X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X800: R420 Totally Exposed (page 21)

Category: Video

by Tim Tscheblockov , Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 05/04/2004 | 06:42 AM ]

Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing: Performance

In order to estimate the performance drop caused by enabled anti-aliasing algorithms, we tested our graphics cards in a few gaming applications.

The results show that graphics cards based on RADEON X800 lose about the same of the speed as RADEON 9800 XT, however, due to higher initial performance level, RADEON X800 XT/PRO turn out much farther ahead than the predecessors. Moreover, in a number of benchmarks the results of the new ATI cards appeared limited by the system CPU performance even in 2x and 4x modes.

NVIDIA based graphics cards in 2x and 4x modes suffer a comparable performance loss, but as soon as the hybrid 8x mode is enabled, the results drop by 3-4 times. Yes, this is the price you have to pay for the ability to use super-sampling in 8x mode.