How much do you like using AA and AF?

[Kipa]

Looking at the performance measures here:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/537/page3.html

...it seems that my 9800Pro is still a great card if I don't enable AA/AF. For those of you with higher-end cards, is it worth it? What I mean is, does your gaming graphics get that much better?

I was thinking about upgrading my 9800Pro, but now I'm not so sure it's worth it. I'm not nearly as educated about video cards so links to any helpful info would also be fantastic. Thanks,

Kipa

 

[trinibwoy]

Some games look 10x better with AF but most people only notice it if they've seen it with AF then without. AA helps with immersion since seeing jaggies everywhere is a stark reminder that you're playing in a rendered gameworld and kinda kills the immersion factor.

 

[Regs]

At 1600x1200 I like to use maybe 2 - 4x AA if possible. AF I just leave off when quality settings are on max. However I hardly ever see a need at high resolutions. The 6800GT and X800's however had free AA/AF on some games. The ones that didn't like D3 and Riddick, you don't really need them anyway. Depends on how the game is designed and what graphic engine it used.

 

[ryanv12]

I dont like stark jaggies, so at the very least I need 2xAA at native resolution (1680x1050). I have to pretty much keep up with getting top cards I guess...but as long as COD2 runs well on my 6800GT with those settings, I'll be good for a lonnnnng time

 

[Blastman]

If you using the older CP and not the CCC. Use Performance- 8AF set in the CP. The P setting looks basically as good as Quality and is 10-20% faster.

There is really no point in not using at least 4AF on a 9800 -- I?ll explain why. Running Bilinear (Performance setting) can give you a 10-20% performance boost (or even more) over Trilinear (Quality) but the mipmap transitions look terrible in a lot of situations. The way to get around this is to use some AF with the Bilinear. Higher levels of AF (4AF and over) on a 9800 do an excellent job of blending the mipmaps when you are using Bilinear. So 8AF looks very good on the 9800?s even in Bilinear (Performance) mode. I run this on my 9600XT all the time.

Performance -4AF is generally about equal to Trilinear - noAF in performance, but looks better. Perf-8AF is just a little slower than running Trilinear-noAF but looks substantially better. You can almost get 8AF for free by using Perfromance-8AF on a 9800. 4AF (Performance) will be free in a lot of situations.

In a game with higher resolution textures like HL2, 8AF makes the game look much better. It?s a blurry mess without AF. AF doesn?t make as much as a difference on the older games as they use lower res textures that look kind of blurry with AF anyway.

And for AA. Try running 2AA in some situations.

 

[Kipa]

Originally posted by: Blastman
If you using the older CP and not the CCC. Use Performance- 8AF set in the CP. The P setting looks basically as good as Quality and is 10-20% faster.

There is really no point in not using at least 4AF on a 9800 -- I?ll explain why. Running Bilinear (Performance setting) can give you a 10-20% performance boost (or even more) over Trilinear (Quality) but the mipmap transitions look terrible in a lot of situations. The way to get around this is to use some AF with the Bilinear. Higher levels of AF (4AF and over) on a 9800 do an excellent job of blending the mipmaps when you are using Bilinear. So 8AF looks very good on the 9800?s even in Bilinear (Performance) mode. I run this on my 9600XT all the time.

Performance -4AF is generally about equal to Trilinear - noAF in performance, but looks better. Perf-8AF is just a little slower than running Trilinear-noAF but looks substantially better. You can almost get 8AF for free by using Perfromance-8AF on a 9800. 4AF (Performance) will be free in a lot of situations.

In a game with higher resolution textures like HL2, 8AF makes the game look much better. It?s a blurry mess without AF. AF doesn?t make as much as a difference on the older games as they use lower res textures that look kind of blurry with AF anyway.

And for AA. Try running 2AA in some situations.

Fantastic. Your post along with a couple articles I've been reading this afternoon are really making this clear. Appreciate it.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I like to run 8xAF and 4xAA all the time if I can (and I mostly can) - sometimes I drop down the AA to 2x in FarCry or even turn it off completely due to frame rates (I run at 1680x1050 on a 6800GT), but I don't like to. Basically, I've gotten used to playing at high settings (spoiled, one could even say ), and I think it's worth it to me. I can't see myself playing at 1024x768 with no AA like I used to on my 9700 Pro and 17" CRT, anyways

 

[biostud]

8xAF 0xAA on my 9800pro

 

[Mrvile]

I hate jaggies, so I pump up the AA and AF on max resolution (which is low, 1200 x 1000) to 16x and 8x every game.

 

[Zenoth]

I can easily see more visual quality with Anisotropic Filtering, than with Anti-Aliasing.

That's mainly because I personally don't care about jaggies.

Of course, I have a 9800 Pro, it's not a recent generation GPU, and, some of you will say it's exactly because of that, that I don't mind the jaggies. But no, honestly, I really don't. I saw many high-quality videos, and many pictures taken at 1600 x 1200, with 6 x A-A enabled in games like UT 2004, Doom III, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry, and, easily, I can say A-F is so much more worth it visually than any level of A-A at any resolution.

But ... yeah, that's just me.

Long live to A-F ! (And it's less GPU-demanding than A-A, so, go Far Cry with HDR at 16 x A-F for the win).

 

[kmmatney]

I thought I would love AA (I upgraded to a 6600GT so I could use it), but I soon found out the bad things about AA - my games were noticably blurred. I'll take jaggies and crisp graphics over reduced jaggies and blurriness.

 

[Zenoth]

I'm with you kmmatney.

I say A-A is for those way too preoccupied by visuals more than game-play. For those thinking or feeling like game-play is directly linked to visual quality.

And the technical answer to this is "wrong" !

 

[nRollo]

I just finished Unreal2. I turned it on by mistake without 4X8X a couple times, turned off the game and set it. It's VERY noticeable.

 

[dug777]

try playing vice city without AF, it looks like total ass

but with 6xAA/16AF at 1280 on my 9800 pro it looks better than most of the screenies i've seen of GTA:SA

I try to play with 2xAA and 8xAF for everything if i can, 2xAA takes away enough jaggies for me, while keeping framerates smooth at 1024 in farcry which is probably the most demanding game i play regularly.

 

[BFG10K]

All of my games stay at 16xAF and have done so since the 9700 Pro. Heck, I even do the same on my 7000 when I'm testing things. I consider 16xAF as a standard in 3D rendering.

As for AA, it's great when I've maxed out my resolution and I still have power to burn. Even at 1920x1440 the difference between no AA and 4xAA is quite visible.

 

[VIAN]

AA on battlefield definitely made the game look more photo-realistic, creating a biggere immerision. It also depends on the game, games like HL2 with sharper textures look great with AF, but BF2 doesn't really look that much more amazing.

 

[Blastman]

Originally posted by: Rollo
I just finished Unreal2. I turned it on by mistake without 4X8X a couple times, turned off the game and set it. It's VERY noticeable.

Ya, I did that too when I swapped cards (testing an old one), forgot to turn AF back on. I don?t know how I ever lived without AF.

Originally posted by: dug777

2xAA takes away enough jaggies for me, while keeping framerates smooth at 1024 in farcry which is probably the most demanding game i play regularly.

I agree. It?s surprising how much of a difference even 2AA makes over none. It doesn?t make the edges really smooth like 4AA, but it does a lot to get rid of the real obtrusive jaggies. I can generally live without AA -- gotta have my AF. Unless one is standing around admiring how straight the flagpole looks at your spawn point (getting your butt shot off ) I don?t really notice the jaggies once I?m in the heat of the action.


Kipa ? 2 other really good performance tweaks for your 9800.

- Set shadows to low (if there is a setting) -- 5-10% boost or more in some situations. In the NOLF2 demo, setting shadows to low (from High) boosted performance about 50-60% on the map I tested with my 9600XT. The IQ difference was minimal.

- set Texture Preference Slider to Quality -- this usually boosts performance 5-10% over High-Quality and produces just as good IQ.

 

[Jeff7181]

There's hardly a game I can play with AF... blurry textures just look horrible.

AA depends on the game... I can play Doom 3 fine without it and only notice aliasing is certain situations. Turn off AA on Far Cry and the game looks like dog poo.

 

[imported_DaveA]

4xaa 16xaf in all games.

 

[raystorm]

I always use 16x AF as not only does it make games look much better but there is hardly any performance hit at all.. in fact..there probably isn't any even on my 9800.


AA on the other hand I rarely use as I honestly can't tell the difference with it on or off. I use 1280x960 resolution and once in awhile use 2x AA but usually I don't bother with AA.

 

[Genx87]

Rarely use it however I fired up HL2 and did notice a difference. So I am running 2AA\2AF application controlled and it is smooth and looks crisp imo.

The only other game I have done this with is Flightsim 2002.

 

[McArra]

AF is a must for me, and AA not in all games.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I run at 1600x1200, i dont see any need for FSAA in most games, although i leave AF maxed out all the time.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

im more lenient toward jaggies, i find 2XAA is a decent setting, doesnt crunch the GPU much at all, and provides bearly noticable jaggies in most of the games i play, and of course if theres HDR, id rather have that then AA.

AF on the otherhand i dont think i could ever do with out. having played UT2004 on a GF3 and then going on to a 6800GT was wicked. AF definately does it for me. i generally use at least 8X most of the time 16XAF theres no reason not to use AF on these cards

 

[imported_Kensai]

I <3 AA/AF.