DarkMatter
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OK, firstly, read the links I post below. I post them not to fanboy it up, but more to educate. AA in ATIs current solutions are superior, if you simply go by a "apples to apples" comparison. This link http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=49008&page=15 was partly influenced by this link http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=869. When the folks a B3D saw that at madshrimps, they responded. These are both reputable sites, and for learning about gfx, theres hardly a better place to go than B3D, as seen by the last line in the MadShrimps conclusion, which added the B3D info. Essentually, whats being said in these links is that yes, if you lower the ATI settings, youll get the same IQ that nVidia does, thus creating less stress on the ATI cards, and more fps. Keep that in mind when you view reviews
Moot comparison:
-$400 single GPU card vs. $550 dual GPU card. If they had compared a single RV770 to the GTX I'm sure there would be different. Dual GPU cards are well known to be able to attain higher AA levels than single GPU cards without a hit in performance. In fact, it's usually the only advantage they have. The dissadvantage is that sometimes Crossfire/SLI doesn't work and that is not reflected in the article.
-Nvidia does not use lesser quality AA by any means. When you choose CSAA yes (and so does Ati with CFAA), but MSAA vs. MSAA is exactly the same. Ati's MSAA results would never be higher as there's no change to be done there. They don't say anywhere the contrary BTW.
- Last one is personal opinion, but I think it's one that will be widely supported. At 1920x1200 it's a moot point to go higher than 4x AA. It's great if you can use 8x without a significant hit, but it would be even better if you could have 25% more frames in all the resoutions instead, except the higher one. The X2 because it's dual GPU solution can do the first one, but never the latter one. Take Crysis for example, the X2 does the same frames at lower settings than on higher ones, so yeah it does not take a performance hit, but it is neither playable in any of those resolutions. Look at any dual GPU in the past and you will find the same.
The X2 scales better trough AA levels than the GTX card, because as a dual GPU that it is, it was designed for that, but that doesn't mean it has better AA quality.