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Who has the best FSAA?

Einz

Einz

Diamond Member
I've currently got a Voodoo5 and I absolutely love the FSAA on here. Looking to upgrade, read some reviews on the radeon and the geforce, and apparently neither one is too good. D3D is most important, OpenGL is a plus. any suggestions?
 
<<<Geforce 3 easily beats the V5 in FSAA>>>

Geforce 3 doesn't have the highest quality FSAA. Voodoo5 has the highest quality FSAA, however Geforce 3 and Kyro II have the most efficient forms of FSAA.
 
absolutely stay clear of the Radeon if you both like FSAA and need it in D3D. it's not just me who says this. look at this comprehensive review -ignore his comments about image quality, he shows he didn't bother playing a game with FSAA turned on because those who have know better.
what makes you think a Radeon or GTS is an upgrade? wait a few months for something really better.
teasy, xbitlabs had a review of the original Kyro, giving scores which do not fall in line with the cheapness of fsaa suggested by Anandtech's KyroII review. which is right because there is a big difference.
 
? xbitlabs had a review of the original Kyro, giving scores which do not fall in line with the cheapness of fsaa suggested by Anandtech's KyroII review. which is right because there is a big difference.?

Lets get this straight ? when you enable 4XFSAA on KYRO there is STILL a 75% fillrate hit; when you enable 2XFSAA on KYRO there is still a 50% fillrate hit. The difference from KYRO?s FSAA and others is that KYRO?s FSAA uses exactly the same memory bandwidth as rendering in the normal resolutions ? i.e. if you use 800x600 with 4XFSAA on KYRO it will have exactly the same bandwidth use as 800x600 no FSAA, but still 4 times the fillrate.

The reason KYRO?s FSAA is cited as being more efficient, is basically because other cards FSAA are every inefficient with bandwidth. When a card, such as a GTS, needs to render 4XFSAA it has to have that 75% bandwidth hit as well as the 75% fillrate hit; however these are equal so there shouldn?t be much different. The fact is that cards such as GTS have a greater than 75% bandwidth hit with FSAA. The reason for this is that it has to render to the memory in the FSAA resolution (so for 800x600@4X FSAA 1600x1200), pass the results of that back to the chips to be scaled down &amp; averaged, read back out from the chip to the frame buffer in the display resolution, and that then needs to be read back into the chip to go to the RAMDAC for display.

This occurs for all cards other than KYRO and V5. KYRO averages its results at the tile level, before it has passed to the frame buffer, and V5 doesn?t bother scaling it down right up until display ? the pixels from the 4 buffers are averaged as they go from the memory to the RAMDAC.

So in terms of bandwidth hit over the display resolution we have: KYRO 0%, V5 75%, GTS / MX / Radeon etc >75% (in bandwidth limited situations), however all still require a 75% fillrate hit (GF3 is different though).

What you are likely seeing from the difference between the original Xbit KYROI and Anand KYROII tests is the fact that KYROI is very fillrate limited in the first place, so it is reaching its 75% fillrate hit much quickly; KYROII has more fillrate, hence its going to be geometry limited more of the time and hence the tests in Anand?s KYROII review are probably showing that its taking more time to reach the 75% fillrate hit. Both are probably correct.
 
I have tried both. The v5 stayed in my main PC till a few weeks ago. In some game the K2 FSAA is faster. But its not as good. I spotted that with in a second the first time I fired up a game on went to x4 FSAA. I really like my k2. I really like my FSAA. But don't let anyone try to tell you that the K2 or GF3 is bettter. You can not compare the two/three. GF3/K2 are more efficent but the quality is less. The v5 has the best, but its a bit too slow for the new games (its fast enough for UT, CS, and other &quot;old&quot; games). Not sure if I will keep the K2 or go back to the V5. Again for me its about FSAA. I have had to live with slower prefromance so going back to the V5 is an option...but that k2 colors look so sweat. In a few days I can post some screen shots of a map I am working with a UT mod team on, that looks awesome on the k2....
 
the v5 has the best fsaa but the gefoce3 has respectable fsaa and is actualy fast enought to use x4fsaa at at least 800x600 in everthing i have tried it on and 1280x960 in many games too. were as the v5 was maxed out at 800x600 x4fsaa even on the least graphicly intence games.
 
wow! thanks for all the information. looks like i'll be sticking with my Voodoo5 for a while, until a better solution comes out. I mainly play &quot;old&quot; games and i really like the picture quality that the v5 gives at 4x FSAA. Looks like i'll pick up a next gen product which has better FSAA. again thanks all!
 
have you actually seen a GF3 live???

or are you making that assumption that a V5 has better FSAA because you have a V5???


I'm taking it that thats the case...


Because a GF3 has much better and crisper FSAA...

I speak from experience w/ both cards..
 
I just dont want to shell out 300 bucks right now for a card that will be obselete in 6 months. My voodoo has great FSAA in D3D and I'm saying I'll wait for a next gen product either from nVidia or ATI and hope that it can offer better price/performance than the Geforce3.
 
I went from the V5 to the GF3

the most noticeable improvement was speed...


but the V5 is still a great card...

Unless you go to a GF3 or higher, dont upgrade...
 
Keep in mind that when Alpha textures are used (in games like HL, CS, MDK2, UT, B&amp;W, ect) then the GF3 dose no AA on the edges on those texures which IMHO is a very bad thing...V5, GF2, ATI, K2 dose AA on those with the V5 being the best.....
 
Alpha textures are used in games caused no problem for GF3, only when textures being used as structures due to reasons of other graphic cards incapable of handling the poly loads woud GF3 have problem, since it doesn't AA textures (&quot;it's same color for all subsamples&quot😉. Though this practice --> textures for structures usage won't last long, because today even the low end $80_GF2MX won't have the problems of low poly rates as comparing to graphic cards of other manufacturers.
 


<< Though this practice --> textures for structures usage won't last long, because today even the low end $80_GF2MX won't have the problems of low poly rates as comparing to graphic cards of other manufacturers. >>



I understand your point and somewhat agree that in the future we probably wont have to deal with this. However todays volume cards (tnt2, mx and V3 seem to be the most popular with GF2 and ATI comming in close behind) can NOT handle the strain with out the Frame Rate hit. I know this for a fact. I make UT maps for a popular MOD and know first hand the impact of adding more polys to a sceen. I have had reports of slow downs in some of my maps by V3/MX users (my beta testers) that I was able to fix by removing a few of the brushes and uses a sheet brush (ie I used an Alpha texure to give the illison of 3D depth). I also now that it was not just the geo that was cauing the slow downs (lighing, textures, ect), but this is what game desginers have to do in order to make the game playable on the &quot;common&quot; video card. Considering that UT is an &quot;old&quot; game that makes me wonder what new games will do on the current hardware. I constantly have seen good maps get bad reviews because the run too slow on the current hardware.
 


<< Unless you go to a GF3 or higher, dont upgrade... >>



OK, I have to be the one to ask...

...what's &quot;higher&quot; than a GF3? Heh.
 


<< Rage187,
Actually I've seen both side by side and again the V5 has the best FSAA hands down. Also, here is a link comparing the G3 to the V5 in FSAA.

The Pulpit G3 vs V5 FSAA

There is a difference and the V5 is better. >>



but the point is the shots are all at 1024x768x32, with a geforce3 those games are playable at that setting with x4 fsaa, the v5 on the other hand will be raterer chopy even with just 2xfsaa.
 
but the point is the shots are all at 1024x768x32, with a geforce3 those games are playable at that setting with x4 fsaa, the v5 on the other hand will be raterer chopy even with just 2xfsaa.

But you know the topic says. Who has best FSAA?


 
well if thats the case you want to know who has better picture quality in FSAA, and not who's is better.

Then if you take everything in too consideration(speed, drivers😉, the GF3 still has the best FSAA..
 
wow, looks like i really hit a hotspot here in the vid forum 🙂 I have a new post with a new question, please answer all 🙂
 
No doubt Geforce 3 is better than a 2 year old voodoo 5 but the quality of FSAA on Nvidia seems to be no better than their GTS.
 
FSAA on a gts in anything above 1024x768 is almost unplayable..

it runs like butter on a GF3



if I had too pick between a GF2 and V5 the V5 wins hands down..
 
well it may sound as though i jumped on the bandwagon a lil too late, but i have a v5 coming this way in few days 🙂 one thing i tell you tho, dont try FSAA on radeons, d3d or OGL... the quality stinks and speed isnt any better. its just not worth it.
 
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