Msaa, csaa, fxaa, smaa, sg-ssaa? Wtf!

[gpvecchi]

Sorry, but I now don't understand anything (again)...
Which one is the best AA for quality and how to apply it (or them)?
I now use CSAA 32x (via control panel)
FXAA enabled (via control panel)
SG_SSAA 8x (via nVidia inject tool)

[Mineria]

Fsaa :d

[Noisiv]

Which one is the best AA

Depends on the game, but generally stay away from 32xCSAA.
If you have that much GPU grunt, use something better.


Read this

[eddman]

Originally Posted by gpvecchi

Sorry, but I now don't understand anything (again)...
Which one is the best AA for quality and how to apply it (or them)?
I now use CSAA 32x (via control panel)
FXAA enabled (via control panel)
SG_SSAA 8x (via nVidia inject tool)

Why do you want to complicate things? Set it at 8x (non-CSAA), also try 16x; enable transparency AA in supported games (multisample or supersample, whichever one you think is good enough), be a happy gamer.

[Pill Monster]

SG SSTrAA for IQ, FXAA is good on straight edges.


Nvidia Inspector is awesome, I really miss that proggy

[thatguy91]

16x anistropy should be required default, both for drivers and for games, at least with 'high' and 'ultra' settings etc, seeing as it has minimal impact on performance.

I should point out I know the question was about antialiasing not anistropy, its just an observation

A thread with a few posts just about different antialiasing settings and quality vs performance hit, for both Nvidia and AMD, thats stickied and locked (with a link to a thread for discussion) would be brilliant, as long as its updated as required. Existing threads about antialiasing become dated, so if a thread were made updating it is important.

[Lavans]

The AA settings you're going to apply for the "best" image quality will vary from game to game. It's really nothing more than trial and error based off of what works best with the engine, and what meets your preferences in image quality.

Personally, I prefer 8xSQ + 2xSGSSAA + FXAA, but in some games it blurs the image, and in others the performance impact is too high. In those cases, I change the settings to 4x/8xAA + MSAA/4xSSAA + FXAA. In games like BFBC2, I use 32xCSAA + FXAA. Sometimes I don't even use FXAA.

The best thing for you to do is try tinkering around with different settings to see what you prefer.

[Infanticide]

Originally Posted by gpvecchi

Sorry, but I now don't understand anything (again)...
Which one is the best AA for quality and how to apply it (or them)?
I now use CSAA 32x (via control panel)
FXAA enabled (via control panel)
SG_SSAA 8x (via nVidia inject tool)

Nothing has changed regarding best quality AA - its still supersampling (SSAA); to use it you need Inspector and probably proper compatibility bits for your game.
MSAA - multisampling is standard aa that actually works, has good performance but doesnt eliminate all jaggies.
CSAA - dont know; its something from nvidia that doesnt work or works best when used with "enhance application settings" ?
FXAA & SMAA are AA methods developed for use on consoles and cheap PCs; it's shader based - something about detecting edges and smoothing them - the result is a lot of blur (more in FXAA case); performance hit almost not existent.
SGSSAA - less performance hit than SSAA, but some blurring;

That is what I know

[evil_religion]

Originally Posted by Infanticide

SGSSAA - less performance hit than SSAA, but some blurring;

SGSSAA is still SSAA and it doesn't have to be blurry.
If it works without blur (often you just have to disable some PP effects like motion blur etc.) and you get high enough FPS, there's no technical reason against it.
4x makes everything well smoothed: Edges, alphatextures, shaders and textures.
No other AA can mess with it.

[Lavans]

Originally Posted by evil_religion

SGSSAA is still SSAA and it doesn't have to be blurry.
If it works without blur (often you just have to disable some PP effects like motion blur etc.) and you get high enough FPS, there's no technical reason against it.
4x makes everything well smoothed: Edges, alphatextures, shaders and textures.
No other AA can mess with it.

Doesn't SGSSAA only affect textures and/or transparent textures?

[evil_religion]

Originally Posted by Lavans

Doesn't SGSSAA only affect textures and/or transparent textures?

That's TSSAA.
TSSAA is SGSSAA but just for alphatextures.

It's not a solid defined term, but SGSSAA usually means SGSSAA for the full scene (everything).

[Meocene]

yeah, real helpful guys...

you don't need to enable all of them at the same time, and doing so will more than likely kill your frame rate.

imo, if there's in game AA options available use them and don't force anything. end of the day what's available is what the devs will have optimized for.
if no in game options are available then try forcing but make sure you do so using the games specific profile, not the global profile.

some people love to mess around with this stuff, and that's cool. personally I'd say that while a game's in motion you'll be hard pressed to see any real difference between anything above 4x msaa with regards to polygonal AA, and forcing some additional transparency anti aliasing via the games profile will clean up any textures featuring transparency (grass, leaves, etc) but performance can take quite a hit depending upon the extent to which a game makes use of textures featuring transparency.

fxaa and smaa are not cheap forms of anti aliasing for consoles. in some (not emediately obvious) ways they're actually superior, smaa in-particular.
for example both of them apply AA to the entire scene - polygons, shaders, transparencies and all (much like super sampling) and not just polygonal edges (msaa).

[evil_religion]

Originally Posted by Meocene

in some (not emediately obvious) ways they're actually superior, smaa in-particular.
for example both of them apply AA to the entire scene - polygons, shaders, transparencies and all (much like super sampling) and not just polygonal edges (msaa).

SMAA inject doesn't apply to shaders and textures (at least there is no visible difference) and FXAA just blurs shaders and textures.
Not compareable with SSAA.

[Meocene]

Originally Posted by evil_religion

SMAA inject doesn't apply to shaders and textures (at least there is no visible difference) and FXAA just blurs shaders and textures.
Not compareable with SSAA.

that simple isn't true.

FXAA Coding Horror

FXAA NV whitepaper

SMAA Devs

the problem with the inject methods is that they don't actually make full use of either the fxaa or smaa algorithms because they're being injected instead of fully integrated into the renderers post processing.

[dr_rus]

Originally Posted by gpvecchi

Sorry, but I now don't understand anything (again)...
Which one is the best AA for quality and how to apply it (or them)?
I now use CSAA 32x (via control panel)
FXAA enabled (via control panel)
SG_SSAA 8x (via nVidia inject tool)

CSAA is an extension of MSAA: 2x < 4x < 8x CSAA < 16x CSAA < 8x < 16xQ CSAA < 32x CSAA

FXAA is a post processing filter AA, it is generally worse than any MSAA/CSAA mode for edges and better than them for textures. You can mix FXAA with MSAA/CSAA. FXAA is the least demanding mode (when used without MSAA/CSAA).

SGSSAA is a supersampling mode which works not only on polygon edges but on textures too. 8x SGSSAA should be on par with 8x MSAA for edge AA. You can combine it with FXAA although there is no point in doint this. This is the most demanding mode.

[Noisiv]

From what I've seen:

1) Driver (301.10) FXAA (v1+v3 combination) does not blur at all.

2) It's a bit less effective then SMAA, but it's faster.

You can't take screenshot of it, so I'd like to hear from others on this (please - non blindos only)

[gpvecchi]

Originally Posted by dr_rus

CSAA is an extension of MSAA: 2x < 4x < 8x CSAA < 16x CSAA < 8x < 16xQ CSAA < 32x CSAA

FXAA is a post processing filter AA, it is generally worse than any MSAA/CSAA mode for edges and better than them for textures. You can mix FXAA with MSAA/CSAA. FXAA is the least demanding mode (when used without MSAA/CSAA).

SGSSAA is a supersampling mode which works not only on polygon edges but on textures too. 8x SGSSAA should be on par with 8x MSAA for edge AA. You can combine it with FXAA although there is no point in doint this. This is the most demanding mode.

That's what I needed! It's a bit complicated, but explanation is very clear. So, my settings are the most demanding, but the best for quality (even too much as I would not need FXAA together with SGSSAA). Right?

[evil_religion]

Originally Posted by Meocene

that simple isn't true.

FXAA Coding Horror

FXAA NV whitepaper

SMAA Devs

the problem with the inject methods is that they don't actually make full use of either the fxaa or smaa algorithms because they're being injected instead of fully integrated into the renderers post processing.

What I said is true because I explicitly wrote "inject".
Is there any game with its own SMAA integration?
I don't think so.
Please show me a video that demonstrates how FXAA smoothes a shader when there's scene movement.

Originally Posted by dr_rus

SGSSAA is a supersampling mode which works not only on polygon edges but on textures too. 8x SGSSAA should be on par with 8x MSAA for edge AA.

Nope, it's better.
Just compare 4xMSAA with 4xSGSSAA, polygon edges with SGSSAA are processed better.

[DarkTerror]

FSAA if the application supports eg:skyrim,Rage. Or MSAA. Shoot FXAA or MLAA at its face coz its the worst form a AA.

[Lavans]

Originally Posted by evil_religion

That's TSSAA.
TSSAA is SGSSAA but just for alphatextures.

It's not a solid defined term, but SGSSAA usually means SGSSAA for the full scene (everything).

Hm, I really dont notice much difference in IQ or performance when enabling SGSSAA. Perhaps the release driver for the GTX680 is buggy?

[evil_religion]

It should work.
The result depends much on the game. When there are many shader effects or noisy textures there is a huge gain (especially when there's movement), e.g. with Crysis Warhead or Mirror's Edge:
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...57#post9230357
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...89#post9225589

Don't forget to adjust the LOD.

[dr_rus]

Originally Posted by evil_religion

Nope, it's better.
Just compare 4xMSAA with 4xSGSSAA, polygon edges with SGSSAA are processed better.

Not really although I suppose there may be some HDR-related cases where that would be true. Generally 4x SGMSAA = 4x SGSSAA for polygon edges.

[milamber]

I just enabled 2xSGSSAA with 8xQ MSAA on LA Noire. Huge difference in IQ. (Drop of 5-10 fps, even more with 4xSGSSAA). Looks great but obviously 4xMSAA+SMAA is going to give me better performance but it will be a little blurrier (I use it for Skyrim).

[nikavelli]

How do I enable SGSSAA with nvidia inspector? All I see is 1x2 SSAA, 2x1, etc. I'm playing source engine games.

[milamber]

Under "Antialiasing - Transparancy Supersampling" you should have options for 2x, 4x & 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling.