News ATi & nVidia Anti-Aliasing Performance

The guys at 3DCenter try and dispell some of the myths surrounding AA:

Both ATi and nVidia like to present their anti-aliasing solutions as something miraculous - for example, that they are the best available on the market, or that they'd work with (virtually) no performance hit. Both companies use very different approaches: While ATi uses three multisampling modes, nVidia employs up to 10 different modes - depending on driver version -, of which most are combinations of supersampling and multisampling.

In most hardware reviews only few of these are benchmarked, simply because there isn't enough time for a more in-depth look. We want to make up for that with this article, which will exclusively look at the anti-aliasing performance of current ATi and nVidia graphics chips, while also keeping an eye on the performance of these modes. While doing so, our emphasis will be on the performance of the more rarely benchmarked anti-aliasing modes in comparison to the lower anti-aliasing modes as well as a general view on the overall performance characteristics"

Full article here