Performance Hits

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

Much like I did in the Radeon 9000 Pro review, I have measured how much of a performance hit the Radeon 9700 Pro and GeForce4 Ti4600 cards take when you enable anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, and when you turn up the resolution.

Anti-Aliasing Performance Hit

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Review - Graphics Cards 16

This one is absolutely nuts– even with 4xAA enabled, the ATI 9700 still doesn’t even lose half of its base framerate! The Ti4600 loses anywhere from 65% to 70% of its performance in comparison. The Radeon 9700 is capable of 6xAA (which looks amazing BTW) but I didn’t benchmark it since there’s really nothing to compare it to. You can get almost-free 2xAA with the Radeon 9700 Pro– it’s a far cry from “free 4xAA” as some rumors of the NV30 have claimed, but this is no rumor!

Anisotropic Filtering Performance Hit

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Review - Graphics Cards 17

Again, the Radeon 9700 wins– though, ATI cards have historically had the lead in anisotropic performance and how much of a performance hit it takes.

Resolution-Change Performance Hit

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Review - Graphics Cards 18

While the Radeon does manage a win here, it isn’t by nearly as much as the two previous tests. I think it’s safe to say that the Radeon 9700 likes eye candy enabled, how about you? 😉 Now that the benchmarks are finished…

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