Page 3: Card Features
<b>Features</b>:<br>
The features of this card are absolutely great. This card has excellent DVD quality, and my CPU usage didn't go higher than 20% while viewing a DVD movie. The image quality is the best BAR NONE! No card that I have seen can match a quality of an ATI card. The nVidia cards may be faster, but I do like the image quality. I also tested Smoothvision, ATI's version of Anti-Aliasing, on the card, I tested it at 2x and 4x in my favorite game, Tribes 2. I did take some pics at 4x. But I didn't care too much for FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) at all. I did notice when I turned on the FSAA that the game exhibited some text problems. Let's look at some pics...<br><br>
<center>Non FSAA Pics<br><img src="/images/r8500/nofsaa.jpg"> <img src="/images/r8500/nofsaa2.jpg"><br><br>FSAA 4x<br><img src="/images/r8500/4x.jpg"> <img src="/images/r8500/4x2.jpg"><br><br> But! Look at the text that 4x produces<br><img src="/images/r8500/4xtext.jpg"><br>I included a shot of 2x.<br><img src="/images/r8500/mount2x.jpg"><br><br> FSAA works by blending the sharp edges with the surrounding. I think it looks good at 4x, but it does take a performance hit and I usually never look at stuff for more than a second anyway... The text also exhibits softing as well. I don't know if that is supposed to happen, but it does and I don't like that. I tried to get better shots, but I couldn't find any. Anyway, let's move on to the benchmarks.</center>