First, I will test the differences between the levels of Antialiasing, which can be configured on your SLI system. Within Battlefield 2, I have disabled the game’s AA controller and configured the filtering to low. Additionally, I have set the screen resolution to 1280 x 1024. These three setting stay the same through the following test so that nVidia’s Antialiasing setting is the only variable. By doing this you should be able to tell a difference between the jaggedness and crispness of each AA level.
Trial 1: AA off
Notice the jaggedness of the railing on top of the brown building and the edges of the roof? Much of this image has extremely noticeable “rough” patches and jagged features.
Trial 2: AA 2x
There is no visible improvement between this and the preceding trial in which AA was turned off. The same areas appear jagged.
Trial 3: AA 2xQ
Compared to AA 2x and AA off, there is reduced jaggedness. Yet, it is still visible on the railings and edges of the roof. This image is more realistic than the first two trials, but is still far from being crisp and clean. Note: this setting cannot be enabled from within Battlefield 2’s video settings.
Trial 4: AA 4x
This is the highest AA setting that can be enabled within Battlefield 2’s video settings. At full screen the amount of jaggedness is minimal; the best of the first four trials. Similarly, in the same “rough” patches as the previous trials, the “stair step” jagged structure is visible, however, the “steps” are much smaller and become more distinguishable upon zooming into the screen shot. Unfortunately, with AA 4x, a certain amount of transitional blur* becomes visible in the areas which were smoothed up.
*Transitional blur is being used to describe blur in the transition areas between the object’s actual edges and the edges that appear after AA cleans up the jaggedness of the object.
Trial 5: AA 8xS
Following the trend, AA 8xS has the most realistic, non-jagged image so far. In full screen, viewing the differences between AA 8xS and AA 4x are distinguishable, yet the improvement is not “significantly better”, and depending on the kind of scene being rendered in the game, this difference might not even be noticed. Upon zooming in, it becomes more apparent that AA 8xS produces a crisper image than AA 4x. The amount of blur is also reduced.
Trial 6: SLI AA 8
SLI AA 8 cannot be distinguished when viewed at full screen from 8xS in terms of crispness. I do however feel I can classify this image’s antialiased objects to have less transitional blur than the above trials. This took a while for me to notice, but when analyzing the edges of the railings there is reduced blurring and blending between the black rail and white horizon; closer to how a we view contrasts.
Trial 7: SLI AA 16
Once again in full screen, the image appears to be identical to that of AA 8xS and SLI AA 8. Even upon zooming in to the screen shot I could not distinguish any improvements.
