Benchmark Results: Nvidia Graphics Cards, Post-Process And MSAA
Enabling anti-aliasing can either have a negligible or significant impact, depending on setting you manipulate.
Cranking the Anti-Aliasing Post (FXAA) filter all the way up to High does very little to performance, though it also affects image quality in a different way than MSAA. Because the penalty it exacts is so minor, though, keep Anti-Aliasing Post turned on all of the time.
Be more conservative with the Anti-Aliasing Deferred option, turning it on and up only when you have the performance headroom to spare, ensuring you can maintain playable frame rates. In the limited examples given here, you’d be better off playing at a native 1920x1080 on a GeForce GTX 480 than turning on 4x MSAA at 1680x1050. The GeForce GTX 590 is really the only board where you’d want to consider MSAA all the way up to 2560x1600.
