Higher resolution 1440p / 1600p & gaming

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bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
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It is the correct definition. Anti-aliasing is a technical term with a specific mathematical meaning.

The reference sites you quoted have, rather unhelpfully, inaccurate definitions.

So can you find a reference to the correct definition, and a reference that states FXAA, MLAA, SMAA, and TXAA are not AA methods? Every review site I've read, call them new AA methods.

Heck, every site I found searching "anti aliasing definition" also says the same thing. It is a general term for reducing jaggies. If only a few of the common AA methods are AA, then what are those other methods?

Edit: My only guess is AA has changed meaning over the years. I have been able to find "Anti-Aliasing Filter", which has a more specific meaning, but it is clear that AA has expanded its meaning. The same source has a different meaning for "Anti-Aliasing". You seem to refer to the first, and I'm referring to the latter.
 
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This Guy

Junior Member
Apr 12, 2011
6
0
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So can you find a reference to the correct definition, and a reference that states FXAA, MLAA, SMAA, and TXAA are not AA methods? Every review site I've read, call them new AA methods.

You need to go back to aliasing. Basically aliasing is the loss of detail from using too low a resolution for the image, caused by certain bits of high detail looking the same as low detail. Anti Aliasing is trying to get that detail back.

Jagglies on your monitor a different. They are caused by quantisation. You only have so many pixels in your monitor so a pixel on the edge of a line can either be part of the line or the background. AA can help with this in some cases.

Those other types of "AA" you mentioned all appear to be focused on edge blurring (which could be a legitimate form of AA if modelled correctly). Their goal is to reduce the quantisation errors produced by having a fixed resolution. They do this by adding noise to the image. This is pre-emptive error correction, not AA.

Can you guys please get back on topic now? My advice has been buried under your bickering.
 

f1sherman

Platinum Member
Apr 5, 2011
2,243
1
0
@bystander36
They are talking about signal processing, you are talking about computer graphics (which can be understood as a subset of signal processing)

And I have a hunch that FXAA could be represented in digital processing as an anti-aliasing filter, restricting signal frequencies/bandwidth.
So I think you are more right than they are :p
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, and then lets go back to the topic :)
 
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bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
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@bystander36
They are talking about signal processing, you are talking about computer graphics (which can be understood as a subset of signal processing)

And I have a hunch that FXAA could be represented in digital processing as an anti-aliasing filter, restricting signal frequencies/bandwidth.
So I think you are more right than they are :p
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, and then lets go back to the topic :)

That is basically what I could find. Antialising is a technique of removing aliasing. AA filtering, on the other hand, seems to be a specific filter for audio or video, which they were talking about.
 

Mark R

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,513
14
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An anti - aliasing filter is the method by which anti-aliasing is performed.

However, before you can apply an AA filter, you need to start with a signal with higher resolution than your eventual target resolution. An AA filter is nothing more complicated than a blurring filter.

In digicams, the AA filter is actually a special blurring crystal placed in front of the sensor, which blurs the high res real life image so that the smallest visible detail matches the size of a pixel.

In graphics, AA is performed by rendering at a higher resolution, then using a blurring filter and finally scaling the resolution to target. (a technique called oversampling or supersampling).

So conventionally to AA, if you want a 1280x720 output, you might render at 2560x1440, blur down so that the smallest visible detail is 2x2 and then scale to 1280x720. This is known as FSAA (4x in this case).

Because it massively increases GPU demand, and because the most visible aliasing artefacts occur at edges, FSAA is undesirable.

There are a variety of "tricks" that can be used. MSAA is one. Rather than rendering the whole image at higher res, it renders certain intermediate components (z - buffer usually) at higher res. As the z- buffer tells the renderer which polygon is visible, and therefore serves as an edge detector, an alpha blending technique can be used to blur out jaggy edges. Effectively, you are taking your final res image and blurring the edges slightly, rather than taking a high res image and filtering out any details that may alias.

The key point about MSAA is that the whole image is not processed, only edges. So, you can still get aliasing artefacts from shading effects (particularly bump mapped textured), etc.

There are a variety of vendor specific techniques like FXAA which use "tricks" of varying cleverness to approximate the effect of FSAA. Some actually detect edges and supersampling the edges, so you get true AA at the edges.
 

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
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Well, antialiasing, in every definition I could find, gives no indication of a specific method needing to be used. It makes no mention of using a filter specifically. It may be a method for doing AA, but it is not the only method. At least not anymore.

Anti-aliasing filter is the only thing I could find that mentions specific rules.

I guess you are running into the same thing, as you failed to list an article explaining it.
 
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Mark R

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
8,513
14
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Well, antialiasing, in every definition I could find, gives no indication of a specific method needing to be used. It makes no mention of using a filter specifically. It may be a method for doing AA, but it is not the only method. At least not anymore.

Anti-aliasing filter is the only thing I could find that mentions specific rules.

I guess you are running into the same thing, as you failed to list an article explaining it.

The first line of the wiki article gives as clear a definition as you could want. It is a process for preventing aliasing artefacts, where a signal is to go on to be "sampled" (represented on a regular grid).

Wiki goes on, rather unhelpfully to split off a section about filters. The point is that in technical language, a "filter" is a process that modifies a signal. An "anti-aliasing filter" is the process (or separate device) of performing anti-aliasing.

The point is that in FSAA, you have a classical process, clearly recognisable as anti-aliasing. You have a high resolution signal (coordinates of arbitrary resolution) and need to represent them on a sampled (pixelated) display. To do this, you apply a filter to remove frequencies liable to aliasing.

The other techniques, diverge from that, by using alternative approaches to give similar appearances (most of them are edge based, as aliasing at edges is visually very distracting).
 

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
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It said is "may" refer to. Not that it has to refer to. Clearly how AA is handled is expanding. All the new techniques don't seem to fit your definition. FXAA, TXAA, SMAA and MLAA all are post process, and not even that link would indicate that they are not antialiasing, as claimed.

Look on the side of your link with this definition: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/antialiasing

And if FXAA, TXAA, SMAA and MLAA are not antialiasing, what are they?
 
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AdamK47

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
15,169
2,830
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What I've learned here is that post process anti-aliasing isn't anti-aliasing, but it can actually provide anti-aliasing. I'm glad we sorted out that mess.

Lock this thread up! We're done here!
 

wand3r3r

Diamond Member
May 16, 2008
3,180
0
0
What I've learned here is that post process anti-aliasing isn't anti-aliasing, but it can actually provide anti-aliasing. I'm glad we sorted out that mess.

Lock this thread up! We're done here!

No need to lock it up. Maybe just stray back to the topic. I'm still interested in the original topic, high resolution screens. :p
 

Peter Nixeus

Senior member
Aug 27, 2012
365
1
81
www.nixeus.com
An additional answer to OP's Question:

At 2560x1440, currently there are only two panel manufacturers that make panels at this resolution = LG Displays (IPS technology) and Samsung (PLS technology).

I see your primary concern is input lag/(grey to grey). This can vary from panel to panel depending on the production run or specific LG panel being used. LG makes several variations of its LM270WQ1, LM270WQ2, and LM270WQ3 for each production cycle and the input lag/ g2g can vary from 5ms to 14ms. So even though a monitor review publication may have tested a higher or lower input lag/g2g - it may actually differ for the end user because his/her actual monitor may have a slight variation of the panel.
 

Granseth

Senior member
May 6, 2009
258
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Is there an easy way to test g2g imput lag? And where do one find out what kind of panel is beeing used?
 

monster88

Member
Oct 30, 2012
63
0
0
When you enter the timings manually, does the pixel clock value automatically change? If so, then with a bit of tinkering, you should be able to go higher. The trick is to try and keep the pixel clock under 164hz (16400 in the downsampling tool). Anything higher than 164hz pixel clock will cause the image to display incorrectly, if at all. But since I have no way of testing the downsampling tool, I'd strongly suggest asking someone in the AMD thread if they can reference their timings for higher resolutions. Though I wanted to ask, what are you setting for your HTotal and VTotal values?

total Htotal = 2080 and Vtotal = 1235, which are the default values. i can successfully get the downsampling tool to register a res like 3840x2160, but if i choose this resolution in games, i get a horribly distorted screen which looks like paint is splattered everywhere and if i don't exit immediately, i have to reset.

recently, i've tried using a program called CRU, which allows for custom resolutions regardless of amd/nvidia and works by overriding .inf files for the monitor (or something like that), this one allows me to set the resolutions as well, but as soon as i set it to 2160p, the pixel rate sky rockets to 592.

the tool includes another tool which is made to allow for much higher pixel rates than the standard 165 mhz. it does this by patching something. anyways, i've tried this, but no dice. everytime i get that horrible, distorted screen, so for now, i'm stuck with 2720x1700.....

edit: i forgot to mention that i can actually play ONE game i have with 3840x2160 resolution -- that game being grid 2, but that is the ONLY game which allows me to do so. strange....
 
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BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,672
2,817
126
You sure?
Of course. LCDs (and similar) have a fixed pixel grid so technically their native resolution is the ONLY resolution they can display.

Any other resolution is just scaled to that fixed pixel grid, be it 1:1, fixed aspect, or full.
 

Lavans

Member
Sep 21, 2010
139
0
0
total Htotal = 2080 and Vtotal = 1235, which are the default values. i can successfully get the downsampling tool to register a res like 3840x2160, but if i choose this resolution in games, i get a horribly distorted screen which looks like paint is splattered everywhere and if i don't exit immediately, i have to reset.

recently, i've tried using a program called CRU, which allows for custom resolutions regardless of amd/nvidia and works by overriding .inf files for the monitor (or something like that), this one allows me to set the resolutions as well, but as soon as i set it to 2160p, the pixel rate sky rockets to 592.

the tool includes another tool which is made to allow for much higher pixel rates than the standard 165 mhz. it does this by patching something. anyways, i've tried this, but no dice. everytime i get that horrible, distorted screen, so for now, i'm stuck with 2720x1700.....

edit: i forgot to mention that i can actually play ONE game i have with 3840x2160 resolution -- that game being grid 2, but that is the ONLY game which allows me to do so. strange....

Try setting htotal to about 2050 and vtotal to about 1095. On my screens, I have to set the htotal to 2020 and vtotal to 1090 to post 3840x2160 without issue.