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AMD vs Nvidia (Lighting) only

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So this is something that has always interested me ever since the game Oblivion came out on pc. I don't know if anyone ever noticed or not.. but there were some differences. If I recall correctly, the gpu's I tested back in the day were either a 1800xt or 1900xt something like that and 8800gtx and a 9800gx2. I observed that there were some differences in lighting. AMD actually had better lighting, now I don't know if there were settings that needed to be changed somewhere but out of the box AMD had better lighting. Example, there was a glow around objects such as the sword and weapons you carry. The nvidia cards... didn't have it.

Fast forward. I observed in Farcry 4 even from the original GTX Titan to a 970. The 970 had a more interesting lighting due the (VXGI) The mountains had better snow and there were more details in the sky. So... I'm wondering... If I was to go with the 390x will I be missing out on good lighting?
 

FreedomEclipse

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So... I'm wondering... If I was to go with the 390x will I be missing out on good lighting?

Hang on, let me plug my 390X in and test it out for you.
 

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Not just the 390x but all AMD cards.

Well, if you have all the AMD/ATi cards dating back to ATi's early days and a spare AGP board lying around Id be happy to test/bench them for you.

if thats not possible then i'll accept you as a sponsor if you wish to sponsor me that i may purchase these cards and an AGP motherboard (dont worry about CPUs - I have 2 or 3 working skt 939 CPUs in the shed - I have a MSI Platinum Neo2 board but its dead sadly) in good faith and give forth the answer that you so desire.
 
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You can use shaders like sweetfx for all kinds of effects, so idk what to tell you.
 
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I have a 7970 and a 970 sitting here and I can confidently say there's no difference in lighting.
 
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I have a 7970 and a 970 sitting here and I can confidently say there's no difference in lighting.
How is this so? Can you take screens? Because the AMD card does not support VXGI to my knowledge. So my GTX Titan does not display same as the 900 series.


I wish I had the old cards that I could load up and show the differences.
 
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The thing you are thinking of with Oblivion is that the AMD cards were the only ones capable of doing both HDR and AA at the same time. Bloom was the only option on NVIDIA cards then if you wanted AA.

Things have changed a lot since then.
 
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The thing you are thinking of with Oblivion is that the AMD cards were the only ones capable of doing both HDR and AA at the same time. Bloom was the only option on NVIDIA cards then if you wanted AA.

Things have changed a lot since then.
aww! yes I remember that now! Good one on remembering that. Now how bout this VXGI stuff lol
 
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I don't even know what VXGI is to be honest...

I do know AMD supports a much broader swath of DirectX 12 instructions than NVIDIA atm.
 
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How is this so? Can you take screens? Because the AMD card does not support VXGI to my knowledge. So my GTX Titan does not display same as the 900 series.

VXGI is just another form of global lighting.

All cards can do it. Global lighting is incorporated into a game engine and that's dependant on its software implementation.

Its not going to magiclly appear
 
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VXGI is just another form of global lighting.

All cards can do it. Global lighting is incorporated into a game engine and that's dependant on its software implementation.

Its not going to magiclly appear
So question.. How come my Titan does not look the same in game as the 970?
 

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I have a 7970 and a 970 sitting here and I can confidently say there's no difference in lighting.
when did you get a 970?
 
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So this is something that has always interested me ever since the game Oblivion came out on pc. I don't know if anyone ever noticed or not.. but there were some differences. If I recall correctly, the gpu's I tested back in the day were either a 1800xt or 1900xt something like that and 8800gtx and a 9800gx2. I observed that there were some differences in lighting. AMD actually had better lighting, now I don't know if there were settings that needed to be changed somewhere but out of the box AMD had better lighting. Example, there was a glow around objects such as the sword and weapons you carry. The nvidia cards... didn't have it.

Fast forward. I observed in Farcry 4 even from the original GTX Titan to a 970. The 970 had a more interesting lighting due the (VXGI) The mountains had better snow and there were more details in the sky. So... I'm wondering... If I was to go with the 390x will I be missing out on good lighting?

Wait, does Farcry 4 even feature VXGI? I thought only the lunar landing demo from Nvidia had that technology, but I may be mistaken.

As far as difference in quality of lighting between the 970 and Titan-X, do you have any proof of this? Both cards feature the exact same architecture, so they'll produce the exact same image on any game given if you're using the same settings on both cards.

Also, it's funny you mention Oblivion in your example, as actually Nvidia cards had a more advanced lighting mode called HDR, which AMD cards didn't support at the time, you could easily reproduce the same lighting effects on Nvidia hardware as the AMD cards offered, by simply using bloom lighting instead on HDR, which was more hardware intensive.
 
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How is this so? Can you take screens? Because the AMD card does not support VXGI to my knowledge. So my GTX Titan does not display same as the 900 series.


I wish I had the old cards that I could load up and show the differences.
The tech you're referring to is obsolete. I know there was a difference back then... Not now.
 
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AMD cards still have a better out of the box color, and do better at video playback than Nvidia.
 
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AMD cards still have a better out of the box color, and do better at video playback than Nvidia.

AMD cards have been native 10-bit for a few generations while Nvidia has stuck to 8-bit on GeForce. I think the new driver for Nvidia enables 10-bit for DisplayPort or its just left over feature from the Quadro driver.
 
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I remember when I was just getting started at gaming and playing Painkiller, the guys I was chatting with on the official forum were remarking how good my screenshots looked from my X800XT.

I've always thought since HDAO that AMD does Ambient Occlusion better too.
 

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In the passed i noticed differences back with ATI 9600\9800 ( noticed in Ghost Recon in game menu's ) range compared with nVidia although now i have no idea as i have not had a nVidia card for some time since 7800 7900GT with the stupid chip placement which in turn made the south bridge much hotter.
 

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AMD cards have been native 10-bit for a few generations while Nvidia has stuck to 8-bit on GeForce. I think the new driver for Nvidia enables 10-bit for DisplayPort or its just left over feature from the Quadro driver.

AMD currently supports 10 and 12 bit colour over HDMI as well, and has for over 6 months. this definitely helps with colours.
 
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