Crossfire 8x & 12x AAA & HQ AF


The same test cases as the previous Super AA tests, we'll now apply Adaptive FSAA and High Quality Anisotropic Filtering to see how that affect performance in relation to the modes without these extra IQ features.

Far Cry - 8x Adaptive AA + 8xHQAF

  307200  480000  786432  1310720  1920000 
X1900 XF - Normal  29.6  46.5  76.3  124.9  169.2 
X1900 XF - AAA/HQ AF  29.2  45.8  72.7  102.4  120.8 
X1800 XF - Normal  29.8  46.4  76.1  123.9  160.5 
X1800 XF - AAA/HQ AF  29.2  46.2  75.3  113.9  135.6 

pixels x fps - Mpixels per second

Difference between default and AAA/HQAF

  640x480  800x600  1024x768  1280x1024  1600x1200 
X1900 XTX  -1.40%  -1.40%  -4.80%  -18.0%  -28.60% 
X1800 XT  -1.80%  -0.50%  -1.0%  -8.0%  -15.60% 

percentage

As our Far Cry has plenty of transparencies in it (courtesy of lots of leafy tree rendering) the performance hit is reasonably high here, reducing the performance of the X1900 Crossfire platform by 29% at 1600x1200. As HQ AF and adaptive AA both increase the texture load, the performance of the X1900 Crossfire is brought in line with the X1800 Crossfire system a little more.

Far Cry - 12x Adaptive AA + 16xHQAF

  307200  480000  786432  1310720  1920000 
X1900 XF - Normal  29.5  46.3  76  124.5  166.5 
X1900 XF - AAA/HQ AF  29.3  45.8  71.6  98.7  116.7 
X1800 XF - Normal  29.6  46.5  76.2  121  149.2 
X1800 XF - AAA/HQ AF  29.3  45.9  68.9  90.4  103.1 

pixels x fps - Mpixels per second

Difference between default and AAA/HQAF

  640x480  800x600  1024x768  1280x1024  1600x1200 
X1900 XTX  -0.80%  -1.0%  -5.90%  -20.70%  -29.90% 
X1800 XT  -0.90%  -1.30%  -9.60%  -25.20%  -30.90% 

percentage

The X1900 suffers a similar performance hit with 12x adaptive AA and 16x HQ AF, but in this instance the X1800 Crossfire system's performance degradation in comparison to the default AA and AF modes is similar to the X1900's.

Doom3 8x Adaptive AA + 8xHQAF

  307200  480000  786432  1310720  1920000 
X1900 XF - Normal  44.7  68.1  100.7  130.5  149 
X1900 XF - AAA/HQ AF  44.7  68  100.3  130.5  148.4 
X1800 XF - Normal  44.1  61.4  95.2  120.6  133.8 
X1800 XF - AAA/HQ AF  44.3  65.2  93.9  119.9  133.8 

pixels x fps - Mpixels per second

Difference between default and AAA/HQAF

  640x480  800x600  1024x768  1280x1024  1600x1200 
X1900 XTX  0.10%  -0.10%  -0.50%  0.0%  -0.40% 
X1800 XT  0.50%  6.20%  -1.30%  -0.50%  0.0% 

percentage

As we experienced in the single card tests, this Doom 3 test is not significantly affected by adaptive AA, so the performance drop is very slight, with the minor increase in texture sampling requirements caused by the high quality filtering mode.

Doom3 12x Adaptive AA + 16xHQAF

  307200  480000  786432  1310720  1920000 
X1900 XF - Normal  43.4  61.9  84.9  103.5  116.5 
X1900 XF - AAA/HQ AF  42.1  61.3  84.5  103.8  116.5 
X1800 XF - Normal  42.5  59.4  80.3  97.9  104.3 
X1800 XF - AAA/HQ AF  42.1  57.1  76.2  97.6  106.2 

pixels x fps - Mpixels per second

Difference between default and AAA/HQAF

  640x480  800x600  1024x768  1280x1024  1600x1200 
X1900 XTX  -3.0%  -0.90%  -0.50%  0.30%  0.0% 
X1800 XT  -0.90%  -3.90%  -5.10%  -0.30%  1.80% 

percentage

Again, as adaptive AA makes very little difference from default AA in this test, there are very few performance differences all over. In this case, the bandwidth demands of 12x AA (6x per board) is enough to offset the extra texturing demands so there really is no performance difference between the default and high quality settings with the X1900 here.