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Digital Vibrance -- ATI vs Nvidia
With the new Nvidia 480 cards it's got me a bit excited, but I see that some are saying the top-end ATI cards are still faster and better.
I haven't owned an ATI card in many years (5+), and I only had one for a short time. I didn't mind the card much, it seemed to do just fine, however, as a long dedicated Nvidia user, I really missed one tiny insignificant feature that Nvidia had at the time (and still has) that ATI didn't then.
Digital Vibrance.
It basically increases the color saturation of everything. Bumping it up to like 15-30 percent creates a LOT more color on the screen from everything. All my games, websites and movies benefit from this tremendously.
The lack of such a feature from ATI then made me replace it asap and never looked back. Silly I know, but I freaking love this dinky feature. Without it, after being used to it for so long, everything just looks so bland.
So my question is, does ATI have anything similar to Nvidia's Digital Vibrance in their drivers by now? If so, I'd definately consider the new ATI cards.
Comments
There is. You can adjust the color saturation. Haven't used Digital vibrance yet so i don't know how those two options compare, but it's basically the same.
Sorry for my english
There's tons of color control options in the control panel, I think digital vibrance is just the equiv of jacking up the contrast in driver settings
I don't get it. Why people want purposively f*ck up the colors?
I have a dx11 ati card and can attest to how bad the drivers are. Every release if full of issues so far, especially with dual monitors. Overclocking opens up even more issues. I'm not quite clear on the issue, but certain shaders of somesort also seem to load very slow with the ati drivers; something noticable with games like bad company 2 where you will be the slowest person to load the map. I had an nvidia card before this for around 8 years with no problems. If you have the extra cash, pay for the nvidia quality.
The famous bc2 bug is in the game or directx, not drivers.
Yeah I figured you could manually tweak all the colors. Nvidia allows that also. However, the Digital Vibrance thing is just a small slider (default at 0), and as you slide it up a little, you can watch the colors on the screen come alive.
For the poster that asked why mess with the colors....
Ever go to Best Buy and look at the TV's? They're all playing the same thing, but some tv's seem to just look alot better. A big reason for that is their color capability. It just jumps out at you.
That's basically what Digital Vibrance does.
If you have an nvidia card, go to Nvidia Control Panel, Display, Adjust Desktop Color Settings.
You'll see DV there. Just try sliding it up a little, and you'll see what I mean. It's awesome.
As for actually tweaking colors, I'd rather stay away from that. I don't want my greens turning yellowish or bluish. DV just brightens the colors.
So you're saying ATI has this feature, or is it simply just your usual color tweaking options? That's not quite the same unfortunately.
I was gonna laugh at the OP. Then I tried it for myself. He's kind of right - the only issue is that some of the reds become too bright, so I set it around 75% (50% is the default). I didn't know anything about this feature, and I don't know anything about ATI cards, but thanks OP.
Go into CCC, select Desktops and Displays, right click the monitor you want to adjust and select configure, click Color, and raise up Saturation. Digital Vibrance just increases saturation which is what the saturation slider on ATI cards does.
I haven't used it in years cuz I tend to agree with dfan on this so forgot if it was contrast or saturation but it's definitely there and looks the same now that I'm comparing them on my other PC.
Also I think it used to be called AVIVO color in the old drivers, pretty sure it's been there forever just not obvious to find.
Awesome! So that confirms it I guess. ATI has a DV equivalent. Thanks.
You can't artificially pump up colors. The allegory you threw out doesn't match. All it does is mess up color balance totally.
Yeah, I leave crap like DV off. Just because something pops out more doesnt mean it looks any better. I learned this when I got my 65" Panny V10. With a screen so large, sure, some settings make it 'pop' more. But I want the real look. I want what the game/movie/whatever was supposed to look like.
Personally, I calibrate all my screens (computer and TV) and think it always looks better (particularly darker colors)
Going to wait until 2011 to see where the DX11 cards go. My GTX295 is still good.
I thought that Digtal Vibrance and ATi's version of it was more for when viewing camcorder / film where the colours have bled out abit either because of a cheap camera or poor light, it was more for that sort of thing than gaming.
Oh and if you have a shitty monitor it helps I suppose.
Well I guess it just boils down to personal preference. Since I started using it, every PC I end up using, I enable it. I mean I don't overdo it with the saturation. It basically just brings the colors out a bit more. Suppose I'll just stay safe and stick with Nvidia still. They haven't let me down so far, except for this latest driver. Totally F'd up my desktop resolution since i'm using a 40" 1080p tv as a monitor. If I try to set any res (desktop or games) to 1920x1080, it stretches the image beyong the borders of my tv. So I'm stuck with some kind of custom res of like 1836x1023 or something. Didn't use to be like that.
I used to use it, for a few days at a time, then I would get tired of the bright colors and turn it back off. I did just boost it up 10% or so since we started talking about it, just enough to add a little color without oversaturating.
I've owned Nvidia up until the 4xxx ATI series came out then I picked up a 4850 (the price:performance, I couldnt pass up) and honestly I think video looks better on the ATI than it did all the Nvidia cards I've owned.
Anyways as far as video and color settings are concerned, I figure it would be easier to just show you the settings rather than just try to explain them. This is how the 4850 Control Center looks, No idea if the 5xxx series has more options.
Oh, so I think the AVIVO settings only effect video playback, there should be one more config screen that looks similar to this, if you look at the individual monitor config probably in the Digital Panel (DVI 2) section:
Monitor settings:
You're right, just found what you're talking about. So yeah, lots of options in ATI :P
Thanks for the screenshots guys. It's really got me thinking about ATI vs Nvidia again. As far as the ultimate cards and PC build could go, I'm still not totally sure who would win out. I think it would be all application dependant. And if the race is going to be close, I suppose I should probably just stick to what I know now and love, Nvidia. Tough choice still though.
If you're looking at the best possible desktop video card, ATI's 5970 beats everything, even the new cars Nvidia just released.
If you're looking for more midrange, it's really a toss up.
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I use a monitor calibrator. You would be surprised on the difference a monitor calibrator makes.
I'd like a feature that would render everything in HDR :-)
The days of ATI being inferior to NVidia are long gone. The ATI 5000 series gpu's are as good as, and in the case of the 5870 and 5970, better than the NVidia cards and often costing less. The new 400 series cards from NVidia are slightly better than the ATI offerings but they cost more (around $100 more than the 5870).
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
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Actually, new nvidia cards lose to ati in almost every aspect. The only title they have is that 480 is the fastest single gpu atm.
The new Nvidia cards were just basically made to handle tesselation better than ATI. . that's about the only thing that they're better at. I'm not much of an Nvidia fan but I do give credit where it' due and so far they appear to handle tesselation a fair bit better. Also to add, if they didn't atleast do something better than ATI I'd be dissapointed being they had an extra 6 months to develop them. But yeah Ginaz is right, actually since the 4xxx series they've been right on Nvidias tail. Ofcoarse they didn't beat out the 285 or anything, but their 4850 and 4870 were competitive with the cards they were made to compete with; which was the 9800GTX (now GTS 250) and the GTX 260.