How many of you Clamp + High Quality?

[ArCElM]

I do not REALLY know what clamp does but I use it anyway along with high quality in the driver options, does anybody else do this? and does anybody know if..

1) its worth it and 2) what kind of performance hit?

am I just kinda wasting my time or..? I am sure I see an improvement using these settings instead of Allow+Quality (the driver defaults)

Cheers.

[rewt]

Clamp prevents negative LOD. It's barely useful.

High Quality disables trilinear optimization. It's also barely useful, and has hardly any effect on image quality.

[Sajittarius]

clamp should theoretically give more performance since you're not letting the game specify a negative LOD (which would make more detail thereby slowing you down)
this would have more of an impact if you specify a negative LOD with nvidia inspector.

The reason you do this is because anisotropic filtering theoretically gives you better textures anyway and combined with a negative LOD you can get shimmering. At least thats what the tooltips in Nhancer used to say if i recall correctly.

Anyone feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

[MfA]

since you cant use negative lod on dx10/11 titles i use clamp, on dx9 slight negative lod it is..

[-Tj-]

Originally Posted by rewt

Clamp prevents negative LOD. It's barely useful.

High Quality disables trilinear optimization. It's also barely useful, and has hardly any effect on image quality.

But fixes "shimmering" in games that use ingame Anisotropic filtering, so its not useless.


IQ - high quality can eliminate distant anomalies (bow-wash effect), also it doesnt have any real performance impact, so why not use it?

[aufkrawall]

Yup, HQ looks better than Q.
It also doesn't cost much performance.

[rewt]

Originally Posted by -Tj-

But fixes "shimmering" in games that use ingame Anisotropic filtering, so its not useless.


IQ - high quality can eliminate distant anomalies (bow-wash effect), also it doesnt have any real performance impact, so why not use it?

There are very few games where either of these settings willl have any noticeable effect on image quality. You're wasting your time, and ours. Working on another ban there TheHunter?

[BetA]

clamp + highest quality... always..
if i use sgssaa i use NO clamp (negative lod) and still very high quality...

[Darren Hodgson]

Originally Posted by rewt

Clamp prevents negative LOD.

It is if you use 16x anisotropic filtering as without clamp you'll see texture shimmering in my experience. Of course, if you prefer artificially oversharpened textures at the expense of some texture shimmering then you don't need to use clamp.

Clamp + High Quality for me, set Globally.

[pimp_gimp]

I always use Clamp and High Quality.

[Sajittarius]

one of the things not being mentioned is that you can clamp and then set negative LOD with inspector.

The LOD near your viewpoint will not go below zero (because its clamped) but the next mipmap out which has an LOD of say 1, will get brought down by whatever negative amount you specify (but wont go below zero)
This has the effect of sharpening textures further away from you. Most games dont need it but some will show an improvement depending on their mipmapping.

[sapo_joe]

Even on my good old GT6800 I use Clamp+High quality. No "optimizations" for me, I like high fidelity graphics!

[Mineria]

Originally Posted by rewt

Clamp prevents negative LOD. It's barely useful.

High Quality disables trilinear optimization. It's also barely useful, and has hardly any effect on image quality.

Preventing negative LOD is a good thing for some games where one experiences shimmering.

Trilinear Optimization does not provide the best texture quality either, it's used to gain performance where you don't need it or want a few more fps.

[spine]

Originally Posted by Sajittarius

one of the things not being mentioned is that you can clamp and then set negative LOD with inspector.

The LOD near your viewpoint will not go below zero (because its clamped) but the next mipmap out which has an LOD of say 1, will get brought down by whatever negative amount you specify (but wont go below zero)
This has the effect of sharpening textures further away from you. Most games dont need it but some will show an improvement depending on their mipmapping.

VERY nice to know, thanks!

I can think of a few games that would benefit from this, Hitman Contracts off the top of my head oddly enough...

[Meocene]

i've always found the best way to improve IQ is to set in-game filtering to trilinear, and force hardware anisotropic filtering via the control panel.
the difference is subtle but clear - hardware filtering trumps software filtering every time.

[Xtreme512]

me too always using clamp + hq since I bought my first nvidia card

[erm]

Some games lose a lot of performance when using clamp and high quality, so I don't use in all games... -.-"

[GabeA]

I've seen the trilinear optimization (the only thing that differs between default Quality and High Quality settings) actually sharpen images. By the way, "sharper" doesn't mean more accurate. As for clamp, it reduces flicker at the expense of detail (LOD bias clamping) -- not worth it at all, since speed also drops. Only turn this on when your game's textures flicker while in motion!

By the way, I have forced anisotropic 16x enabled in the NVIDIA control panel. That's a much more worthy investment of your GPU's resources.

[Veteran]

I use both always.

[GanjaStar]

i set both everytime i install new drivers. their use is marginal unless pixel hunting, but small steps add up to larger improvements.

Originally Posted by erm

Some games lose a lot of performance when using clamp and high quality, so I don't use in all games... -.-"

which games? would be nice to know.

[The General]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-KaV...8&feature=plcp

[gstanford]

I always use HQ, but clamp rarely, usually only with SG:SSAA. It's really a holdover from nv40/g7x days when the texturing units took a lot more shortcuts and optimzations, and is not really necessary for g80 onwards.

[signex]

Originally Posted by rewt

There are very few games where either of these settings willl have any noticeable effect on image quality. You're wasting your time, and ours. Working on another ban there TheHunter?

Why should he get banned for this lol.