Anti aliasing will play a huge role in the success or failure of the Matrox Parhelia. Their innovative Fragment Anti Aliasing algorithm is (theoretically) a much more streamlined approach to enhanced image quality, and the AA performance levels of the Parhelia are quite impressive. While not directly comparing the IQ of each card, we have selected the Parhelia, Radeon 8500 and GeForce4 Ti 4600 and run them through a few game benchmarks, using a variety of anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings. These are pure benchmark scores to demonstrate different performance levels at several different settings, and we will be discussing the technology each card provides a bit later on.
Appropriately, 3DMark 2001SE is the first benchmark in the anti aliasing/anisotropic filtering performance section. We find the Parhelia basic 4X supersampling at its expected low framerates, while FAA-16x ramps up the performance levels quite significantly. Notice that as the resolution increases, the edge antialiasing technique allows the Parhelia to break away from the competition.
As with 3DMark 2001SE, Quake 3 at 1024x768 shows the GeForce4 Ti 4600 keeping up to the various Matrox options. Once we hit 1280x1024, the tables start turning and the Parhelia's FAA-16x offers the highest framerates.
The same anti aliasing performance trends happen with Serious Sam 2, further solidifying the inherent advantage the Matrox edge anti aliasing technology has as the resolutions are increased.
