ATI's SMOOTHVISION - The key to its "success"

Performance

To quickly sum up what we've concluded based on the image quality comparisons these are the performance comparisons we need to make:

ATI's 2X Quality AA vs. NVIDIA's 2X/Quincunx AA with Anisotropic Filtering Enabled
ATI's 4X Quality AA vs. NVIDIA's 4X AA with Anisotropic Filtering Enabled

Our test platform has not changed since our previous article; we are still using the Athlon XP 1800+ on an EPoX KT266A board under Windows XP Professional. We used the following drivers:

ATI Drivers - v6.13.10.3286
NVIDIA Drivers - v21.85

Serious Sam Maximum Settings 1024x768x32 ATI Radeon 8500 (2X Quality AA) ATI Radeon 8500 (4X Quality AA) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (2X AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (Quincunx AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (4X AA + Aniso) 52 25 65 58 47 | 0 | 13 | 26 | 39 | 52 | 65 | 78

Because it is forced to run with Anisotropic filtering enabled (although the lowest level supported) in order to offer competitive image quality, the Ti 500's frame rates are reduced a bit. If you compare these numbers with anisotropic filtering enabled to our previous review you'll realize that the hit for enabling anisotropic filtering is between 8 and 14% on the Ti 500. Even with anisotropic filtering enabled the Ti 500 is able to outperform the Radeon 8500 in every AA mode. Although we didn't include it because of poor edge AA quality, even the 2X performance mode doesn't change the performance picture much at all.

Where the Radeon 8500's supersampling AA really hurts it is with 4X AA enabled; its performance is virtually cut in half because it has to do twice the amount of work. Unfortunately with anisotropic filtering enabled, 4X AA is pushing it on the Ti 500 with frame rates clearly below the 60 fps level.

Quake III Arena High Quality 1024x768x32 ATI Radeon 8500 (2X Quality AA) ATI Radeon 8500 (4X Quality AA) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (2X AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (Quincunx AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (4X AA + Aniso) 95 50 110 91 78 | 0 | 22 | 44 | 66 | 88 | 110 | 132

Again we see a similar picture; ATI's 2X quality AA remains competitive but the inefficiencies of supersampling AA become evident as 4X AA is enabled. Running at 1024 x 768 x 32 with 4X AA and Ansiotropic filtering enabled is a reality on the Ti 500 at 78 fps.

Wolfenstein MP Test atdemo8 High Quality 1024x768x32 ATI Radeon 8500 (2X Quality AA) ATI Radeon 8500 (4X Quality AA) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (2X AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (Quincunx AA + Aniso) NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500 (4X AA + Aniso) 94 39 96 81 57 | 0 | 19 | 38 | 58 | 77 | 96 | 115

Since Max Payne wouldn't let us enable all of the AA modes we are left with Wolfenstein MP Test as our final performance measurement tool for this article. This will most likely be the final time we use the MP Test in an article as the full version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein has been released and it won't be long before we have an official set of demos we use in our reviews based on the final engine.

Wolf tells us the same story; ATI's 2X quality AA is competitive but their 4X AA isn't at all.