Supersampling

[RyanW2050]

Why does it eat my system up while playing WoW where there's a lot of trees?

It's the ONLY setting i can't peg and still get excellent FPS in WoW. 16xAF and 16xQAA are absolutely fine, but as soon as i switch Supersampling on my FPS drops hard when i see trees.



What does this setting drain? GPU power?

 

[JAG87]

Super sampling renders the image at a greater resolution and then downscales it back to the original resolution.

When you use 16QAA by itself you are using Multi sampling which is a geometrical type of anti aliasing, it only works the edges of geometrical objects.

Super sampling on the other hand just renders the whole frame at higher res, and then brings it back down. It's a very inefficient way of doing anti aliasing, but it does provide the best image quality.

Thats why when you are looking at those trees, and you are using SSAA, think that they are being rendered at far above your native resolution. Thats why it slows down so much.

 

[Cookie Monster]

The G92 cores have an updated TRAA algorithm that makes TR MSAA look just as good as the TR SSAA counterpart without the horrendous performance hit.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
The G92 cores have an updated TRAA algorithm that makes TR MSAA look just as good as the TR SSAA counterpart without the horrendous performance hit.

I'd like to see an article on this. Sounds interesting...
While using my card I just assumed that old definitions still hold true.

 

[Cookie Monster]

New Transparency Multisampling Algorithm

NVIDIA also now has a new transparency multisampling algorithm in use that it has implanted in its latest drivers. This new algorithm works on every GeForce 8 series video cards and is not restricted to just the GeForce 8800 GT. This new mode is employed by the latest drivers, version 167.37 and the new 169.01. NVIDIA has developed a new transparency multisampling method that has image quality almost similar to transparent supersampling but without the large performance hit. This new mode replaces the previous TRMS with a new TRMS; the option in the driver control panel is still labeled the same however. NVIDIA claims that the new TRMS mode is on average 6% slower than standard 4X AA. This feature will certainly be welcomed as we can enable TRMS and receive better antialiasing on alpha textures compared to the previous algorithm, with less of a performance hit than TRSS takes.

Link

I cant find the links with actual screenshots but the new TRMSAA is vastly improved.

 

[BFG10K]

Why does it eat my system up while playing WoW where there's a lot of trees?

TrAA operates on alpha textures - vegetation, chain-link fences, grates, that kind of stuff.

If you're running 16xQ when you hit a lot of trees each leaf and blade of grass is getting 8x super-sampling applied to it which is very expensive to compute.

To speed things up use an AA mode that has a lower MSAA component such as 4x/8x/16x (i.e. none of the 'Q' modes) and if you're still not happy, switch to TrMS instead of TrSS.