ATI has made huge strides with their anti-aliasing performance, and have finally broken free of the super-sampling used with previous ATI cards. The Radeon 9700 Pro has the features, it has the performance, but does it have the anti-aliasing image quality?
To help give a better idea of overall anti-aliasing IQ levels, we have taken a 3DMark 2001SE default screenshot (to ensure total consistency between pics), while testing the GeForce4 Ti 4600 and Radeon 8500 at 4X AA, and then done the same for the Radeon 9700 Pro at 4X and 6X AA settings. We chose the Matrix-like shot, not only because it looks cool, but this scene is also a tough one for some AA engines to handle. Here's a full-size shot of the image, with the two arrows pointing to the image sections we will be enlarging.
Now let's zoom in on Mr. Matrix' facial area, and pay specific attention to the area around the glasses. This is a shot taken with no AA enabled and it's got so many jaggies that it's quite hard to miss.
Next up we have the same shot taken with a GeForce4 Ti 4600 at 4X AA. The jagged lines have become smoother and results in a higher quality image with some framerate impact.
The Radeon 8500 is next on the list, and is once again a 4X AA shot. This is also a very good example of anti-aliasing quality, but keep in mind that this level of AA incurs a huge framerate hit with the Radeon 8500.
The Radeon 9700 Pro receives a minimal hit to the fps when 4X AA is enabled, and judging from this screenshot, the image quality doesn't suffer a bit.
At the higher-end 6X AA setting, the Radeon 9700 Pro has what is likely the best AA image quality of the bunch, and the jagged lines have been smoothed out considerably, even over the GeForce4 Ti 4600 or Radeon 8500. There are also no image anomalies present in either Radeon 9700 Pro 4X or 6X screenshots, which shows that ATI has their algorithm tuned quite well.
