FSAA & Image Quality Comparison - 3dfx vs ATI vs NVIDIA

Final Words

From a performance standpoint, none of the current cards have the real world fill rate to push a 4 sample FSAA setting at 60+ fps, which is what we would ideally like. This makes the presence of 2 sample FSAA settings a very smart move on behalf of 3dfx and NVIDIA: we would definitely like to see a 2 sample setting added to the ATI Radeon's sole 4 sample setting.

3dfx definitely has the best 2 sample FSAA setting out of the bunch, although we were unsuccessful with tweaking the LOD bias settings when enabling 2 sample FSAA (other artifacts would pop up), the setting still seems to offer the best overall result in terms of image quality and performance.

ATI's Radeon benefits greatly from its efficient memory management, allowing it to offer faster performance at their 4 sample FSAA setting than NVIDIA's GeForce2 GTS running in its 4 sample mode in 32-bit color. This is an example of yet another situation where theoretical fill rate becomes meaningless as the reality of memory bandwidth limitations sets in.

There you have it, the three major contenders and the pros/cons of their FSAA implementations. What you're seeing now is just the beginnings of what these manufacturers can offer us, what we will really be able to look forward to is the next generation 3dfx part as well as NVIDIA's NV20, both of which may be able to provide a much higher performance FSAA solution that can be used for more than just showing off in screenshots.