AA questions...

[railven]

I swear there was a sticky at one point about this, and for the life of me I can't find it via search.

So I finally got my HD 7970 and while tinkering with the AA (and custom profiles, kudos AMD for finally copying this feature from nVidia.)

Call me out dated, but WTF is Enhanced AA? (EQ)?

So, because I just got the card and basically haven't had much time to start testing it, I just loaded up WoW.

All settings on Ultra @ 1080p, with 8xMSAA on - beautiful. 60FPS, and I can even three box without issue (before on my HD 5870 I'd have to crank down to 1xAA via in-game option.)

So, I start testing stuff. I put it on SSAA and like usual, game stutters, but I expected that, suprisingly I'm in the 40FPS range, before I'd be crawling in the 20FPS range. Not worth the lag since 8xMSAA looks just as good.

But then I see the enhance AA and have no idea WTF that is and the help menus did very little to educate me.

12xEQ is the equivalent to what? Performance wise, I could feel an impact, but IQ wise - looked relatively the same.

I was enjoying 8xAAA+MSAA and would dip to the 40FPS in heavy AoE scenes where it seemed it was applying AAA to everything and it's mother.


tl;dr

What is Enhanced AA and how can I make the most of it? Thanks.

 

[JAG87]

EQAA is MSAA with more coverage samples but without additional color samples. This gives more image quality than the base MSAA, but much less performance hit. So for example, 12x EQAA looks similar to 24x MSAA because it uses 12 additional coverage samples. In truth, it's not quite as good as 24x MSAA, but it's almost as good with much less performance hit of 24x MSAA.

The reason why it looks the same to you is because there really is no telling above 8xMSAA... Hell, I can't really notice anything above 4xMSAA unless I put my face 3 inches from the screen.

 

[railven]

EQAA is MSAA with more coverage samples but without additional color samples. This gives more image quality than the base MSAA, but much less performance hit. So for example, 12x EQAA looks similar to 24x MSAA because it uses 12 additional coverage samples. In truth, it's not quite as good as 24x MSAA, but it's almost as good with much less performance hit of 24x MSAA.

The reason why it looks the same to you is because there really is no telling above 8xMSAA... Hell, I can't really notice anything above 4xMSAA unless I put my face 3 inches from the screen.

Ah so more of that "poor man's" AA stuff, such as MLAA.

I agree, living off 4xMSAA for years (due to hardware bottlenecks) I learned to live with it, but flipping 8x on WoW just because I could, I think I made myself think it looked better. Haha.

I'll be looking at SW:TOR tonight, since that game is a jagged mess. I might have to go SSAA with that one (actually was doing 2xSSAA on the 5870, big difference in IQ, but huge performance hit - woof, hopefully the 7970 can handle it.)

Thanks for the info.

 

[mojothehut]

Ah so more of that "poor man's" AA stuff, such as MLAA.

I agree, living off 4xMSAA for years (due to hardware bottlenecks) I learned to live with it, but flipping 8x on WoW just because I could, I think I made myself think it looked better. Haha.

I'll be looking at SW:TOR tonight, since that game is a jagged mess. I might have to go SSAA with that one (actually was doing 2xSSAA on the 5870, big difference in IQ, but huge performance hit - woof, hopefully the 7970 can handle it.)

Thanks for the info.

I'm running SWTOR on a 7950 (950/1250) with SSAA. After trying all three levels of AA (at 4x) I say that SSAA makes the most noticeable difference. SSAA almost totally removes the jaggies, its impressive. I haven't taken any frame rate hit switching from the MSAA to the higher two. I will say that SSAA runs my gpu warmer, about 5-10C warmer.

 

[d3fu5i0n]

Railven, it's essentially what JAG87 said (with the technical description); in short though, it's more-or-less the equivelant of nVidia's CSAA.

 

[railven]

I'm running SWTOR on a 7950 (950/1250) with SSAA. After trying all three levels of AA (at 4x) I say that SSAA makes the most noticeable difference. SSAA almost totally removes the jaggies, its impressive. I haven't taken any frame rate hit switching from the MSAA to the higher two. I will say that SSAA runs my gpu warmer, about 5-10C warmer.

That's good to hear. Previously, I'd run 2xSSAA on my HD 5870 and drop into the 30-40FPS range in certain areas. I'm sure my HD 7970 shouldn't have any issues with SW:TOR though

Railven, it's essentially what JAG87 said (with the technical description); in short though, it's more-or-less the equivelant of nVidia's CSAA.

All the different AA names from the two vendors - it's like "really?" haha.

 

[JAG87]

All the different AA names from the two vendors - it's like "really?" haha.

It's true, I wish AMD would stop with the silly names.

I mean CSAA makes sense, "Coverage Sampling AA. WTF does Enhanced Quality AA mean... Same with Transparency AA and Adaptive AA. As the average consumer, if I want to address aliasing on transparent textures, I can figure out to enable Transparency AA. Wtf does Adaptive AA mean? And again, same with FXAA vs. MLAA. As the average consumer, if I read Fast Approximate AA, I can get an idea that it's fast but it's approximate (which means it's not as good). When I read Morphological AA...

 

[railven]

It's true, I wish AMD would stop with the silly names.

I mean CSAA makes sense, "Coverage Sampling AA. WTF does Enhanced Quality AA mean... Same with Transparency AA and Adaptive AA. As the average consumer, if I want to address aliasing on transparent textures, I can figure out to enable Transparency AA. Wtf does Adaptive AA mean? And again, same with FXAA vs. MLAA. As the average consumer, if I read Fast Approximate AA, I can get an idea that it's fast but it's approximate (which means it's not as good). When I read Morphological AA...

All I know in the world of marketing, first one to name it owns it, and everyone else has to make their own or pay a royalty.

/shrugs