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.

GeForce 7800 GTX AA Test


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.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Performance Power Consumption
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  • vanish - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    From what i'm seeing the 6800U SLI beats the 7800GTX[SLI] in most normal resolutions. I don't know, but usually when a new generation comes out it should at least beat the previous generation. Sure, it works wonders on huge resolutions, but very few people actually have monitors that can display these types of resolutions. Most people don't have monitors above 1200x1000 resolution, much less 1600x1200.
  • Live - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    What’s up with the BF2 graphs? The 6800u SLI scores more at 1600x1200 4xAA (76,3) then it does at the same resolution without AA (68,3). That doesn’t make sense does it?

    Sorry for the extremely poor spelling…
  • Dukemaster - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    Over 2,5 than a 6800 ultra in Battlefield 2 and Splinter Cell, how the hell is that possbile??
  • vortmax - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    Good job Nvidia with the launch. Now lets see if ATI can match the performance and availability.
  • ryanv12 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    From what I see, the 7800GTX is really of benefit to you if you have a monitor that is higher than a 1600x1200 resolution. Fairly impressive though, I must say. I also wasn't expecting double the performance of the 6800's since it only has 50% more pipes. I can't wait to see the 32 piped cards!
  • Live - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    Looks good. to bad i ahve to wiat a few month until ATI releases the competition.
  • bpt8056 - Wednesday, June 22, 2005 - link

    First post!! Congrats to nVidia for pulling off an official launch with retail availability.

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