SSAA, what's required for this at 1080P

[Attic]

Thinking about biting the bullet and going xFire for 2-4xSSAA goodness on some games.

Tomb Raider
Sleeping Dogs
Metro Last Light
other

Mostly newer games. I know 1 290x is not enough for this at good frames.

What it comes down to for me is there is shimmering I get during gameplay that is like nails on a chalkboard at certain times of gameplay, no setting i've found other than SSAA seems to get rid of it and sometimes nothing gets rid of it. SSAA seems best to get rid of this, but it murders framerate. Would 4k get rid of that shimmering with no AA?


Other question is can SSAA be applied to any game through drivers or does the game have to support it?

Am I totally walking down wrong path on this?

 

[Anarchist420]

Thinking about biting the bullet and going xFire for 2-4xSSAA goodness on some games. Tomb Raider Sleeping Dogs Metro Last Light other Mostly newer games. I know 1 290x is not enough for this at good frames. What it comes down to for me is there is shimmering I get during gameplay that is like nails on a chalkboard at certain times of gameplay, no setting i've found other than SSAA seems to get rid of it and sometimes nothing gets rid of it. SSAA seems best to get rid of this, but it murders framerate. Would 4k get rid of that shimmering with no AA? Other question is can SSAA be applied to any game through drivers or does the game have to support it? Am I totally walking down wrong path on this?

AMD is not as good at SGSSAA support as nvidia is if i am not mistaken. lords of shadow is sponsored by amd yet driver-forced SGSSAA works without severe rendering error only on nvidia hardware.

4k would not reduce the shimmering at all just as it doesnt decrease edge aliasing.

in my opinion, you are totally walking down the wrong path by getting a 2nd 290X.

 

[BrightCandle]

I know how you feel, I hate the choice of shimmering verses blurry with todays cheap Antialiasing methods. The challenge you face is that super sampling anti aliasing is extremely taxing, 4x as taxing as just normal rendering. So while its possible in games that really aren't hard to render the games you are listing are not exactly going to be amenable to this level of antialiasing. Realistically to get the performance you do today you wouldn't probably need 4 cards, and the latency would be much larger.

Its simply not an easily solved problem, even SSAA has artefacts and patterns that are caused by the algorithm itself. All of this is solving for the huge pixels we have on todays screens, and the only way to eliminate it complete is for the screens to be about the same size as they are today but have a vertical resolution somewhere around 12,000 (instead of 1080). 4k helps but it doesn't eliminate the issue and certainly wont be the end of monitor pixel density scaling.

I wish I could give you a solution but I can't. TXAA works in a few games and actually its pretty good at eliminating the shimmer, but its Nvidia only and its only in a small number of games. Using a combination of FXAA and MSAA can sometimes reduce the impact because of the extra blur it introduces, although personally I hate blur.

 

[SlickR12345]

I actually hate the blur, I mean low level AA is okay to fix the jagged edges, but I've experienced that from low level AA to high level or different more taxing AA options there is not much difference.

So all you can do is basically ignore the small details and focus on the gameplay, rather than the visuals.

 

[Deders]

I played both Tomb Raider and Metro: Last Light with 2x SSAA on a single 670, wouldn't have been as smooth without the overclock though.

 

[sxr7171]

All three with 780ti.

 

[PPB]

Basically the same you would require for playing 4k without any AA at all(if you are using SSAAx2 at 1080p).

 

[Pottuvoi]

Basically the same you would require for playing 4k without any AA at all(if you are using SSAAx4 at 1080p).

Fixed it for you.

4k has 4x pixels of 1080p.

 

[Attic]

I'm going to mess around more with some AA in CCC, edge detect and Morphological. SSAA is behind a 60fps min priority for me, and achieving both now looks too daunting on the newer games.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Crossfire is not a great solution for SSAA performance, it requires a lot of additional vRAM and when you crossfire or SLI cards you do not add the total amount of vRAM together, you get the same amount.

I'd advise aiming for card with a really decent GPU and a larger than normal amount of vRAM, the cards that are designed for multi-monitor off one card are probably a good bet, remember that SSAA is basically rendering at a much higher resolution then scaling it down to your native to achieve the anti-aliasing effect so it's not unlike running the kind of large tiled resolutions you see in tri-monitor setups.

 

[PPB]

nvm

 

[Face2Face]

OP, have you tried injecting SMAA with a utility like Radeon Pro? I personally find SMAA to be a great AA alternative vs. FXAA and MSAA. The performance impact with it at SMAA 1x is higher than FXAA, but less than 2X MSAA. I can't say that I have seen much of the crawling or shimmering effect with it; but like you, I definitely notice it with MSAA.

http://www.radeonpro.info/features/post-processing/smaa/


SSAA is the best looking AA option, but it's the most performance hungry as well. Just think, if you turn up SSAA to 4X @ 1080p you are internally rendering the game @ 4K (3840X2160). Move it down to 2X SSAA and you are rendering the game at 2688x1512. It's likely that running Metro Last Light @ 2XSSAA @ 1080p with a R9 290X would be feasible. Metro LL uses another form of AA; called AAA. It's a proprietary AA, that 4A uses in their engine. It cannot be disabled, so you with have no choice to use it in conjunction with SSAA. One thing to add about Metro LL, is that if you do decide to use SSAA, don't worry about VRAM usage. I have played the the game with 4XSSAA @ 1440P (Internally rendering @ 5K) and it uses less than 1.8GB of VRAM. I haven't delved into the SSAA options for Tomb Raider or Sleeping Dogs yet, but it's on my list. I am interested to see the impact in many areas.

 

[Anarchist420]

I'm going to mess around more with some AA in CCC, edge detect and Morphological. SSAA is behind a 60fps min priority for me, and achieving both now looks too daunting on the newer games.

i remember that edge detect was pretty awesome for the games that worked with it. i cant stand any form of morphological aa though

 

[sxr7171]

I can say that Tomb Raider runs at 60fps with rare dips with 2x SSAA on a 780ti.

I'm not sure what the internal AA in sleeping dogs and metro ll is but both can be maxed out at 60fps with rare dips in Metro LL and constant 60fps in Sleeping Dogs. The latter game performs much better after all its updates.

 

[SAAA]

One day I'll end up being confused for a new video filter...

 

[Attic]

One day I'll end up being confused for a new video filter...

Done!



Looking into Radeon Pro. i'll revisit sleeping dogs, 290 should crush that with SSAA. Just got locked into Burial Ep 2 which looks incredible after being disappointed with Ep 1.

 

[MTDEW]

Done!



Looking into Radeon Pro. i'll revisit sleeping dogs, 290 should crush that with SSAA. Just got locked into Burial Ep 2 which looks incredible after being disappointed with Ep 1.

Sleeping Dogs actually has its own FXAA+SSAA "combo" option that looks great and certainly does play just fine with a 290.
But be sure and watch your core and VRM temps, because with the highest SSAA enabled in-game it heats up my GPU more than any other game I've tested.
So much so, that I now include Sleeping Dogs with max SSAA as part of my stability testing for my GPU clocks/temps.

 

[Deders]

What's the point in FXAA if you are already using SSAA?

 

[MTDEW]

What's the point in FXAA if you are already using SSAA?

LOL...no clue either.
I believe we all asked the same thing when Sleeping Dogs was first released and that was it's highest AA option.
It does work well though for such and odd combo and it's the only time Ive ever seen that "combination" type of AA in a game.
Anandtech actually used it to test GTX 780 performance in a review.
GTX 780 Review

Like most console ports, Sleeping Dogs’ base assets are not extremely demanding, but it makes up for it with its interesting anti-aliasing implementation, a mix of FXAA and SSAA that at its highest settings does an impeccable job of removing jaggies. However by effectively rendering the game world multiple times over, it can also require a very powerful video card to drive these high AA modes.