To make it easier for me to type and you to read, from this point forward: Full Scene Antialiasing = FSAA and Anisotropic Filtering = AF.
First up is the UT2003 Benchmark, changing the quality settings to 2*FSAA/4*AF removes quite a bit of edges while making the surroundings look sharper.
I think we found the real power of 5900XT right here, when enabling FSAA and AF the performance surely drops, but the average FPS remains quite high and the game remains playable! The Ti4600 is completely crushed; at 1280x1024 any chance of fluent gameplay is thrown out of the window.
This is pushing the limits of any card, even more when we are using a “budget” card, FSAA up to 4* and AF up to 8*.
The 5900XT’s performance is halved, and playing games at this setting is quite impossible as the lower dips in FPS will make you slide of ledges and plummet to your death due to the stut-t-tering. The GF4 makes playing UT2003 at these settings a slide-show: good looking, but nauseating.
The visual difference on the FX 5900XT between vanilla and 2*FSAA / 4*AF can be observed in this screenshot:
Will the results in Q3A remain ridiculously high when we crank up the detail settings?
Both cards give playable FPS, although I didn’t see the 5900XT break a sweat.. at all!
The Ti4600 is out of the game, while the impressive XT is able to keep up with the pace. But don’t go thinking you can run those latest OpenGL games at these settings, although an older game like this will gladly “play along”, running 4*FSAA on this “budget” card is not yet an option.
Visually the difference is less remarkable in this particular scene then with the UT2003 shot, it does give the 'ol Q3A a nice polished look:
With all the testing done, it’s time for a conclusion ->