ATI X800 User Guide - Page 18

15 CHAPTER 5: Glossary Alpha Blending When an image has an alpha value for each pixel, this tells how much to blend the colors from the image with the background colors. The lower the alpha values the more transparent the image looks. Anti-aliasing Method used to remove the jagginess of an image. When anti-aliasing is used, the edges of an image appear smooth and usually somewhat blurry. Anisotropic Filtering This filtering technique uses a rectangular filtering pattern to render smoother, crisper images. Aspect Ratio The proportions of a display expressed as a ratio of width and height. Common ratios include 4:3 for TV and CRTs, 5:4 for LCDs and 16:9 for widescreen displays. Back Buffer A type of offscreen memory used to provide smooth video and 2D graphics acceleration. This technique uses two frame buffers, often referred to as "double-buffering". While one buffer is being displayed, a second buffer of the same size, the "back" buffer, holds the frame being worked on. Once a new frame is ready in the back buffer it is copied to the front buffer - the display screen. In this way, you will only see complete, smooth frames, and not the operations performed on them. In order to increase performance, all memory used for back buffers are on your ATI graphics accelerator card.