POLL: AA + AF performance vs. shader performance

[Jeff7181]

Which would you prefer. Obviously shaders are being used heavily in games now and require a lot of GPU power to run them. But what about AA and AF? It seems the only performance increases I've seen are at the cost of the level of quality AA and AF provide. My GeForce FX5900 was great with AF. I ran 8XAF in every game and it looked great. Now with my 6800 I have to run 16XAF to get the same level of quality as 8XAF on my FX5900. I don't like taking a step back when I upgrade.

I'm pretty happy with the shader performance of my 6800GT right now. With AA and AF off it doesn't even begin to choke on HL2 or Doom 3. What I would like to see is better quality AA and AF.

What do you think?

 

[Emultra]

Aliasing seens to behave differently in different engines.
HL2 (Source engine) has a lot of aliasing which needs to be taken care of fast.
Painkiller (PAIN engine) seems to have a lot less aliasing even at the same resolution.


Source definately needs both AA and AF pretty badly, and if I had to give the nice shaders up for that, I guess I would. Just because it's so easy to notice. But shaders also add a certain wow-effect (for me, anyways; my previous video card before my current ASUS N6600GT was a GainWard GF2 Pro ).

So, AA/AF is more about removing ugly things (aliasing/pixelating and texture blurring, respectively), whilst shaders add new effects.
Therefore, what is more important depends on how messed up the aliasing and texture blurring is in the first place, and conversely how bland the engine makes the environment look without shaders.

 

[xtknight]

You know, it's time for something innovative. The shader vs. AA+AF slider bar! Choices between manual and auto. An intelligent algorithm (kind of like SLI) will balance GPU power on what's being loaded the most (a la ASUS AI NOS), and increase the underdog by slanting the balance of performance between these two (AA+AF/shaders). Heh...I'm not joking. It's not that far-fetched, is it? Maybe that would require things to be unified which would in-turn slow performance a bit...I don't know...but choice never hurts.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Emultra
Aliasing seens to behave differently in different engines.
HL2 (Source engine) has a lot of aliasing which needs to be taken care of fast.
Painkiller (PAIN engine) seems to have a lot less aliasing even at the same resolution.


Source definately needs both AA and AF pretty badly, and if I had to give the nice shaders up for that, I guess I would. Just because it's so easy to notice. But shaders also add a certain wow-effect (for me, anyways; my previous video card before my current ASUS N6600GT was a GainWard GF2 Pro ).

So, AA/AF is more about removing ugly things (aliasing/pixelating and texture blurring, respectively), whilst shaders add new effects.
Therefore, what is more important depends on how messed up the aliasing and texture blurring is in the first place, and conversely how bland the engine makes the environment look without shaders.

Aliasing is aliasing. You'll see it 95% of the time, unless you're dead-on looking at straight lines on your whole screen. There's no way engines can make this less apparent or more apparent. It just happens. The same goes for mipmaps. I guess they could try extremely hard to coneal these effects, but nevertheless they are never gone. Generally that's not the case. For me, higher res is a lot more important than enabling AA on a lower resolution.

Yes, if my game looked like utter crap when shaders were disabled, I'd definitely give up AA/AF because for me they don't help as much as shaders. Shaders seem a lot less intensive though, so I think AA/AF needs more performance. I'm saying shaders are more important though. I think shaders give you a better visual experience for the little performance they take, versus FSAA which I can barely tell. AF isn't too intensive, but it doesn't make things look a WHOLE lot better for me, especially when I'm moving.

Which makes me think of something else: Why not disable AA when the client is moving the screen? Who the hell can tell if AA is on while their mouse is rapidly moving (especially in multiplayer?) Save the frames and render extremely high quality when still, and medicore but unnoticably different quality while moving. Or at least gradually reduce AA as the moving increases? Turn the LOD bias up (lower quality) a notch also? It's still not that advanced. That way your game isn't jerky and you can still sit still and watch high-def quality graphics on your monitor. What do you guys think? Maybe I'll make an engine that does that...some day...some day. *cough*choke*

 

[ddogg]

ya me 2...better AA/AF

 

[Munky]

Do you mean quality or performance? Usually, if the image quality is not good, then the card sux, whether it's affecting shaders or AA/AF. If you're talking about how fast a card performs shaders or AA/AF, then I say shaders, because modern games are becoming increasingly shader-heavy.

You realize, of course, that the two aspects are dependent on different things. AA/AF is more dependent on the memory bandwidth of the card, while shaders need a fast gpu. Modern cards get AF almost for free, and soon AA might not cause much of a performance hit either. Complex shaders, on the other hand, require a beefy gpu, and a shader that is too long or complex can bring even a x850xtpe to a crawl. So, my vote goes to shaders.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: munky
Do you mean quality or performance? Usually, if the image quality is not good, then the card sux, whether it's affecting shaders or AA/AF. If you're talking about how fast a card performs shaders or AA/AF, then I say shaders, because modern games are becoming increasingly shader-heavy.

You realize, of course, that the two aspects are dependent on different things. AA/AF is more dependent on the memory bandwidth of the card, while shaders need a fast gpu. Modern cards get AF almost for free, and soon AA might not cause much of a performance hit either. Complex shaders, on the other hand, require a beefy gpu, and a shader that is too long or complex can bring even a x850xtpe to a crawl. So, my vote goes to shaders.

I mean both... I want better quality AA and AF with very little performance hit. Build a dedicated part for video cards that do this. Make 16XAA and 16XAF a standard for everything. Jagged edges, shimmering objects in the distance, blurry textures... all unacceptable in my opinion. We have the technology to "fix" those problems... so do it... I'm tired of half assed AA and AF.

I mean yeah... shader performance is, and will be important... but we've already got A LOT of power... and the next generation of cards should be roughly double apparentely. So lets cool it with the shiny water and lense flairs and work on anti-aliasing at least. The blurry textures AF fixes can kinda be hidden with other effects that can be done with shaders I guess. But I'm really sick of looking at stuff in the distance shimmering as the view changes. Flight Simulator is the worst... you see little buildings off in the distance, and it looks like there's an earthquake because of the edge crawling.

 

[SonicIce]

shaders are sexy

 

[hans030390]

i seem to be the only one who could care less for AF/AA....i've never used it, therefore never cared about whether i could use it or not...(mainly because of the crappy hardware i've had before)

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well it isn't a problem with the 6800's. It is merely a design limitation. Remember to use AF it has to use an ALU thereby taking it away from the Pixel Shaders. Their AA however is superb.

-Kevin

 

[Gstanfor]

What really needs to occur is filtering and anti-aliasing for shader effects (without having to write an approximation of these into the actual shader).

Texture and edge aliasing is painfully apparent in Doom3 (especially on grated floors), and can be seen in plenty of other games too (like the 3dmark05 mesh bridge, bridge railings in HL2) and it really detracts quite badly from overall IQ.

It's not nVidia specific either, all cards I have seen suffer from it.

Personally I would much rather see this problem addressed in the upcoming generation than I would see things like 128 bit floating point rendering, but I have a feeling it probably won't be. Hopefully I'm wrong.

 

[trinibwoy]

The poll results are a sign of the times. Right now AA/AF is more important to most people because shaders have now started to have an significant impact on visual quality. In the future, when games are chock full of high quality shaders people will realize that shader power is much more important. Although AF is something I could never do without in most FPS'.

 

[BFG10K]

Both are equally as important. Without shaders we'd go back to dull and static environments.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Both are equally as important. Without shaders we'd go back to dull and static environments.

well, yeah, but I don't think his intention was to eliminate shaders completely in favor of AA/AF. maybe 60% power on AA/AF and 40% on shaders or something like that. of course this is only for the current situation (this generation, since shader performance is very decent to begin with (i.e. we don't need more shader performance for now, we need more AA/AF)). next generation could change everything.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Both are equally as important. Without shaders we'd go back to dull and static environments.

well, yeah, but I don't think his intention was to eliminate shaders completely in favor of AA/AF. maybe 60% power on AA/AF and 40% on shaders or something like that. of course this is only for the current situation (this generation, since shader performance is very decent to begin with (i.e. we don't need more shader performance for now, we need more AA/AF)). next generation could change everything.

Actually my opinion is that AA/AF technology (or quality) is falling behind. Yeah, you can have beautiful, high polygon, self shadowed, realistically lit models with high resolution textures... but if the textures viewed at an angle are blurry, and edges are aliased, it REALLY detracts from the realism.

 

[Gstanfor]

well, yeah, but I don't think his intention was to eliminate shaders completely in favor of AA/AF. maybe 60% power on AA/AF and 40% on shaders or something like that. of course this is only for the current situation (this generation, since shader performance is very decent to begin with (i.e. we don't need more shader performance for now, we need more AA/AF)). next generation could change everything.

We don't necessarily need MORE AF & AA (although any reduction in the performance hit AA exacts is certainly welcome), we need AF & AA to be applied everywhere (meaning on shader effects as well as ordinary textures etc) and for shader power to continue rising.

 

[JBT]

It would be nice if the hit from 4x AA wasn't so much. 4x at pretty much any high resolution makes jaggies disapear. 2x I still even notice them on 1920x1200 with 4x they are gone but the perforamance just isn't there.

 

[McArra]

AA is ok but the setting I can't live without is AF. Also y use 2xQ and 8xAF in every game except in Farcry and Sprinter Cell CT (HDR and AA= no go LOL) that I use only 8xAF.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

well, yeah, but I don't think his intention was to eliminate shaders completely in favor of AA/AF. maybe 60% power on AA/AF and 40% on shaders or something like that. of course this is only for the current situation (this generation, since shader performance is very decent to begin with (i.e. we don't need more shader performance for now, we need more AA/AF)). next generation could change everything.

We don't necessarily need MORE AF & AA (although any reduction in the performance hit AA exacts is certainly welcome), we need AF & AA to be applied everywhere (meaning on shader effects as well as ordinary textures etc) and for shader power to continue rising.

yeah I agree... that's what I said, or if not, that's what I meant. then it would just be a non-issue, off to the side thing with no performance influence.

 

[ronnn]

This is an interesting question and I am not sure. Will be interesting to see what the new xbox does with the extra shaders potential. :beer: