PS3 smoothing beyond that of high-end PC graphics card

[Twistedpixel]

raygun said:

Twistedpixel said:

Netyaroze said:
^Yes ofcourse. But as far as I understood it this has nothing to do with which hardware has more power. But that the CPU from the PS3 can make AA and PC Cpus cant do that or just not so good. Which is not surprising because the Cell is not a classical CPU its a mix.


But ofcourse a highend GPU would crush the PS3 is anyone doubting that ?

A PC CPU or GPU could do this form of AA. But they have other more efficient methods to do it, so why would they bother? Pandemic would not have explored this method if the PS3s GPU was adept at AA.

Well, if you read the article, you would see that the results were BETTER than what they could get with a high end PC video card, with NO PERFORMANCE PENALTY. Again, read the article, I didn't write it, Digital Foundry wrote it.

I read the article and no the performance is not better and the improvement in image quality was not better because this is a form of AA which introduces artifacts at the same time as it removes aliasing artifacts. If you want perfect AA check this out:

http://mlab.taik.fi/~kkallio/antialiasing/images.html

http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs248-03/scan/scan2.html

Analytical anti-aliasing.

Or you could go coverage sample + transparency multisampling AA

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/27892-nvidia-s-geforce-gf100-under-microscope-10.html

Oh and in computing a free lunch is an exceptionally rare thing. There are generally trade-offs to be made and negative consequences to be minimised.

A modern graphics card has fixed function hardware dedicated to AA. On a per transistor basis or per watt basis, this is far more efficient than this form of AA.