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Villagemark
We added the Villagemark benchmark simply to test one feature, Occlusion Culling, or hidden surface removal. This trick is a good idea because, why render something you cannot see? No point in slowing the game down needlessly.
The benchmark was designed with the Kyro II in mind, but most modern video cards have some form of this optimization. Granted, the Ti4600 is a lot faster than the Ti500 in terms of raw power, but at almost 40 frames per second faster, my guess is the improved Occlusion Culling has been improved.
Image Quality
It's great having an ultra fast video card, but if your games look nasty, why bother? Thankfully, games look as good as they ever did, though in my opinion, the Radeon 8500 is still a tad nicer.
AntiAliasing was, well, pretty much the same as before. It's certainly faster now, but for OpenGL, image quality was comparable to the GeForce 3.
Click for comparison AA
As with the GeForce 3, I didn't like Quincunx AA all that much, and much preferred 2xAA, and/or 4xAA. At 1024x768, I found 4xAA very nice, and playable so long as it's a single player game.
We tested the 4XS mode, and I must admit, the image quality was very nice. Loading up Aliens vs Predator 2, the aging Lithtech engine is jaggy city, and some AA loving is what it needs.
Click for comparison AA
Screenshots don't do it justice, but playing with 4XS AntiAliasing is fantastic. Jaggies were almost non-existent, and the image was clear, which is quite impressive when you consider AntiAliasing tends to blur the image. You do suffer a performance hit, but AvP 2 ran just fine at 1024x768. Quincunx was noticably blurry, and textures seemed more washed out.
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