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Performance

Since we're focusing on transparency antialiasing, we only did tests with a small number of games - Age of Empires 3, Battlefield 2, Dungeon Siege 2 , Richard Burns Rally and Serious Sam 2. Since only Battlefield 2, Richard Burns Rally and Serious Sam 2 exhibit performance differences, we will only provide the results from these games. Our test setup remains the same. We tested three cards in total - a GeForce 7800GT, a standard clock GeForce 7800GTX and the ASUS EN7800GTX TOP 2xQ AA mode is forced through the driver panel, while 2x and 4x AA, when available, are set from the in game settings menu. For Richard Burns Rally, both AA and AF are forced from the driver panel. Image quality setting in the driver panel is set to High Quality for best image quality. We limit the tests to 1024 x 768, 32 bit. Higher resolutions should be pretty similar, 2x and 2xQ will be faster than 4x.

Our test setup
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
2 x 256 MB Kingston KVR 3-3-3 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM
MSI K8N NForce 4 SLI motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
ASUS E-616 DVD-ROM
450 watts ATX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
NVIDIA Forceware 81.95 reference driver
NVIDIA NForce 4 6.66 reference driver
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 24 bit 5.12.1.512 driver.
DirectX 9.0c

The results:

Just as expected, 2xQ performance is pretty much the same with 2x performance. Considering the quality is pretty close to 4x, that's quite an improvement. Those looking for the best image quality can still push 4x if you want, since even the 7800GT can still push high enough frame rates, with 40 fps minimum. Interesting to see we can gain pretty much the same rate by slightly overclocking the 7800GTX as we did by moving from the 7800GT to the 7800GTX.

	7800GTX TOP		7800GTX		7800GT
	4x	2xQ	4x	2xQ	4x	2xQ
<30 fps	0	0	0	0	0	0
30-45 fps	0	0	0	0	0	0
45-60 fps	0	0	0	0	5	0
60-90 fps	23	0	49	0	59	0
90-120 fps	41	16	15	21	0	47

Looking at the fps progress graph, we can see that the heaviest part of the benchmark is when we're racing through the pine forest. This is expected with transparency antialiasing, since that part is where transparent textures is at its heaviest. We can also see that we actually gain the most by switching to 2xQ with the 7800GTX. Looks like the 7800GTX TOP slightly higher clocked is much more needed with 4x AA, where the performance difference to the 7800GTX stays pretty much the same across the board.

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