FSAA and Anisotropic
We'll finish off the benchmarking run with a quick look at how the cards fare when image quality is enhanced via the combined use of anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Anti aliasing attempts to give us a smoother picture by sampling at higher resolutions and deriving down the results to our chosen res. Anisotropic filtering attempts to apply the best possible texture to surfaces via the use of advanced algorithms. Needless to say that each exacts a toll on performance.
I'll go back to Serious Sam: TSE benchmark and re-run it at 1024x768x32. I'll use 2x FSAA 4xAF and 4x FSAA and 8x AF together. Naturally, the latter will take a larger performance toll on the cards.
Firstly, no image quality enhancement.
Now 2x FSAA and 4x AF
And finally 4x FSAA and 8x AF
I'm a little surprised that the 64MB Creative was able to keep pace with the 128MB cards at the higher settings. Maybe 1024 resolution isn't quite enough to tax the memory. It seems as if the extra 64MB of RAM specified on most cards only comes into its own in just a few benchmarks
