Geforce GTX 480 with 32x Anti-Aliasing: Gaming screenshots

Website PCGH shows how gaming looks like with 32x Anti-Aliasing on Geforce GTX 480 right before the official launch. Included are Assassin's Creed 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Dirt 2.

[Pandamobile]

PC games, now with 32x more AA than most console games.

[Fishy Fingers]

Come on now, that's not fair, some console games hit 4x AA. Plenty for a 720p image stretched over 50" ;)

[ProjectVulcan]

I dont want 32 x AA though. I want fully fledged high resolution DX11 games with astounding effects and maybe 4 x AA. A console port with identical assets and 32 x AA is still only a smoother console game, besides, the higher the resolution the less AA you actually need. 1920 x 1080 with 2x looks ridiculously better than 1280 x 720 with 4x.

In other words i think i can definitively say most people would settle for crysis visuals and 4 x AA than a console port like AC2 with 32 x AA...

[JsonHenry]

Not impressed.. look at the shadows on the ground in the AC2 screens where the peasants are walking in the streets. STILL have jaggies!

Downsampling is still the only way to go for "true" AA.

[Pandamobile]

I don't think 32x AA is a DX11 feature. It's just what the card can do natively. AC2 is a DX9 game, so that's why it's got the jaggy shadows (you can't really anti-alias shadows yet)

[raztad]

GoW3 has an impeccable AA, shadows and everything included. Dont know how much but it's smooth as butter. Cant ask for anything more.

@evr bellow

Thats a friicking LIE and you know it. GoW3 is 30-60 fps, vsynced and plays extremely smooth. You wont find anyone telling GoW3 has framerate drops.
The fixed camera is a design gameplay since GoW1. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations as you are saying.

What is "off" about MLAA is you hatred against the PS3.

Man it's really sad when you have to resort to plain lies to downplay a system.

@vulcanproject

I'm not arguing which one is better. Just replaying to Panda first comment. GoW3 MLAA implementation is top notch and it provides a really nice looking AA. Pretty satisfied with it.

[ProjectVulcan]

You can have a sort of shadow map AA. High end game engines have soft shadow features often by averaging multiple shadow map values so you get 'anti aliased' soft edges. Games that dont really make this work well end up with that odd and rather nasty shimmering 'stippled' shadow dithering effect though, i would rather have stencil shadows TBH.

32 x AA isnt to do with DX11 no i didnt suggest that. Its just a feature nvidia touted. My point was that its hardly preferable to the use of a new API like DX11

[Pandamobile]

Yeah, I fricking love soft shadows.

I can't believe there's still so many games that use the retarded jaggy shadow method.

Christ, even Source has soft shadows.

[evrfighter]

GoW3 is close to 8xAA. MLAA while using less resources than AA doesn't quite look as good as 8xAA. There's something off about it.

But even then GoW3 comes with a fixed camera and 30fps @ 720p which really shows the age of the ps3.

[OpenGL]

Source does not use soft shadows, it doesn't even support true dynamic lighting. When episode 2 came out they added self-shadowing but it was only used for the protagonist's flashlight, and they use a form of stencil based shadows that have artificially softened edges. True soft shadows are supposed to calculate the effect ambient light has on shadows.

The only game I can think of that even does a close to accurate representation of real soft shadows is Crysis, and it still suffers from a fair number of artifacts.

[ProjectVulcan]

MLAA can be done very well by something like CELL because it is nice and parallel. It would work fine on a modern GPU too if someone bothered to try and implement it, but it doesnt give that overall quality of MSAA. As with anything its a tradeoff. You can have some extremely smooth edges but others the filter completely misses or is poor on, fine pixel detail which is often the most noticeable form of aliasing for me. MLAA should be used more on PS3 i think because its really not very good at MSAA, very bandwidth limited and MLAA is a good compromise.

PC cards however by comparison are mostly swimming in excess memory and bandwidth its no problem for them to have overall the best quality possible practical which usually means a chunk of MSAA. Failing that a bunch of coverage samples. CSAA works pretty well for me on stuff like mass effect 2, it gives much better performance than MSAA but similar quality

[HolyOrangeCows]

And I'm sure you're going to buy it day one, right panda?

I wish these pictures were bigger. You can only get so much out of a 640x400 picture.

[Pandamobile]

Buy what, a 480?

Not for a while. My PC budget is a bit tighter this year cus I'm going off to university in September.

Also, press the Ansicht vergrößern button to see the fullsize.

[Letros]

GTX 480 reviews are not out yet, but someone managed to take some pics of an early posted review, it has now been taken down.

http://www.xtremesystems.or...

After reviewing, power/heat/performance/price(I 'm guessing $500-$600), I'm am very happy I went ahead and bought a 5850 when they came out for $250. I can live with this until this fall when the next gen cards come out again.

And GoW3 AA is ok at best, still ton's of jaggies I noticed on my HDTV, its hard to overcome them with such a low res. MSAA is unbeatable for the performance, hell I play most games at 1080p 4x and have nothing to complain about.

[ProjectVulcan]

Those GTX480 scores are pretty fail. Ouch. Its faster in the games that dont really matter, the ones where 5870 is already fast enough to manage 60 frames. The games that really matter being the ones that put the most load on the cards like crysis warhead, its no faster, in fact a tad slower. Oooof.

Then you have power consumption worse than a 5970, YES 5NINE70, and load temperatures smashing past 90 degrees the likes of which i havent seen since the X1900 series lol

[PotNoodle]

If these prove to be much better than my two 5850's, i'll sell them while they're hot and buy a 480, maybe two 470s if the prices are right.

But yeah, my 5850s were £200 each when i bought them, they're selling for £230 - £260 at the moment. May be able to get a decent price for them still..

[TheIneffableBob]

JsonHenry, shadow aliasing can be fixed with better shadowing algorithms, such as those that can be used in DX11.

Have you seen Bad Company 2's shadows in DX11? Beautiful.

[y0haN]

32 x 0 = 0 :-)

[XRider]

This just shows how outdated consoles realy are

[vhero]

but.but.but the 360 has the best graphics for multi-platform games hahahahaha 32AA is too much though and totally unneeded.

[JsonHenry]

Anyone else but me think anything more than 4xAA washes out textures in games making them actually look worse? Not that I don't like the ability to use 32x I just can't think of a practical use for it in terms of gaming.

[AliTheBrit19]

And yet, people still dont care

Must be too busy playing console games while you try and get your lovely DRM title to work.

[mikeslemonade]

I don't care about upgraded mediocre looking/playing games. Assasins Creed 2 still looks like garbage, so what's your point. Dragon Age still looks like garbage, so what's your point. Uncharted 2 is still the king.

[Letros]

"I don't care about upgraded mediocre looking/playing games. Assasins Creed 2 still looks like garbage, so what's your point. Dragon Age still looks like garbage, so what's your point. Crysis is still the king."

Fixed

[TheIneffableBob]

Only some AA methods blur the textures, like quincunx. The most prevalent AA methods such as edge-detect-type AA do not -- for example, multisampling does not affect textures.

[jjesso1993]

really want this card it going to be so expensive.

[Cueil]

the same price as a 5980 and half the power... fail

[Bigbangbing]

32x? wow...

but seriously who need THIS much of ant-aliasing?

[mrv321]

Someone who wants to zoom into a big circle :P?

[Babaganoosh27]

looks useless just like all nvidia cards overpriced power that u can get in ati for half the price

[kaveti6616]

Useless for you, maybe. Some people really need this kind of power.

[f789790]

You mean want. Nobody "needs" 32xAA. 4xAA does the job.

[Cueil]

ATI 5890 is the same price and nearly 2x the power eff this card

[Vip3r]

That is all.

[RagTagBnd445]

Ahh, this is too much, i would prefer higher texture resolution instead.

[Pandamobile]

A GPU isn't going to magically up texture resolution...

[RagTagBnd445]

A better GPU would allow better texture resolution in games, but yes, developers don't have to do anything to allow 32x AA, but they would have to work to increase texture res.

[Vicophine]

Those textures do not look good... :x

[PrimordialSoupBase]

Call me crazy but I really don't care about aliasing. Even when I can go over 2x in a lot of PC games I choose not to. It changes the look of games, giving a smoothing quality that not all lend themselves to.

[Aphe]

I prefer to have some AA in my games if I can, 2-4xAA is usually good enough. It does look much better with it imo. The only time I don't have AA is if it affects performance too much.

But I can live without it, upping the res takes some off the jagginess of a game anyway.

[PinkUni]

i agree,

its like, i dont really notice a difference in games, and it seems like a lot of trouble to be doing this

polygons ill notice, textures ill notice, but anti-aliasing is worse then nit picking in my opinion

[joydestroy]

i wanna see benchmarks comparing it to the 285/295 and i also wanna see the 470. trying to decide which to go with but i'm liking the 480 so far.

[Bigbangbing]

I can say it could easily beat those, but if you're going to buy it, you'll probably end up with a CPU bottlenecking it.

[steve30x]

It depends on the resolution you use. The Higher the resolution the less your CPU will bottleneck. Anything above 1680 x 1050 will have little bottleneck because you are using mostly GPU power.

[ApexHell]

i still play games with out AA only old games from <2005 do i apply it lol.

[Reigen]

1st i couldent see s**t cuz the pictures are so small
2nd i dont ewen wana gues how much a gpu like that is going to cost

defenetly not wort buying just to play crappy multiplats

[Aphe]

Posting a comment comes with this handy feature called Spell Check. It might be worth you using it.

Unlss yoo lke tklng lk tht?

[ATi_Elite]

cant wait for this 480 gtx to come out so all the HD 5850 cards drop in price and I can run crossfire.

[XtreemGamer]

For me,4xAA is more than enough.... This 32x AA is worthless...

[XRider]

Thats probably because you own a console and consoles can only do 4x AA.

[XtreemGamer]

No. I'm talking about my pc. PS3 can't do MSAA,only Quincux and MLAA. 1680x1050 and 4xAA is great for me.

[xg-ei8ht]

SkyGamer and other pc gamers, your missing the point yet again.

Cell does alot.

Leaving RSX to do the rest.

Now go drag your old 7800gtx, fire up dirt and have a good laugh.

It'll struggle like hell.

PC code isn't great in the best of games, that's why most of the time brute force is needed and until that changes you'll always need it.

PS3 is indeed a closed box, but it still takes time and money to bring on the games.

And no i'm not saying todays hardware couldn't run PS3 games, that would be silly.

x32 aa isn't needed. You all know this, i've been saying it for along time, x4aa is enough in any resolution. Always has been, i'm rather more improvements on the that scale.

The new nvidia card looks very nice, and for a single gpu with tessellation, pulls away from the ati card.

17fps (not playable)
vs
29.5fps(playable)

After all, wasn't that what you guys wanted, dx11 greatness.

[Hotel_Moscow]

4x aa is never enough

thats like saying dvd is enough when its not

[Letros]

Non-fully optimized coding has advantages though, typically PC games come out 1-2 years after they are announced, as opposed to the ps3 optimized exclusive 5 year development cycle. I'm not saying PC exclusives are better than PS3's, I'm just pointing out that when you don't have to optimize til the cows come home, development costs and time are greatly reduced.

[TABSF]

4xAA is not enough

8xAA very jaggy
http://194.71.11.69/pub/gam...

16xAA not very jaggy
http://194.71.11.69/pub/gam...

32xAA amazing
http://194.71.11.69/pub/gam...

Can only Imagine that image with 2xAA or no AA
Also with the GTX 480 it handles AA like it was just a texture

Look at the amazing performance between 8xAA and 32xAA (only 5-7 FPS drop at 1200p and 1600p)
http://www.guru3d.com/artic...

[Hotel_Moscow]

needs more AA

[mittwaffen]

Seriously, I own both and a pc. Don't even defend the consoles you cheap pr!cks.

8XAA + High resolution is as good as this, any higher is just for bragging rights - lol.
PC's and Video cards years ago can still do this, this card isnt even needed today we have way more than what our games need.

[PS360PCROCKS]

32x? Wow...That's about 8 times more than what the xbox 360 is even capable of producing in a perfect world. The PS3 I have no idea about.

[TABSF]

The Xbox 360 and only achieve 2xAA and 4xAA as far as I'm aware

The Playstation 3 rarely has AA in games but on Saboteur they managed to programme the Cell B.E to run 16xAA which is amazing

[Chupa-Chupa]

Uncharted 2 Looks better

[Pandamobile]

Lol

[Avery]

1 up on ATI with x32 AA ability

[fatstarr]

wow those look so .... beautiful. I want this card now.

[Jerk120]

It's better than the Cell.

[RagTagBnd445]

Yeah, but much better than the 360:P

[lh_swe]

Why are you even comparing the two?

I know I am gonna compare one cars turbo-charger with another cars engine, good job genius.

[TABSF]

The performance of this GTX 480 when running 8xAA, 16xAA and even 32xAA is amazing just look 5-7 FPS is the difference between 8xAA and 32xAA on BC2
http://www.guru3d.com/artic...

I'm looking at the GTX 485 later this year hopefully on 28nm manufacturing process and by that time the drivers will be well defined
Its not as bad as everyone has been saying for now

Expected Huge ATi price drop on HD 5970 and/ or big driver improvements for Catalyst 10.4

[Chubbs 76]

I luv these console people. Their retarted consoles are running at most 4 x aa on a card that is way outdated. Their running on 6800 I don't even remember what that card looks like.console is a poor mans way to play games n yea the truth prob hurts so justify how ya want but pcs are 2 mayb 3 gen ahead

[wissam]

To all pc owners.these shots are not impressive.end of story.

[xg-ei8ht]

TABSF

Man, you just proved nothing.

You had to use a zoom to find aliasing in a fast pace action title.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

Your x32 still has jaggies. smaller, but still visible when zooming.

x4aa is enough for me.

But enjoy your zoooooooooooooooom

[RagTagBnd445]

Well, if you play in some of the high resolutions than 720p, then i will assurer you that more AA will do a difference.

[xg-ei8ht]

Actually it depends on what game your running, what type of aa your using.

But as long as i enjoy the game, i can play with or without aa.

Does not bother me anymore.