Now that we've covered the theory, we'll look at how the various cards perform in their various antialiasing modes. For the sake of simplicity, we've omitted a few less useful AA modes, like the 3X, 5X, and 6X modes on the Radeon 8500, which are simply too slow and cumbersome to matter, and the 4xS and Quincunx modes on the GeForce4 Ti. 4xS mode is only available in Direct3D, and Quincunx is simply 2X AA plus a blurring filter; it sacrifices too much texture quality and overall sharpness to be worthwhile.

The Radeon 9700 Pro's antialiasing performance is very impressive. The 9700 has the best combination of edge antialiasing quality, compatibility, and performance of any consumer graphics chip.