Detonator Image Quality Test: Part II

OK, responding to criticisms of my previous test, I decided to do a more
thorough test using only the GeForce 5900 on one machine.

First, the system setup:

EVGA GeForce FX 5900 128MB
Athlon XP 2400
KT 400 motherboard
Windows XP

Det 45's and Det 51's, quality settings, 4xAA, maximum anisotropic
filtering, blend mimpmapping

Testing tools used: Aquamark 3 Professional (I paid 10 bucks for it), Paint
Shop Pro 7, and FRAPS

Benchmarks:
1280X1024 (native resolution of LCD)
Driver:
FPS
Det 45's
18.2
Det 51's
22.2

Image Quality Tests:

OK, first I watched both benchmarks 3 times on each driver. I couldn't tell
much difference, really. If I had to make a quick decision, I'd say the
45's looked somewhat better, more vibrant colors.

Next, I used FRAPS to capture a series of frames detailing the main subject
sub in the early part of the benchmark. I was able to capture two nearly
identical frames: 609 for the 45's, and 608 for the 51's. Upon close
inspection with Paint Shop Pro, I could clearly spot the differences between
the two drivers and images. Overall, the current official 45 drivers have a
much better dynamic range- colors are overall more vivid, especially yellows
and greens, but also the lighting is slightly better for the current,
official drivers. I saw no color banding in either set of drivers .

It's a tough call, but I think the newer 51 drivers perhaps sacrifice too
much image quality. The difference is slight, but noticeable on close
inspection. And the shame of it, they are sacrificing this image quality
for only about 4 extra frames-per-second. Overall my subjective experience
was that both drivers ran the game about the same in terms of performance,
neither one was particularly faster than the other. After all, we are
talking about framerates that are only a little better than a slideshow in
either case.

Conclusion: NVidia needs to find a way to increase driver performance
without sacrificing too much image quality. Failing that, NVidia should use
a slider setting so that users might be able to choose their own trade-offs
between performance and image quality.