Accuview Antialiasing

    Now aside from the fancy name used to describe the antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering techniques employed by the GeForce 4 series, this is a fairly important area that helps 3D quality immensly in most, if not all, games, not just a few that support its features.  I was unable to achieve anything over 2X ansiotropic filtering via the drivers (which is all I used) so if anyone can tell me how to unlock/access higher ansiotropic filtering modes, I would like to know.  The antialiasing methods have been improved over the previous versions used by Nvidia, with samples now being taken from a better sample of areas.  Another new mode is called 4XS (only available in DirectX) but provides better coloration by increasing the amount of data used to decide the color used in each pixel.  Let us see how the these features stand up against the Kyro II and Parhelia (reviewed here).  If you would like the uncompressed images please e-mail me.

Parhelia	MSI GF4MX 440-8X	Kyro II
No AA or Ansiotropic filtering	No AA or Ansiotropic filtering	No AA or Ansiotropic filtering
	2X AA	2X Horizontal AA
	Quincunx AA - Ansio	2X Vertical AA
4X AA + 2X Ansio	4X AA + 2X Ansio	4X AA + Ansio
16X FAA + 2X Ansiotropic Filtering	4XS AA + 2X Ansiotropic filtering

    We can see the 4XS mode of antialiasing is a very large improvement over the previous maximum AA setting of Nvidia based video cards.  If we look at the pictures of 4X AA and 4XS AA of the MSI card we see that this setting brings the image fairly close to the quality of the 16X FAA of the Parhelia, though it is still not quite as good as the Parhelia.  The ansiotropic filtering of the Nvidia card is better than the Parhelia is in my opinion at the same settings, and is equal to the quality of the Kyro II's ansiotropic filtering.  All in all given 4XS and 2X ansiotropic, this card is almost as good as the Parhelia for AA and better than the Parhelia and similar to the Kyro II in ansiotropic filtering.

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