SuperAA is just MSAA on different texture sampling positions which Nvidia already supports on a single card. The main difference here being that ATi's sampling positions are programmable. The hybrid modes are playable on NV40 but mostly on older less demanding titles.
SuperAA is just MSAA on different texture sampling positions which Nvidia already supports on a single card. The main difference here being that ATi's sampling positions are programmable. The hybrid modes are playable on NV40 but mostly on older less demanding titles.
I don't really see anything innovative about SLi 2.
Bringing back SLi was innovation. Improving it and tweaking it is, to me, simply refining a product.
apoppin
Lifer
Originally posted by: Insomniak
technically [nothing is innovation then. . . there is nothing innovative about SSAA . . . everything just builds on what has gone before . . .
. . . i was just tossing in something offhand to Mr xknight- and now that i look at it - OT
SSAA also applies a blur to everything which may make some people complain. Blurry text and textures, not cool.
No it doesn't. SSAA "sharpens" the textures if anything - its like an extra step of anisotropic filtering.
Quincunx can have a blurring effect, especially in contrasty ares of textures, but Quimcunx is based off MSAA, not SSAA. Closely related to Quincunx is 4x9 tap AA, which is basically Quincunx with 4 sample points rather than 2 together with SSAA and a rop filter. Perhaps that is what you are thinking of. 16x AA (2x2 SSAA, 4x MSAA does not involve quincunx style rop filters).
BenSkywalker, thanks for the info. While its not on the PC, it does seem is can work. Seems I was mistaken.
Nice name calling, again. Grow up.
Nice name calling, again. Grow up.
I like antialiasing for the most part, but it does seem to blur edges that should be sharp. Sure, without AA those edges would be more jaggy, but at least they'd be razor sharp like they should. Though all in all, AA is good. AF too.
What is the difference between 2x AA and 2xQ?
8xS?
What is the difference between 2x AA and 2xQ?
8xS?
With nVidia, 2x AA is 2 sample rotated grid MSAA. This is true right back to GF3, which pioneered MSAA. Prior to that AA on nVidia GPU's was OGSS (ordered grid super sampling).
Quincunx is 2x MSAA with a blur filter applied in the ROP's
Strangely enough, 4x AA on nVidia GPU's has always been ordered grid, regardless of MSAA or SSAA (OGMS, OGSS). This only changed with nV4x (GeForce 6 series).
HRAA: High-Resolution Antialiasing through Multisampling (pdf)
Quincunx is 2x MSAA with a blur filter applied in the ROP's
Strangely enough, 4x AA on nVidia GPU's has always been ordered grid, regardless of MSAA or SSAA (OGMS, OGSS). This only changed with nV4x (GeForce 6 series).
HRAA: High-Resolution Antialiasing through Multisampling (pdf)
The irony of this is amazing, here we have someone who started a petition to get a member banned for "Manners. Insults. Rudeness. etc etc..."
Full Thread
Actually on topic, its good that nVidia supports SSAA but if not many people know about it, that somewhat decreases its usefulness. If its already supported then I'm sure we'll see official driver support as soon as crossfire is released (if not sooner).
Also, I remember when the Matrox Parhelia came out, it had something called Fragment Anti-Aliasing (FAA) or something, and it was supposed to be pretty good.
Gamingphreek
Lifer
- Mar 31, 2003
- 11,679
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Nvidia just recently switched to Rotated Grid. The Geforce FX series used something different IIRC.
-Kevin
That's due to sampling positions more then anything- certainly not due to jittered multi frame versus single super frame. If the sampling points are the same for both, the end results will be the same.
Actually it does blur them- IHVs are forced to use a more agressive LOD when enabling SSAA to make this less of an issue.
nVidia's xS modes aren't a lot like what you are saying there, they are exactly that.
x8S is brutal on newer titles to be sure, it runs on older titles just fine.
The big boost for SuperAA over MSAA is that can reduce aliasing on alpha textures- which is due to the fact that is is also using SSAA. 8000 sample MSAA still won't eliminate anything at all when it comes to alpha textures- the GeForce1 handled this better then any currently supported mode on ATi hardware(due to driver restrictions, not due to lack of hardware).
BFG-
I'm not understanding what you are saying here- with identical samples MSAA will smooth poly edges the exact same as SSAA(in terms of IQ, obviously the performance hit will be much larger).
And, man, I just miss those alpha textures so much. :roll:
About the only remotely new game I can think of that uses transparent textures extensively is Call Of Duty and its variants, and that's built off the Quake3 engine. I guess this could be more of an issue if you like to play older games a lot, but it's not exactly the end of the world. If you HAVE to have AA on your alpha textures, well, you'll just have to buy an NVIDIA card.
I find it hard to believe the lack of SSAA is just ATI being jerks. If they could flip a switch and turn on flawless SSAA support in all their hardware, I'm sure they would. It might be due to a lack of driver support, but I find it unlikely they would purposefully restrict its use just to not have a feature.
(The rest of this is in response to the multiple people complaining about blurriness from AA)
AA of any type slightly softens the image (either edges with MSAA, or any contrasting areas with SSAA). However, this is actually more accurate (in a mathemetical/sampling theory sense). Aesthetically, some folks don't like it, and would rather have well-defined (but jagged) edges. Meh.
If text/GUI elements are getting hit with AA, the result can be pretty ugly (since these things are already been drawn as sharp as possible, trying to use AA on them does actually just blur them). This is usually because of a bug/flaw in the game engine or its interaction with the driver, NOT a problem with the way antialiasing works. The game *should* draw any 2D text/GUI elements *over* the rendered image, after it has been processed with AA/AF.
I dunno which card/setting you're using but my AA definately makes edges a loth sharper (smoother if they are a hill by rounding them off). It definately gives an incredible illusion of playing the game at a much higher resolution.
Yeah AA makes fonts blurry in Wolfenstein: ET for me. I think Half-Life 2 is fine though. Wolfenstein: ET uses the Quake 3 engine, which probably wasn't made with AA in mind, so it's understandable. The only way I can turn AA on in that game is to force it from ForceWare control panel.
As posted above, SSAA works on mac versions of mac cards just fine, so the hardware is clearly capable.
Go search beyond3d for what ATi engineers have had to say on the subject in the past. They have stated, they could have enabled SSAA, but chose not to (for performance reasons IIRC).
This is more proof (if it were even required) that ATi restricts their users choice of how things are to be rendered. Either you do things the way ATi's engineers dictate it will be done, or you don't do it at all. nVidia, by contrast, gives you an enormous amount of choice and doesn't force you into doing things one way only. I know which of the two methodologies I prefer.
Did I say it wasn't?
I recall this coming up before, and I was unable to turn up anything that was basically ATI saying "we could turn on SSAA, but we don't want to because we like screwing our customers for no good reason." Link?
Those straw men sure are easy to knock down, aren't they? :disgust: Care to explain why NVIDIA gives you "an enormous amount of choice" compared to ATI?
Profiles and the ability to turn optimizations, AA options, AF options, mipmapping options, etc on or off on an application by application basis.
The ability to use MSAA, SSAA, or a blend of the two (no SLI required for the blend either).
The ability to fully utilize the DX9 specification with regard to rendering precisions, the ability to utilize FP hardware blending.
Fully functional vertex shaders, not partially implimented versions that unload a signifigant amount of the work they should be doing onto the cpu (looping/branching).
Fully IEE compliant FP operations (which makes the GPU useful for researchers outside of graphics applications).
...
I could go on and on, but I think you start to get the picture. ATi relies on their optimizations and lack of user choice to maintain their speed advantage. Take away the optimizations and hardware shortcuts and they would fall flat on their face.
Weren't people saying exactly the same thing about nvidia last year? Both companies have great quality AA with this generation, I don't see why all video forum posts have to turn into a flame war.
ATI has profiles, too. Dear God, you may have to adjust it before playing a game if you want different settings for that game. Oh no, the horror. :roll:
I admit that having it loaded automatically per app is handy for the applications that don't let you control things from within the game, but those are getting pretty rare these days.
Yes, NVIDIA has SSAA on their cards (didn't we just go over this?). The performance penalty for the blended mode is pretty horrible, however.
ATI's cards meet the DX9.0/SM2.0 specs just fine.
Last I checked, that's called "The Geforce6 cards have SM3.0 and FP Framebuffer support", not "ATI doesn't like giving its users choices". Extrapolating from video card features to corporate/design philosophy is a bit of a stretch.
I'm pretty sure the FireGL cards also offer this (although I can't say I've ever needed it).
I fail to see how this at all follows from anything you said, but... uh, okay.
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