FSAA on the Radeon

[TargetDrone]

My brother's thinking about getting one of these for his computer and we were curious about the current FSAA options and performance of the Radeon. At the review here at Ananad's site they said there was only a 4X option for FSAA. Have any new driver releases since then created a 2X FSAA option? If so, how does it perform?

And as long as I'm asking for advice, how do you think this will perform on his current CPU (Celeron 400@450, 192MB RAM) for games like Half-Life, Need For Speed style games, and Thief 2?? I realize it's on the slow end, but he'll probably be upgrading it to an 800MHz+ Coppermine next year. We were kind of hoping that since it was on the low end, there would be a lot of unused card power left over for FSAA without taking much of any performance hit. One of the reviews here did a good job of pointing this possibility out. We're hoping that if a 2X FSAA option is available for the Radeon that this might be possible. What do you think?

 

[TargetDrone]

I just wanted to give this a bump before it falls completely off the chart. I realize the HSR drivers are the hot topic of the day, but I really could use some help.

 

[Hawk]

It won't performance super well with the 450, and the FSAA on the Radeon isn't very good, perhaps comparable to the Geforce 2's? www.reactorcritical.com had a thing on FSAA comparing the cards, you can check that out.

 

[Fumiup]

There are beta 7041 drivers that enable both 2x and 4x in both Direct3D and OpenGL

You can find them here
http://www.3dchipset.com/beta/ati/list.html

 

[Taz4158]

The tweaked 7041s at rageunderground are far better.

 

[Fumiup]

Those are the ones tweaked from rageunderground.

11/19/00

v4.13.7041 Beta2

7.5mb


- Beta 2 released by Rage Underground

 

[TargetDrone]

Thanks guys. It's good to know that 2X IS a possibility and hopefully going to see full driver support. Unfortunately all the reviews I've found were using the original drivers and there obviously have been quite a few revisions since then. Most of the reviews (with the exception of the one from reactorcritical.com) seem to show that Radeon actually does pretty well in FSAA, especially considering only 4X was available at the time. And of course, none of them help me out by looking at the performance on a slower CPU (although he'll hopefully only have it for a few more months and I might see what I can do about getting it up into the 500+ range like mine)

Until all this Voodoo5 driver stuff came up in the last day or so, I was pretty much leaning heavily towards the Radeon and I still am. But maybe we'll wait another week or so and see how all this stuff plays out first.

 

[fastrabbit]

I have a Radeon 32 DDR running on a Celeron 400.

I haven't messed with the FSAA because I thought the graphics looked great without it. I play a lot of Need for Speed III and Porsche Unlimited. I can run it at its highest resolution (NFS III, 800x600 and NFSPU 1280x1024) and all the details turned on without a problem.

Just food for thought.

 

[TargetDrone]

Thanks for the feedback Fastrabbit. I figured the Radeon probably did fairly well across the board, but it's good to get real world experience. However, I'm still trying to decide between the V5 and the Radeon. Like I said, this card is actually for my brother and he lives about 150 miles from me. So I'd prefer to have a card that's a solid performer while simple to maintain (it's hard to describe driver tweaking and updating over the phone). The Voodoo5 fits the bill quite nicely in that department, but I see the Radeon as having even greater potential given enough time with the drivers. I also didn't consider that he only had a 15" monitor for the time being. So I doubt he'll ever be running anything over 800x600 (or at the max 1024x768) for awhile. That may mean that FSAA could be an even more attractive feature since he'll be at lower res anyway.

 

[Looney]

Well, in your situation i would recommend the V5 then... because ATi does have some compatibility problems. And if your brother isn't very technical, he may have trouble with drivers installation and such... and to get the best FSAA he'll have to go into the registry and tweak it.

 

[Taz4158]

<< Well, in your situation i would recommend the V5 then... because ATi does have some compatibility problems. And if your brother isn't very technical, he may have trouble with drivers installation and such... and to get the best FSAA he'll have to go into the registry and tweak it. >>




There no compatibility problems to speak of and all FSAA, both 2 and 4 times are available from the control panel. There is no need for registry editing. Obviously you don't own a Radeon or you wouldn't have written the above.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

Ahh, the complexities of Radeon life.
How are Radeon drivers any different than anyone else's?
And that FSAA!
CD-Drivers: checkbox off/on
Beta: off/2X/4X

As an American citizen, and a VIVO owner, I demand to be educated in the procedures of Radeon FSAA! My checkbox was dimpled! My intent was clearly FSAA!

 

[MrPOOF]

Yes it's true, those new beta drivers have settings for 2x and 4x fsaa. It's easy to figure out.

 

[CountyRescue]

Radeon rocks havent seen or had any isues i run the 7040's on a 815e im getting a new via in a day or two so i hope its awesome also