BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC
In the benchmarks that follow this page, we've enabled 8XS mode for the BFG GeForce 7800GTX OC and the GeForce 6800 Ultra, to show a complete performance profile at this setting. Again, we also set the ATi X850 to it's highest 6X AA setting, which as you'll note below, doesn't look as good as NVIDIA's 8XS mode, since it doesn't have the ability to provide AA processing on transparent or opaque texture surfaces but only on object edge surfaces.
As an aside, we've previously shown you that ATi's Cross-Fire technology will begin to provide Super-Sample AA operations with the new dual-GPU based AA modes they'll be introducing with the product. However, we have yet to see any Cross-Fire based motherboards or graphics cards in our test labs to date, so we can't comment first-hand on how well these new AA modes perform or look on the ATi based product.
For now, as far as what is available for you to purchase today, the 8XS single card driven AA mode that is available with the BFG GeForce 7800GTX OC, looks decidedly cleaner in our opinion and is very playable even in heavy combat action with Battlefield 2. Have a look for yourself.
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;) BFG GeForce 7800GTX OC No AA |
;) BFG GeForce 7800GTX OC 4X AA |
;) BFG GeForce 7800GTX OC 8XS AA |
;) ATi Radeon X850 XT PE No AA |
;) ATi Radeon X850 XT PE 4X AA |
;) ATi Radeon X850 XT PE 6X AA |
As we saw with our Half Life 2 screen-shots, like AA or non-AA processed image quality is virtually identical, comparing both NVIDIA and ATi-based outputs. However, ATi's 6X AA mode can't compare with NVIDIA's 8XS mode as is very apparent in the barb-wire on top of and within the chain-links themselves on the fence in this scene.
Interestingly enough however, it seems as though the 8XS mode is doing a good job of cleaning up the surface area of the fence that is horizontally facing the first person perspective in this shot. However, it isn't doing quite as good a job on the surface area of the fence that runs down perpendicular toward the radio tower. This area definitely looks a bit better than the ATi 6X AA mode but not as clean as the horizontal facing surfaces. So, even 8XS AA doesn't grab everything and clean it up but perhaps 16X SLI-AA would? We didn't have the opportunity to test this out with the single BFG card but may we can follow-up here in future articles to see if our theory holds true.
