So I experimented with the FSAA feature of the ATI perferences pane to study the effects on the GA application running at 1024x768 on a millions of color display.
At 1024x768 resolution with 3 bytes per pixel is about 3 meg of VRAM just for the frame buffer that holds the final image for display.
Now my ATI 9600 Pro is dual headed so the 64Meg VRAM is allocated evenly across two monitors. I monitor the VRAM usage while running the GA application and almost locked up my machine going to 6x anti-alliasing. Even at 4x I could not get a stable VRAM indicaton.
If I understand how this works, 2x FSAA means each pixel is evaluated across a 2x2=4 bit sample, so it takes 4 times as much VRAM? That would eat up 12 meg of VRAM in my case.
So 4x FSAA menas 4x4=16 times as much VRAM and 6x FSAA means 6x6=36 times as much VRAM. If this is true, no wonder my system almost locked up at 6x FSAA! There's not enough VRAM to support that!
So now I realize that FSAA on GA is a practical option only for those with one monitor and LOTS of VRAM, like 128Meg or 258Meg.
Who knew?
