CF not working in ME3

[Lepton87]

Does CF have any issues in ME3? I've got Cat 12.3 and the newest CAP and it still does not work. Is anyone having the same issues? Is there any way to force CF in that game? Unfortunately it's not playable at 2560 8xMSAA on just a quarter of my hardware.

UPDATE: 3-way CF seems to work just fine, unfortunately it's not enough to enable SSAA, because FPS dips below 60 sometimes. I'm not sure if the 4th GPU would make it playable but it's possible because it's technically playable with avg FPS in the 50 range, still I don't want those dips below 60.

 

[Stuka87]

When you say MF3, are you meaning to put ME3 or MW3 perhaps?

 

[Lepton87]

When you say MF3, are you meaning to put ME3 or MW3 perhaps?

ME, sorry for the confusion.

 

[Stuka87]

Do you need to have the AA set so high to prevent jaggies? I would think at such a high res you could cut back on the AA some and not notice any difference.

ME3 typically runs like butter on most any hardware setup. Although you have a much higher resolution than most.

 

[Lepton87]

I really like SSAA because it antialiases everything and looks much better in motion than MSAA, although it is very costly in terms of performance. The game is really smooth with SSAA 2x and FXAA, if I could enable 8xMSSAA on top of that I could make do without that SSAA 4x. Is there any way to enable MSAA along with SSAA and FXAA?

 

[blackened23]

I really like SSAA because it antialiases everything and looks much better in motion than MSAA, although it is very costly in terms of performance. The game is really smooth with SSAA 2x and FXAA, if I could enable 8xMSSAA on top of that I could make do without that SSAA 4x. Is there any way to enable MSAA along with SSAA and FXAA?

Do you understand the inner workings of SSAA? If you're using 4x SSAA that means the internally rendered resolution is 7680 x 4320. SSAA takes the intended rendered image and upscales it, that is why it is

#1) costly
#2) Looks better than anything else

You should never combine SSAA with other AA modes. If you use SSAA you use that alone and thats it, using it it combination with anything is not wise. In fact,
only AMD offers SSAA within the driver (to enable) while nvidia doesn't -- because the performance hit is too drastic. Nvidia requires an external application such as nvidia inspector
to enable SSAA, which functionally means that most users can't use it.

You should use MSAA by default. If you find MSAA unsatisfactory, you can up the MSAA to 2-8x, and/or combine it with post process such as MLAA or FXAA.
You should always use SSAA by itself because of the way it renders the image, you shouldn't ever combine it with post process. You can't combine MSAA and SSAA,
CCC will "convert" MSAA to SSAA. (as does nvidias implementation, if you're a power user with nvidia inspector)

Anyway, you'll be hard pressed to find any hardware that runs everything with SSAA satisfactory. In fact, 2x SSAA is pushing it on most modern games unless they're very old. SSAA is just extremely demanding.

 

[Lepton87]

Do you understand the inner workings of SSAA? If you're using 4x SSAA that means the internally rendered resolution is 7680 x 4320. SSAA takes the intended rendered image and upscales it, that is why it is

#1) costly
#2) Looks better than anything else

I know how it works and why it's so costly performance-wise but I've got the hardware to do it so why not? Unfortunately I still see jaggies with SSAA 2x and SSAA 4x is only borderline playable with 3-way CF and 4-way CF doesn't work. I guess AMD doesn't bother to optimize for 4-way CF users because there are not that many of us.

ps. I believe it downsamples it rather than upscales.

 

[blackened23]

I dont think ME3 has native MSAA. As far as I know it uses deferred lightning so does not have native MSAA, and uses post process only. Thus any attempt to "force" SSAA will not work and won't improve the IQ.

The best bet is using SMAA, FXAA, or MLAA. I may be wrong but i'm pretty sure no mass effect title has ever had native MSAA. Every title i've played required post process or nothing I think? Perhaps this is why SSAA is having problems with the title -- like I said SSAA does not work without native MSAA in the game.

 

[Lepton87]

I played ME2 with SSAA 4x and it performed and looked great. As far as I know they didn't make many changes graphics wise between those two games so I expected it to work just fine with SSAA.

UPDATE: I'm 100% sure that SSAA works as intended in ME3 just as it worked in ME2. Textures look so much better with SSAA 4x than MSAA 4x.