Best forced AA through CCC?

[Red Hawk]

In the Catalyst Control Center, there are four modes of anti-aliasing given: Box, Narrow Tent, Wide Tent, and Edge Detect. Which provides the best IQ? Also, for my setup, would it be better to force AA through the graphics card or force MLAA from the processor?

 

[BFG10K]

Stick to box or edge detect; I wouldn't use any of the others as they visibly blur the image. Also MLAA is done on the graphics card, not on the processor.

 

[Red Hawk]

Oh. I thought the processor was used for MLAA. I've seen it referred to as a non-hardware accelerated process.

 

[BFG10K]

Oh. I thought the processor was used for MLAA. I've seen it referred to as a non-hardware accelerated process.

That's how it started, but with the advent of more advanced shaders it can be ported to the GPU.

 

[Red Hawk]

Ok. So, which provides the better image quality and/or less of a performance hit: MLAA or MSAA?

 

[BFG10K]

2x/4x MSAA is usually faster and looks better too. MLAA has a huge performance hit at higher resolutions and often intolerably blurs the image too. If you’ve got performance to burn then use SSAA instead of MLAA.

 

[Bill Brasky]

MLAA should be a last resort saved for games that don't have built in AA or don't cooperate with MSAA, IMO.

When I tried MLAA with Bad Company 2, there was also a noticeable mouse/ input lag due to the extra processing filter. This doesn't really affect single player, but I wouldn't recommend it for fps multiplayers.

 

[Red Hawk]

2x/4x MSAA is usually faster and looks better too. MLAA has a huge performance hit at higher resolutions and often intolerably blurs the image too. If you’ve got performance to burn then use SSAA instead of MLAA.

Ok, thanks. The game I'm thinking of using AA in is Mass Effect 2. There's no support for AA in-game, so the aliasing can get pretty bad, even at 1080p.

 

[Phynaz]

Ok, thanks. The game I'm thinking of using AA in is Mass Effect 2. There's no support for AA in-game, so the aliasing can get pretty bad, even at 1080p.

I believe that is a game running on the Unreal engine.

In which case MLAA is your only option.

 

[Skurge]

I believe that is a game running on the Unreal engine.

In which case MLAA is your only option.

MSAA works fine with that game through CCC

 

[Phynaz]

MSAA works fine with that game through CCC

Really? Wow, Thanks!
Can you force it in ME1 too? I'm playing that right now.

 

[KingFatty]

MLAA can produce really good effect in some games, and not-so-good in others. I tested it in SC2 and got good results with little performance penalty, but I didn't like how it smoothed the fonts.

I believe MLAA has the lowest performance hit, but can produce smoothing similar to MSAAx4. But MSAA will selectively appy itself to geometric shapes, whereas MLAA will apply itself to everything based on differences in contrast. So MLAA is dumber in what it gets applied to, but that improves performance because it's not doing any difficult determinations on geometry etc. and instead merely looks for contrasting colors and smoothing those.

So MLAA will smooth everything, including fonts, which may be odd-looking in some games (Starcraft 2 fonts). However, I think MLAA works particularly well on mass effect games (not sure haven't tried it) where you see big jaggies on straight lines that can dominate a scene (window sill)?

 

[Skurge]

Really? Wow, Thanks!
Can you force it in ME1 too? I'm playing that right now.

Yeah it does, I just tried it.

 

[Phynaz]

Hey look at that, it works!

Makes my GPU work very hard and I'm taking a pretty big performance hit. Maybe it's because I have film effect turned on and it's trying to apply AA to all those pixels.

Thanks Skurge.