Take a good look at the leaves on the lower left part, you could definitely see (if you look closely enough) transparency SSAA doing it's work. Image quality under transparency MSAA and no transparency AA is pretty similar. So, we can see that transparency SSAA does work with this game and can provide better image quality to transparency MSAA or no transparency AA. But it seems there's quite a big hit with transparency SSAA - look at the FRAPS fps counter. With no CPU overhead (bots, physics etc), the GeForce 7800GTX we used offer up to 120 fps - well above the 100 fps cap enabled by default in the game. With transparency SSAA, 71 fps is the highest we can go - that's close to a 50 fps performance hit. Seems like even supersampling is still too heavy for the GeForce 7800GTX.
Serious Sam II, just like its predecessor, makes heavy use of transparent textures. The only game rivaling it is FarCry. Here again we can see transparency SSAA providing a better image (with less aliasing) - look at the vines hanging off the trees. You can clearly see aliasing with transparency MSAA and no transparency AA. However, the load from doing transparency SSAA proved to be too much for the GeForce 7800GTX. Understandably so considering the amount of transparent textures in use - performance dropped to 25 fps or about 1/3 or the frame rates with transparency MSAA and no transparency antialiasing. What if we reduce the number of samples? Theoretically, it will be faster but will image quality suffer? Let's take a look at what you get with 2x transparency SSAA.
Image quality is pretty close to 4x transparency SSAA (there are very subtle differences), with less of a performance hit (38 fps instead of 25 fps - still about half though). We can conclude that transparency SSAA offer the most significant image quality boost (when it works) compared to both transparency MSAA and no transparency antialiasing. Of course, for them to work, the levels (or the game) must make use of transparent textures. If no transparent textures are in use, we won't see any image quality improvement or performance difference. We can also see the amount of transparent textures in use does influence the performance levels you're getting. We really can't recommend enabling 4x transparency SSAA with Serious Sam II, no matter how good it looks. That's why we wished NVIDIA made separate options to control the levels of antialiasing between normal and transparent textures. The best compromise of image quality and performance will probably be 4x MSAA and 2x transparency SSAA (with 16x AF).
Brothers in Arms seem to be quite an anomaly, since it does use transparent textures, but we can see no (visible) differences or even any performance difference for that matter. Looks like not all games will work correctly with transparency SSAA. Another game that seems to confirm this fact is F1 Career Challenge. Below, you could see screenshots displaying artifacts in the game when transparency SSAA is enabled. In actual gameplay (when you're racing on the track), you couldn't see anything at all and performance is so slow, you'd think the PC had crashed. The Forceware drivers do have a long standing bug with this game, so this may be causing the problem.
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