Anti-aliasing Quality

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

Here we’re going to look at one aspect of image quality – anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing is an important feature for those of us looking to play games at lower resolutions (i.e. anything under 1600×1200). Because of the lower resolution, edges/lines have less pixels to render themselves with and therefore causes the jagged lines we see. Anti-aliasing creates the illusion of removing these jagged edges by softening the colors along the edge making it appear smooth. If we wanted, we can anti-alias at 1600×1200, but on a 19″ monitor it is less important. We will use Unreal Tournament 2003 to generate anti-aliased frames.

The images produced with the FX5200 and FX5600 are identical. The same goes for the Radeon 9500 and Radeon 9700. So when I mention the FX5600 or Radeon 9700 below, the same applies to their little siblings.

If for any reason you disagree with my observations, I encourage you to download the larger images and see for yourself. Feel free to post your findings in our forum!

Note: Some of the images have the flames missing. Rest assured I did not change any of the settings when taking screen shots. I suspect this is a problem with the software since the flames disappear randomly in various screen captures but all looked fine while in UT2K3.

Setting
Ti4800SE
FX5600
R9700
AA0 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 56 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 57 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 58
AA2 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 59 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 60 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 61
2QAA ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 62 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 63
AA4 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 64 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 65 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 66
AA4XS ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 67 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 68
AA6 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 69
AA6XS ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 70
AA8 ATi & Nvidia Video Card Roundup - Graphics Cards 71

FX5600/5200 and Ti4800SE
Comparing the samples of anti-aliasing, we can see that the quality of anti-aliasing between the Ti4800SE and the FX5600 are identical. I was always under the impression that the AA algorithms were re-written on the FX, you’d figure there would be a big visual difference.

Strangely enough, we see that the “4XS” anti-aliasing sample on the Ti4800SE and FX5600 produce the best image for that card. It appears to create the best anti-aliasing effect and even appears to sharpen textures. When comparing 4XS on the FX5600 to 6XS and 8X (on the same card), we can see that 4XS is still superior! Strange indeed!

Another strange item to note is that “XS” anti-aliasing is supposed to be a feature only found on FX series cards. Then how is it that the Ti4800SE is able to use this setting and produce similar visual results? 4XS anti-aliasing is NVIDIA’s closest match we have to 4X anti-aliasing seen on the Radeon.

Radeon 9700/9500
We can see that at 2x anti-aliasing on the Radeon 9700 is as good as the 4x anti-aliasing on the NVIDIA cards. 6x anti-aliasing on the Radeon is gorgeous – you can barely see any jagged edges, even along the circular shape. I think we can conclude here that the Radeon cards have better anti-aliasing than the NVIDIA cards. Taking a look at the performance charts, we can see that 2xAA and 4xAA should be easily attainable with playable frame rates.

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