AA Comparison

And now the fun part: playing around with images. Certainly everyone has their own taste when it comes to AA, but we've cropped and blown up this 800x600 screenshot from Oblivion in order to better show what's really going on. As resolution increases and pixel size decreases, the impact of higher AA modes also decreases. This is useful to keep in mind here.

A few key points to check out: compare the interior of textures between either no AA image and any of AMD's tent filters. Notice how the detail on interior textures is significantly decreased. It can be quite frustrating to enable a high anisotropic filtering level to increase the detail of textures only to find them blurred by your AA mode. Also, note how NVIDIA's 8x CSAA and 16x CSAA modes only subtly change some of the pixels. This is because CSAA actually attempts to better understand the actual geometry that a pixel covers rather than going around looking for data outside the pixel to bring in.

These screenshots are with gamma correction enabled on NVIDIA hardware in order to give the best comparison with RV770 which does not allow us to disable gamma correction. We do prefer disabling gamma correction for the average case and especially for anti-aliasing thin lines.

Click the links in the table below to change the AA images displayed


AMD RV770 No AA

AMD RV770
NVIDIA GT200

Click here to download all the full resolution, uncompressed images used in this comparison

Fixing AMD's Poor AA Performance The Test
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  • calumhm - Friday, September 11, 2009 - link

    i mean, ATI invented the unified pixel/shader architechture, or so i believe, and this generation they've got dx10.1 level hardware something like 7 months and counting before Nvidia have any.

    Also i once read an article about SLI and Crossfire, about how SLI has only one rendering type, scissors. (meaning the screen is divided in two) Whereas ATI have scissors, tiled, (so that the more demanding areas of the screen are better divided amongst the cards) and others.
    Also, you can combine any HD series ATI card with any HD series card! thats way better than having to say, buy another 7800 for SLI because just one isn't doing it anymore, even though the 9800 series are out. With CFire you could add a 4870 to your old 3870!

    Im currently with Nvidia (a 9600gt (found one for £60!)) but am frequently impressed by ATI.

    -IS- ATI the smart customer's choice?
  • heaneyforestrntpe68 - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link

    well I am looking forward to a single card setup. SLI or CF is beyond the reach of my pockets. :P https://bit.ly/2Z7E1jr
  • billywigga - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link

    im pretty shore the 4870 is low profile ive been looking everywhere for a low profile graphics card and i think i foung a high ends one unlike the geforce 8400 and the 8600 those arenot very good and they dont look good either but where do i buy the 4870
  • Hrel - Thursday, August 21, 2008 - link

    Why has there been no article comparing the 8800GT to the 9800GT? Is it just a rebrand, are there noticeable performance differences. It's 9 series, I assume it has hybrid power, but I don't know. Anandtech, PLEASE! Do an article on this.
  • billywigga - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link

    bang for the buck id get the 9800 because its newer also all the diffrence is it has more intagrated ram your saving a lot if you just get more ram to your computer.
  • firewolfsm - Friday, August 1, 2008 - link

    I'm trying to do the same benchmark for Crysis for my 4850 as I have a similar system and a fresh vista install. Just wondering what kind of driver settings you used.
  • spikeysting - Saturday, July 19, 2008 - link

    I just got it for $179 at Frys. Such a good deal.
  • Yangorang - Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - link

    Anyone tried this mod?
    http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319658">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1319658
  • jALLAD - Friday, July 4, 2008 - link

    I would for sure go for the 4870. (I am a Quake Wars fan boy u see :P)
    But I was unsure how these would perform on Linux. Is the driver support reliable? Right now I use a 7950 NVIDIA and their support on Linux is almost shite. I was wondering whether its better or worse...

    Anyone ?
  • KriegenSchlagen - Monday, July 7, 2008 - link

    If you are a Quake Wars fan, aren't the scores higher in 3-4 GeForce SLI configs vs. Crossfire mode 4870?

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