VoodooExtreme mentioned recently that 3dfxgamers.com, a site created by graphics card manufacturer 3dfx, has updated their page of Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing 'demos.' These screen shot comparisons and animated demos illustrate the difference in image quality you can expect when enabling FSAA with a 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 in OpenGL and Glide games.

If you've read our review of this card, you know that we had an extremely frustrating experience capturing screen shots with the card due to the limitations of the driver. As a result, we don't feel our review quite captures what 4x FSAA can really accomplish; a visit to the FSAA demo page at 3dfx is highly recommended if you are curious about how this card can improve image quality at low resolutions.

However, we are compelled to note that 3dfx's demonstrations are not entirely valid comparisons; they compare 640x480 shots with and without FSAA, while they should be comparing 1024x768 or greater without FSAA to 640x480 with 4x turned on. As our tests of the V5 reveal, benchmarks taken at 1024x768 without FSAA are almost identical to 4x at 640x480 in many games.

In any case, even with this added grain of salt, 3dfx's demos of FSAA are well worth checking out for a better illustration of FSAA than our screen shots could provide. Hopefully a future revision of the Mac drivers will allow screen and movie captures, so we can provide better examples for you, from games that are actually available for the Mac OS.

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI Review

VoodooExtreme

FSAA Demonstration Page at 3dfxgamers.com

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