or i just need to know more about the test and find where it says what should and shouldnt be seen

[Eastcoasthandle]

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,695689/Radeon-HD-5870-Review-of-the-first-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/?page=5

there we are, its improved in 5xxx but its still there...
and its still worse than in gt200! :mad:

so they did not only NOT fix it, they didnt even get it done better than nvidia... sigh...
so nvidia doesnt have a reason to improve it and they wont... great...


...
What looks sharp on the pictures, flickers in motion...
LOL, I hardly call that conclusive be it they think it's real or otherwise. I find it odd there is a lack of video showing what they are trying to claim. Coming from the same website that wanted to show video of what "they thought" was microstutter (I believe they've removed those videos). As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding and I don't see any pudding.

[informal]

Yeah IIRC that whole "microstuttering" thing was started by pcgh website. Although some games can't scale well from one to multi GPUs,I haven't seen this thing manifest in reality with neither 4870X2 nor GTX 260 SLI...

[kuhla]

mh, am i the only one who notices the pretty sharp-edged gradient in the grey area (respectively: there's no gradient at all)?

i don't know, but the gradient of the gtx285 in the grey area looks more appealing to me.
what's the way it's meant to be? i have no idea.

check the attachment for a quick comparison i did to illustrate what i mean:

wowa..... good eye, I'm wondering what that is all about too....

[trinibwoy]

Yeah IIRC that whole "microstuttering" thing was started by pcgh website. Although some games can't scale well from one to multi GPUs,I haven't seen this thing manifest in reality with neither 4870X2 nor GTX 260 SLI...

Sigh, it's not some mysterious urban legend made up by people just for kicks. All you need to do is bring up Fraps and record frame times to see it for yourself.

With respect to AF quality, you cannot tell anything from static screenshots. The underfiltering can only be detected in motion. Those static shots show the level of angle dependence, not the level of filtering.

[LordEC911]

wowa..... good eye, I'm wondering what that is all about too....
You want the gray area like that. That is why everyone is calling ATi's new angle independant AF algorithm near perfect, it doesn't get much better.

You can see why in that test, look on the top half, GTX285, between the "gray" area and the white/gray, you can see where it should be completely grey, there are small spots of white/gray. On the 5870 side that isn't present.

[saaya]

yes, is should all be an even grey, the more spots or lines or uneven scaling towards the center you can see, the worse the filtering...
and yes i wish pcgh would make some videos, they tried it some time ago, but not very high res and it was too short and blurry to see much...

[Manicdan]

someone should make a flash animation to describe the problem

[trinibwoy]

someone should make a flash animation to describe the problem

Ask and you shall receive :)

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2009/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5870/index7.php&sl=de&tl=en&history_state0=

There are three videos in the middle of the page 60MB each.

HD4890 (http://ht4u.net/images/reviews/2009/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5870/3dc_filtertester_hd4890.avi), HD5870 (http://ht4u.net/images/reviews/2009/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5870/3dc_filtertester_hd5870.avi) and GTX 275 (http://ht4u.net/images/reviews/2009/amd_ati_radeon_hd_5870/3dc_filtertester_gtx275.avi).

In each video they did a comparison between the AF hardware and the reference image. The reference image was generated using a shader so it's how things should look if the TMUs were not doing any optimizations.

You can clearly see under-filtering/shimmering on the ATI cards. Now let the conspiracy theories begin!

[RaZz!]

that's quite a let-down tbh. even though i recognize the texture shimmering only in older games where the surfaces are mostly flat etc (with a 4850 that is), i still hoped they'd finally abandon these issues. nothing can beat texture shimmering on the g70 though :p:

[saaya]

according to pcgh using supersampling aa solves the problem, mostly at least!


SSAA in games
In comparison to the internal Oversampling, which can be forced on Geforce graphics cards with the tool Nhancer, the texture LoD is not adjusted with Ati's SSAA. To put it bluntly this means that the amount of AF is not increased. With a third party application like the Ati Tray Tools you can adjust the LoD by hand in order to receive the best texture sharpness. For 2x SSAA we don't recommend any changes yet, but for 4x SSAA you should set the LoD to -1 and for 8x SSAA -2 or -3 are flicker free - depending on the texture content.

so we need to use ssaa, which doesnt work in newer games, and a third party tool to adjust lod to get rid of the texture flickering... not perfect, but if it works... hooray! :D