Anti-Aliasing
It's still here, you know it looks good, and with the GeForce4... IT'S FASTER! For those of you unfamiliar with anti-aliasing, you might be more familiar
with the jagged edges you see in games, especially at low resolutions. Anti-aliasing is a feature, usually hardware based, that essentially "blurs"
those edges to make a more smooth transition that's less noticable to the eye (nVidia
white paper). Ever since the GeForce 2, nVidia cards had this hardware-based capability, but it usually came at a price. Such adjustments to
the rendering process are very processor intensive and slowed your game to a near crawl. Not anymore.
The GeForce4 series has made leaps and strides in this area. It's now to the point where, depending on your AA quality, you can turn it on and avoid
taking a major hit in FPS performance. Some newer games have the option of enabling AA on a per-game basis, but you can force it to manual for all 3d graphics in the
control panel. nVidia calls it "Accuview", and there are different levels, hence different qualities of anti-aliasing available. Some yielding
smoother graphics, and others offering better performance. The levels are as follows:
2x (most basic and with highest performance)
Quincunx (the quality of 4x with performance near to 2x)
4x (higher quality, but with a performance hit)
4xS (the highest quality available with "slightly lower" performance than 4x, Direct3D only)
As you examine our benchmark numbers, notice how each mode affects overall score. At the same time, also notice the improvements and overall impression
of the images, as seen in the screenshots.
Overclocking
The ability to overclock isn't available to the "average" home user with the default software installation. To enable it requires a registry
hack and a reboot. The default settings for core and memory clocks are 270mhz and 400mhz, respectively. At your discretion however, you can
modify these values up to 340mhz and 500mhz. Overclocking of course pushes your card past it's normal operating limits, generating excess heat in
your system. nVidia warns that such tweaks might even cause damage to your card, so do be careful. For this review, we won't be running any
overclocked benchmarks, but the option is still there for those who want to take that step.
