AAA Versus TrAA

[ArchAngel777]

I was dissapointed to learn (I should have known this before, but I must have missed it!) that AMD does not support Adaptive AA in DX10 or 11. They only support it in DX9.

On the other hand, nVidia does support this in DX9/10/11. I have been a TrAA junky ever since it has been implemented. I am always using it and always wish reviewers would use it in their tests. If you doubt this, check my post history, I am sure I have posted about TrAA a hundred times over the years. Anyway this is a staple option [for me] which means the 7970 is no longer on my 'to buy' list. Unless someone can convince me that I am mistaken? Am I mistaken?

How do others feel about this? I really hate aliasing in the alpha textures. I don't have a lot of experience with AMD cards except in my laptop, and it performs exceptionally, but because it is a mobile GPU, I don't expect a lot from it. Although the 6770M is an impressive notebook chip and is quite up to the task for most games.

Edit ** I always use [when possible] the Super Sampling 4X TrAA combined with regular MSAA for polygon edges. I found that MS version of TrAA often does not work.

 

[BFG10K]

How do others feel about this?

It sucks, just like it sucks that TrAA doesn't work in OpenGL, while AAA does.

 

[ArchAngel777]

It sucks, just like it sucks that TrAA doesn't work in OpenGL, while AAA does.

I did not know that. How many games recent games use OpenGL now? I think Rage is the only one I can think of, but I don't always follow-up on what engines are use for games. Although, this does give me something to think about....

 

[MrK6]

I think a lot of DX10 and 11 games have the option built in, although I'm sure there are examples where it isn't. I'd like to see DX10 and 11 support from AMD on this, dunno what the hold up is. I'm hoping GCN + unified drivers starts to speed up their development of IQ features.

 

[blackened23]

TrAA / Transparency SS are just cheap forms of AA that are barely noticeable while having small performance hits. I think you've been duped. If you want good AA, you use SSAA or MSAA. TrAA is cheap junk just like FXAA is - it looks okay and has only a small performance penalty. AMD has better AA than nvidia does, and you can use MLAA / SSAA as well via CCC (and SSAA does work in DX11, if I remember right).

SSAA is the best AA and nvidia does not include it in their drivers.

I explained it here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2217309&page=7

It should be mentioned that practically every game with DX11 generally has the AA options built in.

 

[BFG10K]

How many games recent games use OpenGL now?

Not many, but I run a lot of OpenGL source ports and older games. About 33% of my games are OpenGL titles.

 

[ViRGE]

It sucks, just like it sucks that TrAA doesn't work in OpenGL, while AAA does.

TrSSAA works in OpenGL. I use it with Minecraft all the time.

 

[ArchAngel777]

TrAA / Transparency SS are just cheap forms of AA that are barely noticeable while having small performance hits. I think you've been duped. If you want good AA, you use SSAA or MSAA. TrAA is cheap junk just like FXAA is - it looks okay and has only a small performance penalty. AMD has better AA than nvidia does, and you can use MLAA / SSAA as well via CCC (and SSAA does work in DX11, if I remember right).

SSAA is the best AA and nvidia does not include it in their drivers.

I explained it here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2217309&page=7

It should be mentioned that practically every game with built in DX11 generally has the AA options built in. You would have to be nuts to use any sort of override AA in DX11, because override AA has a bigger performance penalty than an ingame AA option.

I don't think you are correct. MSAA+TrAA = SSAA in the quality sense, but has a much more minimal impact on performance than true SSAA.

I think it goes without saying that if I am using TrAA, I am also using MSAA... True SSAA has a massive performance hit, but is superior to MSAA+TrAA.

 

[Grooveriding]

More often than not forcing AA via nvidia's control panel does not work. nvidia's TRMSAA hardly every works, but TRSSAA does work more often. If you are enabling the multi-sampling mode under Transparency AA in the CP, it's not working, if you are using a 2x, 4x, 8x super-sampling under Transparency AA settings that is the one that works at times. AMD's Adaptive AA doesn't work in DX11 but works in DX9 all the time.

Both modes are pretty lackluster. If you want to see the effect really applied properly try using SGSSAA, but you better have some serious hardware if you want to use it in a modern DX11 game. FWIW I can't with my setup, it's just too intensive. It's nice in older source games like Half Life 2 though.

 

[ArchAngel777]

More often than not forcing AA via nvidia's control panel does not work. nvidia's TRMSAA hardly every works, but TRSSAA does work more often. If you are enabling the multi-sampling mode under Transparency AA in the CP, it's not working, if you are using a 2x, 4x, 8x super-sampling under Transparency AA settings that is the one that works at times. AMD's Adaptive AA doesn't work in DX11 but works in DX9 all the time.

Both modes are pretty lackluster. If you want to see the effect really applied properly try using SGSSAA, but you better have some serious hardware if you want to use it in a modern DX11 game. FWIW I can't with my setup, it's just too intensive. It's nice in older source games like Half Life 2 though.

Yeah, I always use Super Sampling TrAA, never Multi-Sampling TrAA. I should have clarified that in my original post.

 

[blackened23]

I don't think you are correct. MSAA+TrAA = SSAA in the quality sense, but has a much more minimal impact on performance than true SSAA.

I think it goes without saying that if I am using TrAA, I am also using MSAA... True SSAA has a massive performance hit!

MsAA + TrAA does not equal SSAA in quality.. Supersampled AA takes the rendered image and scales it internally up to 8x. Lets say you have a 1920x1080 image, it will be rendered internally in excess of 15k x 8k resolution, (so you are effectively running a resolution 8 times greater than what is on screen) and while it is rendered internally the image is aliased, color corrected, and has extra pixels added to correct the image to look much smoother.

Transparency SS only affects polygons with transparent textures. It only affects a very small portion of what you see on screen and as such the quality is substantially worse. I don't see that having TrAA is much of a benefit, because 1) nvidia override options doesn't work in some games and 2) At the end of the day its just another cheap form of AA such as FXAA. I'd just as soon use MLAA or FXAA.

 

[BFG10K]

TrAA / Transparency SS are just cheap forms of AA that are barely noticeable while having small performance hits.

This is untrue – alpha textures benefit tremendously, and the scheme is very cheap unless you run into an area full of thick foliage.

If you want good AA, you use SSAA or MSAA.

MSAA won’t work on alpha textures, and SSAA is too costly in many situations. Also TrAA can stack with nVidia’s combined modes for even better quality.

AMD has better AA than nvidia does, and you can use MLAA / SSAA as well via CCC (and SSAA does work in DX11, if I remember right).

This is untrue - AMD’s AA is far behind nVidia’s. AMD’s SSAA only works in DX9, unlike nVidia whose works DX9/10/11 and OpenGL. nVidia can also force AA into more games than AMD.

It should be mentioned that practically every game with built in DX11 generally has the AA options built in. You would have to be nuts to use any sort of override AA in DX11, because override AA has a bigger performance penalty than an ingame AA option.

TrAA still functions with built-in AA. Also almost no game has built-in support for TrAA/AAA given the schemes are implemented differently with each vendor, though the results are similar.

 

[BFG10K]

TrSSAA works in OpenGL. I use it with Minecraft all the time.

Nope, you're getting SSAA. TrAA does not function in OpenGL.

 

[blackened23]

Nvidia control panel does not have SSAA. TrSS is not SSAA. And you are wrong about nvidia being able to force AA into more games than AMD, see for yourself in nvidia inspector. A great majority of games have "tread override as use application preference". Dead space 1/2 and dead island come to mind. I have owned both sets of hardware and absolutely AMD's ccc works MOST of the time while nvidias override works roughly 65% of the time.

Transparency SS only affects polygons with transparent textures. It doesn't do any of the work that SSAA does, such as rendering internally at an upscaled resolution. SSAA affects the entire scene and is rendered internally by the GPU at a substantially higher resolution....Transparency SS does none of this.

 

[ArchAngel777]

MsAA + TrAA does not equal SSAA in quality.. Supersampled AA takes the rendered image and scales it internally up to 8x. Lets say you have a 1920x1080 image, it will be rendered internally in excess of 15k x 8k resolution, (so you are effectively running a resolution 8 times greater than what is on screen) and while it is rendered internally the image is aliased, color corrected, and has extra pixels added to correct the image to look much smoother.

Transparency SS only affects polygons with transparent textures. It only affects a very small portion of what you see on screen and as such the quality is substantially worse. I don't see that having TrAA is much of a benefit, because 1) nvidia override options doesn't work in some games and 2) At the end of the day its just another cheap form of AA such as FXAA. I'd just as soon use MLAA or FXAA.

I think maybe you are misunderstanding me. My understanding and experience is that MSAA is used to smooth out the polygons. SSTrAA is used to apply super sampling AA to the alpha textures. This should essentially anti-alias the entire scene. Now you can argue as to how it works behind the scenes, but the result should be an anti-aliased scene. This setup is much less costly than using SSAA for the entire scene. While it won't look quite as good, the performance typically doesn't justify the use of full SSAA. IF you have an older game and Tripple SLI 580's maybe...But, I don't.

 

[ViRGE]

TrAA / Transparency SS are just cheap forms of AA that are barely noticeable while having small performance hits. I think you've been duped. If you want good AA, you use SSAA or MSAA. TrAA is cheap junk just like FXAA is - it looks okay and has only a small performance penalty. AMD has better AA than nvidia does, and you can use MLAA / SSAA as well via CCC (and SSAA does work in DX11, if I remember right).

SSAA is the best AA and nvidia does not include it in their drivers.

I explained it here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2217309&page=7

It should be mentioned that practically every game with DX11 generally has the AA options built in.

I'm afraid you're out of the loop, or at the very least don't completely understand what TrAA and AAA do.

TrAA and AAA are true anti-aliasing modes, albeit ones that only work on alpha transparent elements. In this case you can either use multisampling, which effectively forces alpha-to-coverage testing of elements*, or you can use supersampling which is the tried and true taking of multiple color samples for each pixel. This is nothing like FXAA, which is a post-processing filter; TrAA/AAA take place during the rendering process and have full access to the scene geometry and depth information.

Also to note, AMD does not support SSAA on DX10+. Meanwhile NVIDIA does, though it's not exposed in the regular control panel (you need NVIDIA Inspector or NVIDIA's own NVIDIA SSAA tool to enable it).

* Alpha to coverage has one notable difference from true MSAA: it samples the texture and the alpha channel, not the texture behind the alpha channel. As a result it can look a bit dithered without extra coverage samples

 

[blackened23]

I think maybe you are misunderstanding me. My understanding and experience is that MSAA is used to smooth out the polygons. SSTrAA is used to apply super sampling AA to the alpha textures. This should essentially anti-alias the entire scene. Now you can argue as to how it works behind the scenes, but the result should be an anti-aliased scene. This setup is much less costly than using SSAA for the entire scene. While it won't look quite as good, the performance typically doesn't justify the use of full SSAA. IF you have an older game and Tripple SLI 580's maybe...But, I don't.

AMD actually does SSAA very well, the performance hit is there but it works fantastic in many older games. I've since sold my 6970s but, Dead Space 2 is one example of SSAA working very well.

I just feel obligated to point out when someone says, nvidia has better AA than AMD, it is not true. I guess TrAA is nice to have, but it isn't a huge perk in my book because it doesn't do anything that FXAA / MLAA can't do.

 

[ViRGE]

Nope, you're getting SSAA. TrAA does not function in OpenGL.

Actually I'm not getting SSAA (I've tested that theory). If I was getting SSAA, Minecraft wouldn't render correctly. I won't bore you with the details, but due to how the game's textures are packed SSAA makes everything pink because it misinterprets the alpha channel. TrSSAA produces a notably different result, and probably through sheer luck on NVIDIA's part it renders Minecraft correctly because of its different method of handling the alpha channel.

 

[blackened23]

I'm afraid you're out of the loop, or at the very least don't completely understand what TrAA and AAA do.

TrAA and AAA are true anti-aliasing modes, albeit ones that only work on alpha transparent elements. In this case you can either use multisampling, which effectively forces alpha-to-coverage testing of elements*, or you can use supersampling which is the tried and true taking of multiple color samples for each pixel. This is nothing like FXAA, which is a post-processing filter; TrAA/AAA take place during the rendering process and have full access to the scene geometry and depth information.

Also to note, AMD does not support SSAA on DX10+. Meanwhile NVIDIA does, though it's not exposed in the regular control panel (you need NVIDIA Inspector or NVIDIA's own NVIDIA SSAA tool to enable it).

* Alpha to coverage has one notable difference from true MSAA: it samples the texture and the alpha channel, not the texture behind the alpha channel. As a result it can look a bit dithered without extra coverage samples

That was true 2 years ago (regarding SSAA with dx10/dx11). That has since been rectified, it does work with CCC version 12+.

Furthermore, I don't consider nvidia inspector a proper means for enabling SSAA. First of all, override settings via nvidia inspector do not work a great deal of the time. Secondly, most end users have no clue what nvidia inspector is nor should they. They just want to enable SSAA and thats that, and that is what CCC allows an end user to do.

 

[BFG10K]

Nvidia control panel does not have SSAA. TrSS is not SSAA. End of thread, please read up on AA.

Heh, thanks for letting me know.

And you are ABSOLUTELY wrong about nvidia being able to force AA into more games than AMD, see for yourself in nvidia inspector.

You're mistaken. I can have TrAA in DX10/DX11 and SSAA in OGL/DX10/DX11 with nVidia. I can't on AMD.

Also in general, out of the ~120 games I have installed right now, and I can get AA into more of them with nVidia than I can with AMD. I’m talking about real AA here, not post-filters like MLAA or FXAA.

Take any game without built-in AA; nVidia’s more likely to be able to force AA into it than AMD.

Take any game with built-in AA; nVidia’s more likely to be able to force enhancements on top of it than AMD.

These two are objectively proven facts.

A great majority of games have "tread override as use application preference". Dead space 1/2 and dead island come to mind.

The stock control panel settings often don’t mean much at all.

I don't expect you to see this objectively because you've only owned nvidia hardware.

I used to write articles for a hardware website and I often discovered things that nobody else had.

This included in-depth IQ comparisons with both vendors. I’ve also been running forms of super-sampling for over a decade on multiple vendors, including the very first implementations in consumer space.

So I’m quite educated on this topic, thank you very much.

 

[blackened23]

You're mistaken. I can have TrAA in DX10/DX11 and SSAA in OGL/DX10/DX11 with nVidia. I can't on AMD.

This is not correct. You're googling something from 2 years ago. SSAA does now work in DX10/DX11.

Furthermore, the fact remains that nvidia does not have SSAA in the driver. You can only "try" to enable it in nvidia inspector and that doesn't work most of the time. Please prove me wrong on that one, I have 200+ games on steam and I have tried all sorts of combinations with both sets of hardware. Nvidia override doesn't work a GREAT DEAL of the time. Christ, you can plainly see it in the games list in nvidia inspector ---- most of them don't have AA compatibility bits and that means any type of override does nothing -- also a great number of them have "treat override as application preference" flagged. AMD absolutely has more reliable override than nvidia does, end of.

Do you consider SSAA via nvidia inspector a proper means of enabling SSAA? (when it works, which is probably 20% of the time). Do you think more than 1% of enthusiasts even have nvidia inspector?

 

[ViRGE]

That was true 2 years ago, SSAA not working in DX10/DX11. That is no longer the case. It does work in DX10/DX11. It definitely does work with CCC version 12.

I assume when you say "it", you mean DX10+ SSAA on AMD cards? AnandTech's 7970 review disagrees with you; they even have a quote from AMD explaining why AMD doesn't support it.

Basically the fact that most new game engines are moving to deferred rendering schemes (which are not directly compatible with hardware MSAA) has meant that a lot of attention is now being focused on shader-based AA techniques, like MLAA, FXAA, and many others. These techniques still tend to lag MSAA in terms of quality, but they can run very fast on modern hardware, and are improving continuously through rapid iteration. We are continuing work in this area ourselves, and we should have some exciting developments to talk about in the near future. But for now I would just say that there is a lot more we can still do to improve AA quality and performance using the hardware we already have.

Regarding AAA & SSAA, forcing these modes on in a general way for DX10+ games is problematic from a compatibility standpoint due to new API features that were not present in DX9. The preferred solution would be to have games implement these features natively, and we are currently investigating some new ways to encourage this going forward.

Furthermore, I don't consider nvidia inspector a proper means for enabling SSAA. First of all, override settings via nvidia inspector do not work a great deal of the time. Secondly, most end users have no clue what nvidia inspector is nor should they. They just want to enable SSAA and thats that, and that is what CCC allows an end user to do.

I don't have any problem with NVIDIA Inspector's overrides not working, but I do agree that AMD is doing a better job of exposing their SSAA mode. NVIDIA shouldn't keep it hidden like they do now.

 

[blackened23]

citation:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/anti-aliasing-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon,2868-7.html

Tomshardware found the same results. Nvidia override works less frequently than AMD's.

I will also have to check on SSAA in dx11. I was under the impression that it was working with CCC 12+, will double check. Of course, its unrealistic to use SSAA in dx11 in combination with tessellation and such...such a performance hit would murder framerates.

 

[BFG10K]

Actually I'm not getting SSAA (I've tested that theory). If I was getting SSAA, Minecraft wouldn't render correctly. I won't bore you with the details, but due to how the game's textures are packed SSAA makes everything pink because it misinterprets the alpha channel. TrSSAA produces a notably different result, and probably through sheer luck on NVIDIA's part it renders Minecraft correctly because of its different method of handling the alpha channel.

Please, show me these details because that makes no sense. SSAA is transparent to the application; it simply shifts the pixel centre when rendering and then combines the values. There’s absolutely no reason why it should misinterpret the alpha channel.

I’ve tried TrAA in ~45 OpenGL games, and in every case I’m getting SSAA.

 

[ViRGE]

I don't think you are correct. MSAA+TrAA = SSAA in the quality sense, but has a much more minimal impact on performance than true SSAA.

I think it goes without saying that if I am using TrAA, I am also using MSAA... True SSAA has a massive performance hit, but is superior to MSAA+TrAA.

Eh, MSAA + TrSSAA doesn't really match true SSAA. With MSAA + TrSSAA you're anti-aliasing polygon edges and alpha textures, however you're not anti-aliasing shaders. The high cost of true SSAA means this is usually a worthwhile tradeoff, but there's an obvious quality difference, particularly in games that have heavy shader aliasing due to specular lighting.