The Radeon X1000 series, inclusive of the X1900, have two new image quality settings officially available to them. First a new anisotropic filtering mode that is angle invariant, unlike the default, thus offering a more consistent level of AF for all surfaces rendered, regardless of their angle of rotation. Second, an Adaptive AA mode, which can selectively change between Multi-Sampling on opaque textures and Super-Sampling on transparent textures, thus AntiAliasing areas of the scene that use Alpha textures, such as a chain fence, without the full performance impact of super-sampling FSAA. For more details and sample quality outputs of these new settings read our X1800 article here for High Quality Anisotropic Filtering, and here for Adaptive AA.

In this test case we'll perform the same tests as we did on the previous page, but with these new modes enabled.

Overall the costs for enabling ATI's angle invariant anisotropic filter in this Doom 3 test are fairly small, roughly dropping 1%-2% in most cases. The overall performance impact, relative to the angle variant mode, is going to be very dependant on the type of game and the scene being rendered, as the more surfaces that are off from 90 degree points, the more the performance impact is likely to be.

Enabling Adaptive AA in this test doesn't show much performance difference from normal multi-sampling FSAA. Like HQ AF, Adaptive AA is is very scene dependant with the more transparent textures used, the more super-sampling is used, hence the higher the performance hit relative to straight multi-sampling AA.

Because Adaptive AA's performance hit is hardly noticeable in this Adaptive AA and 16x HQ AF test, the performance drop from the standard IQ settings is primary dictated by the HQ AF, which itself is not very high.