Max Payne 3 - Winter 2009 ZOMG!

Yeah, I have to agree with you.

I too recently updated to driver version 301.42 and they have done wonders for all games, seem stable & have not given me any problems.

Performance is great so I've nothing to complain about...

 

I noticed jaggies with my settings, I'll have to turn msaa off and see if just fxaa helps smoothen things out.

I want to say though, this game is really fun and frickin beautiful. The unavoidable movies can get annoying at times, but honestly I'm so into the game that most of them don't bother me.

Great game, especially for $29.99 via the steam sale last week.

 

Same, I'm on the Forceware 301.42 which is a great & stable driver, excellent performance in gaming.

By the way, what's your average fps in Max Payne 3 when fully maxed?

I'm getting an average of 100fps and a maximum of around 130...

 

from what I've read that's a bug in the game and not the true fps.

 

Strange...

So are the fps likely to be higher or lower than what the reading says?

Don't say lower.

 

Lower, sorry =( .

From what I've read the latest fraps records the right fps I believe. I'm using evga precision and it gives 300fps in most scenes. It's much lower. Even with vsyc on my fps are 180 which is way too high. It's a bug in the engine. Read about all this last night on the steam forums.

 

Hmm, so how would one know his true fps in Max Payne 3? Any other software or alternative way of reading the correct frames per second?

Not that I care too much anyway as it's 100% silky butter smooth throughout...

Would be nice to know my exact frame rate though...

With regards to Battlefield 3 I get an average of 110fps (Fully Maxed @1920x1080) and a maximum af about 155...

I'm unsure if Battlefield 3 or Max Payne 3 is more demanding graphically...

I would say similar but Max Payne 3 would be slightly more demanding.

 

Not sure what my fps is, but like you its silky smooth throughout. Do you get the white lines also or?

 

Not yet, thankfully no!

If I did get white lines I'd be straight on forums seeing if others had the same issue & for a possible fix if any...

 

The white lines around dead enemies and along wall edges are only really noticeable if you switch from FXAA only to MSAA/MSAA+FXAA and look for them otherwise they're easy to miss in the middle of all the action.

 

Hmmm, I will play Max Payne 3 later on this evening & will keep my eyes pealed for any white lines...

Do the white lines occur for everyone or for certain setups?

 

I have no idea except that it only occurs with MSAA and that Rockstar specifically mentioned they'd fixed the issue in the v1.0.0.28 patch. I'm pretty sure they had too but it's baaaaaaaaak in the v1.0.0.29 patch using the same drivers (so it doesn't seem likely to be a driver issue).

The easiest and quickest way to check for these white lines is to play the first level of the Arcade mode as they appear around the first few enemies you shoot and along the edges of the wall on the left hand side on my setup. If I disable MSAA then the white lines disappear (and the anti-aliasing improves!!!).

 

Nice tweak guide for the game here: http://www.geforce.co.uk/optimise/guides/max-payne-3-tweak-guide/#1

Didn't know about the -availablevidmem commandline for example.

 

Wow, just look how good the game looks with 4xMSAA set in-game and 4xSGSSAA forced through the driver:

http://www.geforce.co.uk/Active/en_...payne-3-tweak-guide/12_3_MSAA_4x+4xSGSSAA.png

Didn't know that you had to use the same level of sampling for both MSAA and SGSSAA either, e.g. 2xMSAA+2xSGSSAA, 4xMSAA+4xSGSSAA.

All the commandlines supported by this game:

-adapter - Force specific DirectX adapter starting from 0.
-aspectratio - Force aspect ratio [width:height].
-availablevidmem - Force Video RAM limit to the amount specified (MB).
-cpucount - Force CPU count if query is not successful.
-d3dmt - Force multi-threaded DirectX runtime.
-dx10 - Force DirectX 10 if available.
-dx10_1 - Force DirectX 10.1 if available.
-dx11 - Force DirectX 11 if available.
-dx9 - Force DirectX 9.
-frameLimit - Force VSync [0, 1, 2]
-fullscreen - Force Fullscreen mode.
-fxaa - Force FXAA quality [0..3].
-gpucount - Force GPU count if query is not successful.
-height - Force vertical resolution.
-language english - Force English language.
-language french - Force French language.
-language italian - Force Italian language.
-language german - Force German language.
-language spanish - Force Spanish language.
-language russian - Force Russian language.
-language portuguese - Force Portugese language.
-language polish - Force Polish language.
-MSAA - Force MSAA [0..5].
-MSAAQuality - Force MSAA quality level.
-nomouseaccel - Disable mouse acceleration.
-outputMonitor - Force specific monitor starting from 0.
-reflectionquality - Force reflection quality [0..3].
-refreshrate - Force refresh rate.
-safemode - Force game to load with safest settings.
-shadowquality - Force shadow quality [0..3].
-ssao - Force SSAO [0..1].
-stereo - Force 3D stereo support [0..1] (1 is on)
-tessellation - Force tessellation quality [0..3].
-texturefilterquality - Force the Anisotropic texture filter quality [0..4].
-texturequality - Force the texture quality [0..2].
-useHighQualityShaders - Force usage of high quality shaders [0..1].
-waterquality - Force water quality [0..2].
-width - Force horizontal resolution
-windowed - Force windowed mode.

The MSAA ones are interesting... didn't know there was a quality setting...

 

They're in the readme file I believe, mouseaccel one is new but was mentioned in the patch notes where it was added.

EDIT: Yeah section 8 of the readme.txt file. (I think it's been mentioned before though.)

Spoiler

_____________________________

8) COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS
_____________________________

commandline parameters can be added to the "commandline.txt" file in the root of the game folder.

-adapter Force specific DirectX adapter starting from 0.
-cpucount Force cpu count if query is not successful.
-d3dmt Force multi-threaded DirectX runtime.
-dx10 Force DirectX 10 if available.
-dx10_1 Force DirectX 10.1 if available.
-dx11 Force DirectX 11 if available.
-dx9 Force DirectX 9.
-frameLimit Force VSYNC [0, 1, 2]; (0 equals Vsync Off)
-fullscreen Force fullscreen mode.
-fxaa Force FXAA quality [0..3].
-gpucount Force gpu count if query is not successful.
-height Force vertical resolution.
-language english Force English language.
-language french Force French language.
-language italian Force Italian language.
-language german Force German language.
-language spanish Force Spanish language.
-language russian Force Russian language.
-language portuguese Force Portugese language.
-language polish Force Polish language.
-MSAA Force MSAA [0..5].
-MSAAQuality Force MSAA quality level.
-outputMonitor Force specific monitor starting from 0.
-reflectionquality Force reflection quality [0..3].
-refreshrate Force refresh rate.
-safemode Force game to load with safest settings.
-shadowquality Force shadow quality [0..3].
-ssao Force SSAO [0..1].
-stereo Force 3D stereo support [0..1] (1 is on)
-tessellation Force tessellation quality [0..3].
-texturefilterquality Force the Anisotropic texture filter quality [0..4].
-texturequality Force the texture quality [0..2].
-useHighQualityShaders Force usage of high quality shaders [0..1].
-waterquality Force water quality [0..2].
-width Force horizontal resolution
-windowed Force windowed mode.

 

So I don't know much about msaa, but it looks like it adds a layer of visual quality to everything. When I have just fxaa things looks more washed out, as do they with no fxaa, but once I enabled msaa things are much more vibrant and details are more noticeable. Placebo effect or is this setting known for better iq?

 

FXAA and such shader based methods introduces a bit more blur due to how they work than what MSAA does, MSAA does also add some blur but it's not over the entire image or how to describe it best.
(I guess SSAA would be the only thing that doesn't since it scales the original image and such, FSAA possibly as well depending on implementation perhaps.)

 

I tried the 4xSGSSAA setting using the Enhance option in the profile with an LOD offset of -1.0 and left the ingame settings at 4xMSAA + FXAA=Very High. Sure enough, the game looks phenomenal and there are no jaggies at all! Very pleased about that. SGSSAA makes my cards sweat though with the top card hitting 80 C (normally I don't see them go above 70 C except for a few games which peak out at 75 C) and the bottom one oddly 7-9 C cooler for some reason. Still the game looks awesome now and still runs at around 60 fps (seems to hover between 56 and 60 fps). I'm going to see if 2xSGSSAA is enough though.

 

Your right. After trying the first stage of the Arcade I noticed very faint white lines around dead enemies that are far away and even some around Max Payne.

However, when moving close to the dead enemies the white lines seem to dissapear...

Max Payne 3 too makes both gpu's sweat, especially the top one.

However, I'm able to keep temps at around 74 thanks to this:

 

Forced 2xSGSSAA does a great job of actually fixing the broken (4x)MSAA when used with FXAA and it around 5 C cooler while allowing the game to run at 60 fps except for very brief dips down to 45 fps during a few (but not all) of the non-interactive cutscenes. I'm actually surprised that SGSSAA works this way and with DX11 as I thought it was DX9 only.