NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running
by Derek Wilson on June 22, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Transparency AA Performance
For our Transparency AA testing, we ran through the AT_Canals_08-rev7 timedemo in Half Life 2. This demo has quite a few fences, and we wanted to test NVIDIA's claim that graphical quality is indeed improved significantly. Our performance tests show that MSAA comes at a marginal performance hit to overall framerate, while SSAA consumes quite a bit of our performance.
In order to illustrate the effect of the new AA mode, we took screenshots of a tell tale frame from our demo run. The screenshot shows very clearly that SSAA provides quite a quality improvement over no AA. MSAA ends up not looking worth the investment.
No Transparency AA
MS Transparency AA
SS Transparency AA
Below we have prepared some mouse overs to demonstrate the difference between the various levels of Transparency Anti Aliasing. Put your mouse over the first image to see the difference betweeen no Transparency AA and SSAA. The second image compares no AA with MSAA and the final image compares SSAA to MSAA.
No Transparency AA versus SSAA
No Transparency AA versus MSAA
SSAA versus MSAA
The difference between no Transparency AA and MSAA is very small. Only with a difference map are we even able to distinguish between the two. However, the difference between MSAA and SSAA is very pronounced.
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Regs - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Yikes @ the graphs lol.I just came close to pushing the button to order one of these but then I said...what games can't play on a 6800GT at 16x12 res? There is none. Far Cry was the only game that comes close to doing it.
Bravo to Nvidia, his and boo @ lagging game developers.
bob661 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
#19Are you new to this market or do you have a short memory? Don't you remember that the initial 6800 Ultra's cost around $700-800? I sure as hell do. Why is everyone complaining about pricing? These are premium video cards and you will pay a premium price to buy them.
Barneyk - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Yeah, not a single comment on any of the benchmarks, what is up with that?There were alot of wierd scenarios there, why is there NO performance increase in SLI some of the time?
And why is 6800Ultra SLI faster then 7800GTX SLI??
Alot of wierd stuff, and not a singel comment or analysis about it, I always read most new tests here on AT first becasue its usually the best, but this review was a double boogey to say the least...
Dukemaster - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
@21: The score of the X850XT PE in Wolfenstein still looks messed up to me...shabby - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Ya some of the scores dont make much sense, 7800 sli loosing to a single 7800?yacoub - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Hey, looks great! $350 and you've got a buyer here!Lifted - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Guys, they simply reversed the 6800 Ultra SLI and 7800 GTX SLI in all of the 1600 x 1200 - 4x AA graphs.Now everthing is kosher again.
Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
To 18 - I have to admit, I didn't bother looking closely at them, seeing the X850XT supposedly beating all the other cards by such a margin at those resolutions showed they were completely screwed up! I didn't notice the performance increase as you go up the resolution, maybe it's something I missed on my own X850XT? ;) I wish...that would be a neat feature, your performance increases as your resolution increases.I agree it needs pulled down and checked, not to be harsh on AT but this isn't the first time the bar graphs have been wrong - I would rather wait for a review that has been properly finished and checked rather than read a rushed one, as it stands it's no use to me because I have no idea if any of the performance figures are genuine.
John
RyDogg1 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
Wow, who exactly is paying for these video cards to warrant the pricing?Lonyo - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link
To #14, the X850XT performance INCREASED by 33% from 1600x1200 to 2048x1536 according to the grahics, so to me that just screams BULLSH!T.I think the review needs taking down, editing, and then being put up again.
Or fixed VERY quickly.
AT IMO has let people down a bit this time round, not the usual standard.