Try out the refresh rates yourself. R.click the desktop and select 'Properties', then 'Settings', 'Advanced', 'Monitor'. Ensure that your correct manu and model number are shown (and not 'default monitor') or else select something like 'Default Monitors: 1600x1200'. Now at the bottom of the Monitor Tab you will see 'Screen Refresh Rate' and a drop down list allows you to select higher numbers. Go up gradually and if the screen goes all wierd, your monitor can't handle that refresh rate at that resolution, just don't press anything and Windows will restore the previous setting. If only 60hz or 'default' are shown then select a lower res (eg 800x600) and more should be available. You should aim for 75hz minimum for day-to-day Windows use. WinXP allows you to untick a box that says 'Hide modes the monitor can't display', it always a good idea to uncheck this and find the higher settings yourself. Some settings can be forced from sw, tweak type tools or gfx card control panel. This is useful to force a game to use Ani, a certain type of AA, Vsync etc. Older cards like Rad7500 and GF2 cards hate AA and medium details would be better so res of 800x600x32 or 1024c768 are playable. Another factor is the amount of gfx RAM. Games like Max Payne tell you in the pre-game settings what effect and req a partic setting has. Generally 32MB will stutter with full details and medium res, 64MB should handle most games without a prob on max detail (providing the card is fast enough, eg GF2MX NO, GF4TI YES). 128MB means you don't have to worry about textures and details, for about 6-12 months anyway! LOL. This is all generalisations as it is almost impossible to comment on every card and every game. Just remember that a GF2TI 32MB will kick the ass of a GF2MX 64MB, a GF4TI4200-64MB will kick the ass of GF3TI200-128MB, memory is nothing without the bandwidth and speed of the gfx card as a whole unit. When it comes to AntiAliasing (removal of 'jaggies' / pixel step effect), ATI (and GF2) use SuperSampling (rendering more pixels than used in final output) which takes a larger perf hit and is quite old and inefficient. GF3 & GF4 use MultiSampling which involves more guess work; faster but slightly blurrier results. The blurriness can be overcome by use of Anisotropic Filtering which sharpens the textures and results in an image easily as good as Supersampling but is much faster. Aniso is only officially for OpenGL but the new 4xS mode works in DirX to use AA & still keep the detail. Matrox Parhelia-512 uses FragmentxAA, it works out which parts of the image need to be antialiased and only performs AA on those select parts and does so with only a small perf hit. Unfortunately it misses some jaggies, results in eratic frame rates and can't always be used, at which point 4xAA (SS) is the only other option and has a big perf hit. Slower card of TNT2 & 3dfx generations, esp with 16MB RAM really benefit from 16bit colour. For modern gfx cards like GF3, GF4TI & Radeon8500 you only want to consider 32bit colour, and prob AA as well! Of course actual perf diffs do depend upon the card and CPU used. With 'slower' CPUs and higher end gfx cards you really want to max out gfx settings with AA, Aniso and of course 32bit colour in order to use the full GPU potential that the CPU may not tap. Obviously you get fewer comparable results when shifting from the default 1024x768x32 as fewer people run or submit them but this should still be quite accurate. If it's perf you're after then lowering the resolution or detail settings a little may be more pleasurable than 16bit colour, do bear in mind that on GF3 & GF4TI cards you may be actually slowing things down by switching to 16bit! Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it all really comes down to personal preference . 16bit colour, 16bit uses 2 to the power of 16, ie 65536 colours or more accurately 'shades of colour'. 32bit uses 24bit colour (the other 8bits are reserved) which gives 2 to 24, ie 16777216 shades (16.8 million). It is difficult for most people to distinguish between 16bit and 32bit colour but with the way in which modern gfx cards have evolved 32bit is now very nearly as fast as 16bit, and as seen above performance can actually be worse at 16bit. This is most probably due to any relatively modern game actually using 32bit samples for textures and game detail which means that they can be used without translation, but by switching to 16bit you are freeing up bandwidth (less colours means less data to be processed) but you then have to convert 32bit to 16bit before processing. This 'scaling' of colour often leads to distortion and 'banding' (where shades of colours should be smooth but visible different colour bands can be seen). IMHO, if you have a modern gfx card (GF3 or Radeon8500 or higher) then you really should consider 32bit as default and alter detail levels or resolutions in order to make the game smoother. With so many detail options and gfx card capabilities it does take some experimenting to find the balance between high performance and high quality but it really comes down to what is personally acceptible and preferable to you. 4xS AA is 4xAA MS-AA but it uses some SS-AA techniques (probably reminiscent of Fragment AA that Parhelia uses). This gives it the appearance of 4xAA & Ani with a similar hit BUT you can't officially use Ani in D3D hence 4xS AA is the D3D equivilent of OpenGL 4xAA & Ani combination with similar perf hit. However QxAA (2xAA hit on GF4, inbetween 2x & 4x on GF3) with Ani offers 4xAA & Ani / 4xS AA looks with far less perf hit. So in essense I would rec QxAA & Ani as by far the best quality and perf combination. Then see how far you can up the res with full details without things getting jerky. Lecture is kind of a loaded word though... let's say instead, droppin' da bomb knowledge! So I just tried a few combinations of AA and Aniso and got a first hand idea of the pluses and minuses of each. Thanks alot, you've really helped my understanding of this stuff. Thanks for the thanks guys. No need for those couple of idiots to be so critical over such a small point though, like they've never been wrong. However I don't believe I was wrong. The AVERAGE human eye only needs 12-15 FPS to fool the brain in to seeing continous movement instead of individual frames. Regarding TV sets, which most would say show very good motion, NTSC displays 30 FPS and PAL 25 FPS. Although note the words MUCH and LITTLE (you twits). Try a blind test and a random sample of 10 people. I doubt many would be able to distinguish between 50 FPS (likely minimum FPS 30 FPS) and 100 FPS (beyond the usuall probability of lucky guesses) but I would guarantee that most people could tell the difference between 1024x768xAA 50 FPS and 800x600 100 FPS. THAT was the point I was making and it was hardly a crucial one. If you bothered to read any of my posts you would notice I say "it all really comes down to personal preference". There are always a handfull of people who can distinguish between very 'small' differences that the majority of people can't, usually enthusiasts or experts, whether that would be 100 FPS vs 50 FPS, 85Hz vs 75Hz refresh rates, Audigy vs nForce vs Live etc. Anyway to give the full quote:
Originally posted by: Mingon
WOW dug yourself an even bigger hole there, firstly lets no bother mentioning interlacing on a TV because I am sure a person who like who is never wrong knows this anyway. As for 12-15fps for constant motion what an utter load of garbage I cant believe you have said that. Most people need a absolute minimum of 50fps for a nice constant motion picture, I and alot of people I know need 75 as a minimum. Did you actually try that program at all ? at 12-15 fps was it smooth? I think not. I think the only way for you to learn is to site in front of a monitor with a 25hz refresh rate for about 10 minutes and then hopefully your brain will be erased and we can start again
Anyway to address your points, I didn't say I was never wrong, what I said was that with how critical you are on such a miniscule unimportant detail it would seem as though YOU believe you are never wrong. However I didn't and don't believe I was wrong on the point I made, most people would be better off playing at 50-80 FPS with enhanced res or eye candy than running 100+ FPS where the refresh of the monitor simply isn't showing each frame anyway. A lot of people either use the highest res their monitor can handle or else use default refresh rates, in both cases they are likely to only have a 60Hz refresh rate and hence frame rates beyond 60 are not going to give any effect other than tearing. Mingon, I NEVER SAID THAT! I said "The AVERAGE human eye only needs 12-15 FPS to fool the brain in to seeing continous movement", NOTE seeing a continuous motion, nothing about SMOOTH or RECOMMENDED, I'm talking Science here, or did you not finish the basic level of education? I never suggested 25Hz, or even 25 FPS! I think people like you are very sad, simply contributing nothing to forums other than criticism on irrelevant points. Look at what people say, not what you think they say, learn to read, and if you can't say anything constructive then don't say anything at all. Yeah, I know what you mean, I wouldn't play games any where near that. I never suggested anybody should. What I did suggest was that people should try settings out and see what they prefer. But I advised and still do that for the MAJORITY of people a higher res with eye candy and 50-80 FPS is much more pref than lower res and 100+ FPS. Anyway since you seem to like barking on about the irrelevant, TV interlacing. It came about due to the technology in the early days of the TV sets and signals couldn't cope with providing the whole picture in one go. So what they did was send all of the odd horizontal lines followed by all of the even horizontal lines to make up just 1 complete frame. As TVs developed this was no longer req (even though little has truely changed in the methodology of the CRT), but interlacing was kept for compatibility and easiness. Interlacing does lead to more headaches and eystrain, particularly close up. Generally standard TV set uses either 60Hz (NTSC) or 50Hz (PAL) interlaced, which equates more to 30Hz and 25Hz in reference to Computer Monitors which are not interlaced. However since TV sets rarely show still text, fine detail and are rarely viewed close up, they get away with it.
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