Antialiasing Performance - Prey

We tested AA scaling performance at two resolutions using two games, the first being Prey. We start with 1280x1024. If you need to refresh your memory on what's happening with G80's AA modes, read the page on AA grids in our image quality analysis.

1280x1024

4x is faster than 2x on G80 with 97.92, with 8x a mixed CSAA mode (4xRGMS + 4xCS), 8xQ a true 8xSSMS mode, 16x being 4xRGMS + 12xCS, and finally 16xQ being 8xSSMS + 8xCS. Performance for all hardware on test scales as a function of the number of true multisamples taken, balanced off against board bandwidth and coverage samples (where applicable).

Notable performance spots to focus on are Radeon X1950 XTX's 6x mode being comparatively cheaper than 8x (a CSAA mode) on the two G80 boards, and the fact that 8800 GTX's memory bandwidth advantage per ROP allows it to scale better than 8800 GTS. GeForce 7950 GX2 suffers poor performance scaling at 1280x1024 with the mixed supersample modes, and its true 8x offset grid multisample mode isn't performant either, comparatively speaking.

1920x1200

1920x1200 shows the same trends with a higher per-mode cost because of the pixel count.