X-bit labs

Highly Defined: ATI Radeon HD 2000 Architecture Review (page 17)

Category: Video

by Anton Shilov , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Alexey Stepin

[ 05/15/2007 | 07:34 AM ]

Performance in FSAA Modes

Besides comparing the quality of the different FSAA modes supported by the Radeon HD 2900 XT, we also compared their influence on the speed of the card in the popular 3D shooter Half-Life 2: Episode One that runs on the advanced Source engine. The results are listed below:

The new Radeon HD 2900 XT is unquestionably faster compared to the previous-generation Radeon X1950 XTX. However, not only it is slower than the GeForce 8800 GTX, it is not as fast as its direct competitor: GeForce 8800 GTS, which is an alarming sign.

With regards to ATI’s new custom-filter antialiasing methods we can state the following:

• Wide tent filter does not reduce performance as significantly as narrow tent filter does.
• CFAA with narrow tent filter does not have critical performance advantages over comparable MSAA modes, e.g., 6x CFAA with narrow tent filter does not offer substantially improved performance over MSAA 8x.
• Current implementations of Nvidia’s CSAA offer higher performance and, often, better quality compared to ATI’s CFAA.