Downsampling...

[Anomaly1964]

Have any of you guys tried this?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

 

[bystander36]

I have done that. I can't say I always like it, but it can be good at times.

It will behave like OGSSAA, but it will alter text, which can make it annoying when games have small text, like Dragon Age Origins.

 

[toyota]

I use it all the time and it works great. I use 3200x1800, 2560x1440, and 2560x1080 quite often.

 

[blackened23]

It's pretty great for old games or less demanding ones. I use it in Dark Souls and a few others. Dark souls goes from looking shoddy to pretty darn great with downsampling and all of the other DXfix stuff.

 

[toyota]

I dont think it really makes much visual difference in most cases. just seems to clear up some jaggies and makes thinks like fences or power lines look better. it helps the foliage in a game like the first Crysis too. bottom line though is IMO it shows how exaggerated the push for 4k is on typically sized monitors. all that is really going to do is make you pay out the rear for hardware to push games with miniscule image quality improvement.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Use downsampling as well, only in older games and nothing modern like BF3 or BF4 being the two most demanding games i own.

 

[Gloomy]

I use it occasionally. It's great for games that don't support SSAA/MSAA/CFAA which on AMD cards is... all of them. <_<


It increases the detail on everything. Textures, particle effects, lighting, shadows, AO (unless the developer declares an explicit limit on these of course). It's not a small difference.

 

[blackened23]

I dont think it really makes much visual difference in most cases. just seems to clear up some jaggies and makes thinks like fences or power lines look better. it helps the foliage in a game like the first Crysis too. bottom line though is IMO it shows how exaggerated the push for 4k is on typically sized monitors. all that is really going to do is make you pay out the rear for hardware to push games with miniscule image quality improvement.

I respectfully disagree. It does depend very much on the game and what the baseline basis of comparison is - I usually play more slow paced games on a 1600p IPS, and the difference is pretty stark in some games to my eyes. But it is subjective.

Now, Dark Souls with DXfix + downsampling is an absolute tremendous difference. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot. It's more that just downsampling because DXfix does more than downsampling alone, but the difference is what I would characterize as night and day. The game goes from looking fairly horrible and one of the worst PC ports of all time, to looking very good. Other games don't improve as dramatically - it depends on the game, but it can make a big difference in some games.

In newer games I just don't really bother. The performance and VRAM hit becomes too great in modern titles which makes it great for screenshots but terrible for actual gameplay. But it (ogssaa) is a nice thing to have for older titles when you have oodles of performance to spare. I've been meaning to try it in Dead Space 3, seems like a good non-demanding game to try it with.

 

[Anarchist420]

Downsampling is okay, but it doesn't get rid of aliasing enough by itself due to the fact that it isnt sparse grid. 4x sgssaa is the very best in my opinion.