Detonator 52.14 Test & 52.10 Re-Test

October 8, 2003 / by Leonidas / page 2 of 7

   Direct3D Filter Quality

This behavior is clearly different under Direct3D. The driver 45.23 delivers a properly quality, with the already mentioned exception in Unreal Tournament 2003. As with OpenGL, it didn't matter with the 45.23 driver if the anisotropic filter is set in the application or by means of the control panel. Referring to this, the drivers 52.10 and 52.14 offered an innovation: A (at first glance) properly functioning application setting (in the German version of the drivers named "Anwendungsgesteuert") (App = per Application):

52.10/14 Direct3D 0xAF (App)

52.10/14 Direct3D 2xAF (App)

52.10/14 Direct3D 4xAF (App)

52.10/14 Direct3D 8xAF (App)

At first sight, the filter quality of the Detonators 52.10/14 in the Application mode presents itself equal to that of the Detonator 45.23. However, with the direct comparison of both screenshots, you can recognize that nVidia runs a new "optimization" of the filter quality in Application mode (MouseOver effect using Javascript, alternative: click opens both screenshots):

Here the first point shows up, which we sadly overlooked in our first article about the Detonator 52.10: nVidia suddenly optimizes also the base trilinear filter. Not only on the texture stages 1-7, but also already on the texture stage 0 - and not only, if the anisotropic filter is set by the means of the control panel, but also -and particularly- in the Application mode. The Application mode normally displays what the application requests and doesn't exhibit any further optimizations, but on all texture stages the usage of a faked trilinear filter is forced with the drivers 52.10 and 52.14, regardless of the user settings.

In order to verify our screenshots by means of the the D3D AF-Tester, we additionaly used the filter test from 3DMark03 to be sure. This test is not able to display different texture stages, but the faked trilinear filter of the Detonators 52.10 and 52.14, compared the trilinear filter of the Detonator 45.23, is clearly evident with this program (MouseOver effect using Javascript, alternative: click opens both screenshots):

It should not be left unmentioned that in the meantime nVidia finally has an Application mode which is true to its name at least by some extent. If there wouldn't be the forced usage of the faked trilinear filter, this Application mode would be cheered by us (as it has been erroneously done in our original article about the Detonator 52.10). The Application mode of the Detonator 51.75 did not work at that time as described, but with the Detonators 52.10 and 52.14 it does work now - however with the new restriction that there is now generally only a faked trilinear filter for everything.