QUincunx, what is it? should i use it?

[Hammyton]

I always run my games in 4x AA but i found out there is this Quincunx option.... (I have g4 ti4200).... I have heard this option gives better peformance (I have been looking for ways to make my games run faster) but has bad visual quality...
Could anyone explain to me what exactly Quincunx is, and if it is a option that I should be using?

 

[Rand]

Think of Quincunx as a MultiSampled AA with a slightly different sampling pattern then nVidia's typical 2X RG MSAA with a blur filter applied.
Quincunx offers performance slightly worse then 2X FSAA, but quite a bit better then 4X FSAA.
It reduces jaggies almost as well as 4X, and significantly better then 2X.
Only problem is that the blur filter applied effectively kills image quality IMHO, if that game being run has any significant degree of 2D text it's a nightmare, and it severely diminishes texture rendering quality.

Personally I hate Quincunx, it's useless unless anisotropic filtering is applied... and applying anisotropic filtering effectively nulfies any performance advantage it might once have had.

If you don't mind blurred textures then you may care for Quincunx, and it's certainly faster then 4X FSAA..... but personally I'd rather disable antialiasing entirely then suffer quincunx.

 

[Hammyton]

but your saying that if i apply like 2x anisotropic it will offset the loss in quality of text and such?

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: Hammyton
but your saying that if i apply like 2x anisotropic it will offset the loss in quality of text and such?

To some degree, yes. You may need to bump it up to around 4-8X to completely offset the blurred textures and loss of textual quality, but it'll certainly help.
Rendering accuracy still won't be quite as good as it would without antialiasing, or 2X/4X AA though.

Personally I'd suggest you avoid Quincunx altogether.
Once you apply anisotropic filtering your pretty quickly going to see the same performance hit as you would with 4X AA in any case.

Still, I suppose it wouldnt hurt to at least give it a try... perhaps you won't mind the blurriness. There are certainly a few out there that like Quincunx.