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NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX (G70)

By Vijay Anand - 22 Jun 2005

Intellisample 4.0 - Transparency Antialiasing

Intellisample 4.0 - Transparency Antialiasing

Normal antialiasing techniques work fine for objects of sizable dimensions, but antialiasing sub-pixel sampling patterns/algorithms are unable to rectify extremely fine objects such as fencing and fine leaves because they normally do not fall into view of the sub-pixel sampling patterns. NVIDIA's transparency antialiasing offers to overcome this into modes - transparency adaptive supersampling and transparency adaptive multisampling. Both get the job done but just like traditional supersampling, transparency supersampling endures a larger performance hit for little improvement over its multisampling variant. As such, we suggest opting for the transparency multisampling option. After all, most of us are all accustomed to full scene multisampling antialiasing these days. Transparency antialiasing is an optional feature that can be used in conjunction with normal FSAA. It is only available using the advanced settings view mode as seen below:-

Transparency antialiasing option with three values: - Off, Transparency Multisampling and Transparency Supersampling.

On average, there shouldn't be more than a 10% performance hit by activating transparency antialiasing, but of course this is greatly dependent from game to game, scene to scene. Check out the image quality difference we encountered using the FarCry game when running at a resolution of 1280x960 with 4x FSAA and 8x AF:-

This is a close-up of some foliage in the game without Transparency antialiasing. Click to inspect the entire screen capture.

Now this is the same shot with Transparency antialiasing enabled; what do you know, it works! Check out the smoother and cleaner edges of the leaves. Just like the above shot, click this picture to inspect the entire captured frame and see where else there's been an improvement.

As for performance concerns with transparency antialiasing, we doubt it's going to eat much into a powerful card such as the GeForce 7800 GTX, but here's some results to reassure you:-

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