Transparency Antialiasing Quality

We took screenshots in two popular shooters, Far Cry and Half-Life, to see the effect of the new full-screen antialiasing methods.

Alas, we couldn’t find any great differences between ordinary FSAA and FSAA with enabled Transparency Antialiasing in Far Cry. Well, yes, there is a difference, but it is so negligible that you can notice it only after a careful examination of each screenshot.

Half-Life 2 is quite another story: Transparency Antialiasing makes the image much better in this game. We mean the Supersampling mode, while the Multisampling mode brings a less impressive picture, even though of an improved quality, especially in combination with FSAA 8xS. The most beautiful picture can be observed in FSAA 8xS + Transparency Supersampling mode: even the smallest details are drawn almost ideally. So, the new feature of the GeForce 7800 GTX – Transparency Antialiasing – can really improve the quality of certain details of the image, especially if combined with FSAA 8xS, but how does it tell on the speed of the card?