nVidia GeForce GT200 Series Anti-Aliasing Investigation
Image Quality (TrAA)
The tree is actually a transparent texture, likely a result of the game’s LOD system optimizing performance by reducing workload at distances. Because MSAA and CSAA only affect polygon edges, none of them impact the tree. The combined modes can because they anti-alias the entire scene, but let’s see how the tree looks with TrAA. Note that I could’ve used another scene with more alpha content, but by using the same scene, it becomes clearer how these AA techniques all come together as a total package.
0xTrAA
2xTrAA
4xTrAA
8xTrAA
Even with just the thumbnails, you can clearly see changes to the color gradients as each level of TrAA is applied, but feel free to load the larger images if you like.
I run 2560×1600 with 2 gtx280’s and something very noticable was how much smoother all games run with AA (all in game no need for Nvidia control panel) when I upgraded from Vista 64 to Win 7 64. Games like Crysis and COH at 2560×1600 everything maxed with 8xcsa wouldnt even render a frame with Vista, after upgrade to WIN 7 64, COH and Crysis run 16x NP, (Cryis with low FPS obviously) SLI 285’s and 280’s Win7 is the way to go.
Yes, Windows 7 handles SLI/CF better than Vista.