Alternative anti-aliasing makes performance worse?

[KeeperFiM]

So I have a pretty low spec computer but I wanted to still be able to use anti aliasing in my games. So I gave these programs called "FXAA Injector" and "injectSMAA" a try. While both looked very nice, they both cause performance to be worse than in game AA options, the opposite of what they are supposed to do! Anyone care to explain?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Seems like programs like that would only be "potentially" useful for older games and games that don't normally support AA. In any case, all they could ever do is add a bit more overhead and probably implement a form of AA that the game isn't optimized for. The in-game graphics settings are always preferable to any external solution, even the settings in the graphics card driver, in my experience. You may just have to give up your attachment to AA until you can get a faster GPU or reduce other detail setting to attempt to compensate.

 

[cmdrdredd]

A lot of the injectors also have sharpen filters and other adjustments that can also affect performance a bit.

 

[darkswordsman17]

The thing with those is that they won't work perfectly with games, so its possible they won't run that well. I believe they also have varying levels just like AA does so you might have one that's actually tougher to run but gives better appearance.

I believe a lot of games use FXAA these days so that might be why its not as big of a performance hit as the in game AA.

Oh, and also make sure you're not running the game's AA along with the other as that'll obviously kill your performance.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Seems like programs like that would only be "potentially" useful for older games and games that don't normally support AA. In any case, all they could ever do is add a bit more overhead and probably implement a form of AA that the game isn't optimized for. The in-game graphics settings are always preferable to any external solution, even the settings in the graphics card driver, in my experience. You may just have to give up your attachment to AA until you can get a faster GPU or reduce other detail setting to attempt to compensate.

I thought the "injectors" were actually aimed at newer games that either didn't allow AA or else had poorly implemented versions that hurt performance while not improving visuals that much (Skyrim comes to mind). I know a lot of times they're paired with other tweaks as well.

It might have changed recently, but I know that for a while there AA was falling out of favor with game devs because they were using a different rendering setup (deferred rendering maybe?) than they had been which made implementing AA a pain so they were just not doing it or doing it in an efficient way so the performance hit was especially large. Plus since consoles were their focus they weren't using it then either. Then AMD and nVidia both came up with newer AA techniques that they could implement so they started doing those. I think as PC gaming has had a resurgence and GPU power got higher we've seen options come back, and them put more focus on stuff like enabling AA.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If your PC is as old as you claim OP it is possible that any amount of AA would drag performance too low.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I thought the "injectors" were actually aimed at newer games that either didn't allow AA or else had poorly implemented versions that hurt performance while not improving visuals that much (Skyrim comes to mind). I know a lot of times they're paired with other tweaks as well.

It might have changed recently, but I know that for a while there AA was falling out of favor with game devs because they were using a different rendering setup (deferred rendering maybe?) than they had been which made implementing AA a pain so they were just not doing it or doing it in an efficient way so the performance hit was especially large. Plus since consoles were their focus they weren't using it then either. Then AMD and nVidia both came up with newer AA techniques that they could implement so they started doing those. I think as PC gaming has had a resurgence and GPU power got higher we've seen options come back, and them put more focus on stuff like enabling AA.

Honestly I don't know anything about injectors, but I did a cursory google search and most of what I read referenced using them to apply modern AA techniques to older games. Seems like its a rare case when the in-game AA isn't preferable to something like this from a performance perspective. That would explain what the op is experiencing anyway.

 

[JeffMD]

Keeper, you gave us no specs on the video card and computer. AA Injectors substitute real AA with shaders, if your video card is very weak in the pipeline department then it could completely overwhelm the video card.

 

[Red Hawk]

Well, what are the specifications of your PC? Operating system, CPU, graphics card, RAM, etc? And what games are you trying to play? Many recent games come with native support for performance-cheap AA methods like FXAA, MLAA, and even SMAA. Using programs like FXAA Injector would cause worse performance than the in-game equivalents.

 

[KeeperFiM]

Keeper, you gave us no specs on the video card and computer. AA Injectors substitute real AA with shaders, if your video card is very weak in the pipeline department then it could completely overwhelm the video card.

My computer is a 2010 iMac running Windows 7 via Boot Camp. The graphics card is not so good...

It's... it's...
It's a Mobility Radeon HD 4670... with 256mb video ram.
>.<

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

 

[KeeperFiM]

Anyways guys, you have cleared up the confusion for me. What you are saying makes sense.
I don't even know why I am asking this, I might be getting a very good gaming PC soon. :I
Yay for posting unnecessary threads.

 

[JeffMD]

Keeper. hmm, does not sound to bad really. Plenty of pipelines availabe on the video chipset, and its an i3 intel cpu model right? I wouldn't consider that "pretty low spec" Pretty low spec is like a 1.6ghz c2d or even a P4.

However if you were trying to push the game at the native resolution of your screen, 1080p, I can see it stressing the system out alot. You didn't mention the game either, maybe the game hates injectors.

 

[BrightCandle]

The 4670 has some dedicated hardware for doing Antialiasing on the card. The default version of AA given a game that renders in the classical way will actually perform quite a bit better because of that extra hardware. The Post processing AA techniques like SMAA, FXAA and such all use the processing cores of the GPU in place of this dedicated hardware. You don't have very many processors on your GPU thus the post processing AA has a larger impact than someone with a modern card.

Actually modern games don't want to avoid the accelerating AA on the GPU really. But deferred rendering allows them to create significantly better lighting at lower performance cost but it precludes the use of normal anti aliasing. Thus games today almost exclusively use post processing AA, despite the fact it often does not do a very good job and is surprisingly costly in terms of processing performance.

If you had a faster card the impact would be less.