What is does Anti-aliasing and Anistropic Filtering do?

[Oifish]

Which one should I have set higher or should both be set to the max. I have the newst Omega drivers so I think I have the Catalyst 4.10 control panel.

 

[naruto1988]

usually they are off. if you are playing a game and you still have extra video processing power, you can turn them on for better image quality. i think anistropic filtering to anti-aliasing ratio is 2:1.

 

[Marsumane]

Ever look at something that should be straight and has a "stair step" like effect to it instead of it being straight? AA fixes that. The more AA, the less stair-like it will appear. It basically smoothes edges.

Ever look at some textures, such as the ground off in the distance and notice its blurrier then the ground at your feet? AF fixes that. The more AF, the more defined the textures in the background will be. It basically eliminates blurryness on distant textures that could be more defined.

If you already have a high res, aa will be less effective because they are already made up of more defined pixels. Thats y i use af before aa because i usually play at 1280 or 1600 before i even touch aa or af. So i reccomend a high resolution, with some af if you can afford it. If u can afford more, go something like 2xaa , 4x af. That combination, at a high res, results in a very good iq.

 

[BFG10K]

Basicially AA removes jagged edges and AF sharpness the image. I suggest maximum resolution & AF and then using AA if you have power to spare.

 

[dguy6789]

yea, on any radeon 9X00 and up card, always have 16XAF, as on even a 9200SE has less then 5% performance loss going from nothing to 16XAF.

 

[OMG1Penguin]

Although AA usually has a dramatic effect on framerate. 2x is low impact on FPS, but pretty high impact on IQ. From there, it's exponential.