Image quality
Image quality is where it's at. You'll soon see that all modern, high-end graphics cards have enough pixel-pushing, bandwidth-saving power to run smoothly at 1600x1200x32. However, we really need to see what kind of performance we receive with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering used.
So, let's see just what kind of images both a GeForce FX5900 Ultra and Radeon 9800 Pro produce in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. The NV35 was manually set to 24-bit z-buffer depth. Images were taken via the SaveScreenShot () command into .tga format. This ensures that images are lifted correctly. Images were taken at 1024x768x32, maximum detail. A section was blown-up by 300% to highlight what effect certain settings had on image quality.
Firstly, no AA or AF. GeForce FX5900 Ultra.
Radeon 9800 Pro.
Little or no difference here. The lack of wall detail needs some anistropic filtering, and stair effect at the bottom of the wall is in need of some antialiasing lovin'.
Now just 8x anistropic filtering. Note that SS2 overrides any manual anisotropic setting; it must be inputted from advanced rendering options.
FX5900 Ultra
Radeon 9800 Pro
Notice how much clearer the wall and grass detail is over and above that of no anisotropic filtering? Very, very similar. Perhaps the Radeon 9800 Pro has the edge. It's hard to call.
Now 4x antialiasing and 8x anisotropic filtering
FX5900U
Radeon 9800 Pro.
We're not exactly sure what's going on with the FX's antialiasing. It seems to completely blur the whole image. Sure, it gets rid of the stair effect at the bottom of the image, but at what cost? Looking at the whole picture, it seems as if there is a reasonable degree of blurring throughout. Quake 3, for example, doesn't show this kind of blurring with anti-aliasing used. We'll have to take a far closer look at the FX5900 Ultra's image quality over a variety of games. The limited time scope of this review didn't permit it. Anisotropic filtering appears good, antialiasing is something that needs looking at.
