Serious Sam 2 AA and AF
If you're spending almost £150+ on a video card, you want it to do more than just play games smoothly. Ideally, you're looking for the best possible image quality through enhancements via antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. The removal of jagged lines and the provision of quality textures comes at the cost of performance, naturally. The question is how much performance one must sacrifice at the altar of image quality.
I'll look at two benchmarks again with particular emphasis on improved visuals. Firstly, Serious Sam 2 at 1024x768x32 with no image enhancement applied, then 2x antialiasing and 4x anisotropic filtering, and 4x AA and 8x AF. The Radeon' anisotropic filtering level was set to quality.
We've seen this graph before.
Here is the Achilles heel of the GeForce4 range of cards. They simply get stung with the combination of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Looking at both the Radeons and Ti 4xxx cards, it's clear that overall image quality is the same. It's just that the Radeons do it so much more efficiently.
Upping the ante to 4x AA and 8x AF for super visuals is going to be a taxing business. Benchmarked at 1024x768x32 again to show image enhancement at a resolution that will most benefit from it.
The numbers speak for themselves here.
