Which settings drop framerate the most?

[Medellon]

I have a 4200 128MB card with an XP 2600+ chip. Some games (older ones) run pretty well with AA and AF enabled but the newer games are really straining my card and I'm having to turn off these extra features. Which options strain the video card the most and which options do you enable on your 4200's?

 

[Sid59]

combination of intensive gpu games, high AA/AF and high resolution.

i'd vote for high AA/AF as the main culprit

 

[Viper96720]

AA strains it more than AF

 

[Medellon]

Do the current generation cards handle these features better? I ran some tests and AA and AF just kill the framerate on my card, is this normal?

 

[Medellon]

Do the current generation cards handle these features better? I ran some tests and AA and AF just kill the framerate on my card, is this normal?

 

[kylebisme]

yes they do handle those options better, the and radeons moreso than the fxs.

 

[VIAN]

I'd say:

Drivers:
Anti-Aliasing
Resolution
Anisotrpic Filtering

Software:
Texture Quality
Shadow Quality

ATI receives better performance with Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering on over Nvidia.
ATI's Anti-Aliasing looks better than Nvidia's.
Nvidia's Anisotropic Filtering looks better than ATI's.

Generally, they both look the same, however performance differences are not negligible.

 

[Shinei]

I've found that my Ti4200 struggles more with AA enabled than with AF enabled... Playing Halo with 8xAF and a 64mb Ti4200 at 1024x768 provides playable framerates about 85% of the time (massive explosions in the hangar area of the Truth and Reconciliation produce the lowest framerates, though I'm not entirely sure why an empty hangar gets such low framerates), but that's with an Athlon XP 3200+ and a gig of Mushkin at 2-3-3-11...
My vote for "most performance lost for least visual quality gained" goes to AA, the ultimate waste of resources. I run 8xAF in OpenGL, and 64-tap AF in DX (64-tap being equivalent to 8x, I assume), with virtually no performance loss, even at stock frequencies.

 

[VIAN]

It isn't a complete waste of resources nor is the IQ the least.

Your video card just happens to suck, but why don't you try to run them in moderation and not push them all the way up. You should get a new video card to truly enjoy AA and AF because it's crappy on old ones like the geforce4 and under. The performance drop is crazy.

 

[Tab]

Ansioscoptric Filter.

 

[BFG10K]

Which settings drop framerate the most?

It depends on the system, the card, the game, the settings and the drivers.

The simplest answer I can give you for your card is probably AF first followed by AA.

Nvidia's Anisotropic Filtering looks better than ATI's

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.