Anisotropic Filtering Quality

Before running the tests we decided to check out the quality of anisotropic filtering as it was done by the GeForce 7800 GTX using the appropriate function from 3DMark05.

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX	NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra	ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition

We could see no difference between the GeForce 7800 GTX and GeForce 6800 Ultra when they were doing tri-linear filtering only. With the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition the mip levels begin farther and the transitions between them are smoother than with NVIDIA?s cards.

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX	NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra	ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition

It?s hard to distinguish between the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GeForce 7800 GTX as concerns anisotropic filtering. But on a closer inspection you can see that the sharpness of textures is higher with the latter card. Here, the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition produces another picture, with less distinct mip levels. That is, the ATI card is better at doing anisotropic filtering than the GeForces. So, the GeForce 7800 GTX doesn?t bring us anything new in terms of anisotropic filtering, but its quality is higher than with the GeForce 6800 Ultra. The difference is negligible, though, especially in real gaming situations.