Texture Filtering Performance Comparisons

Using the same setting in SS:SE as previously, we'll do a few more comparisons of the texture filtering performance.

 

 

8X 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Aggressive 138.2 135.8 133.7 119.7 93.4
Balanced 139.5 137.5 128.9 99.2 72.3
Application 138.0 132.8 109.4 77.2 55.3
 
% Diff From Aggressive 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Balanced 1% 1% -4% -17% -23%
Application 0% -2% -18% -36% -41%

Here we are comparing the highest filtering level of the three quality level setting available on GeForce FX 5800. As we can see they give quite a wide range of performances with the Balanced mode being, at worst, 23% slower than the Aggressive mode, and the Application mode being 41% slower.

 

 

  640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
Bilinear 139.1 137.2 134.6 122.1 96.8
Trilinear 138.9 134.6 112.4 78.0 55.1
% Diff 0% -2% -16% -36% -43%

Taking a look at the performance of plain Tri or Bilinear filtering under the 'Application' mode we can see that there is quite a large performance difference between the two modes. This would indicate that each of the texture units are bilinear capable and require two units to perform Trilinear Filtering.

 

 

8X AF ('Application') 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
GeForce 4 Ti4600 118.6 86.4 56.4 35.3 24.3
GeForce FX 138.0 132.8 109.4 77.2 55.3
GeForce FX (400/400) 137.7 125.6 95.1 65.5 46.8
 
% Diff from Ti4600 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x960 1600x1200
GeForce FX 16% 54% 94% 119% 128%
GeForce FX (400/400) 16% 45% 69% 86% 93%

Comparing the GeForce FX's and GeForce4's 8x Anisotropic Filtering in 'Application' mode, which is the closest to GeForce4's filtering quality, we can see that the 5800 has quite a performance advantage over GeForce4. The highest performance difference is 128%, which is beyond the straight fill-rate differences of the two boards.