16x AF & 16xS AA Benchmarks

Up to this point we have compared the 7900 GTX to the 7950 GX2. But the dual card 7950 GX2 has SLI specific image quality settings which is are not available to its slower, single card counterpart. With the 7950 card installed, the AF settings max out at 16x and the AA settings can be set to a maximum of 16xS. Let's take a look at what kind of hit the card takes when these are enabled.

SLI AA & AF - Prey & Doom 3

Prey

These images are unresized 1920x1200 each, showing you the image quality difference between 0xAF/AA, 8xAF/8xS AF & 16xAF/16xS AA


As mentioned before, the 7950 GX2 was much slower than the 7900 GTX with 8x AF and 8xS AA turned on. To my surprise the card delivered the exact same frames at 16x AF and 16xS AA. I always set the image quality setting in the NVIDIA control panel, which worked perfectly fine for all other games. It could be that some sort of bug in Prey could trigger this. If you look closely at the two respective screen shots above, you will not see any difference in image quality between 8/8 and 16/16.

Doom 3

These images are unresized 1920x1200 each, showing you the image quality difference between 0xAF/AA, 8xAF/8xS AF & 16xAF/16xS AA


Setting the SLI AF/AA settings in Doom 3 cut the delivered frame rate in half and the game became a slide show at 1920x1200.