Downsampling Made Simple With Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

Agent Orange · 6 Mar 2014 at 07:44

I *WISH* State of Decay would support res over 1080. I love that game but man what a lousy port it was.

almighty15 · 6 Mar 2014 at 08:30

Down sampling aint all that and is inferior to SGSSAA that is built into AMD's drivers.

You just have to set AA mode to 'Enahnce' in CCC or Driver Pro... It works in loads of games.

In games that it doesn;t work work in just change AA 'Quality' to 'Adaptive'

That will then apply super sampling to the transparent objects in the game like tree's, fences...etc...etc....

4xMSAA+4xTRSAA produces a very clean image and 8xMSAA+8xTrSSAA is, in my opion on level with super sample AA without the massive performance drop.

Agent Orange · 6 Mar 2014 at 09:36

I personally don't see it that way but each to their own. Good thing is we all have these options to try and find what works best for you.

LtMatt · 6 Mar 2014 at 09:39

almighty15 said:
Down sampling aint all that and is inferior to SGSSAA that is built into AMD's drivers.

You just have to set AA mode to 'Enahnce' in CCC or Driver Pro... It works in loads of games.

In games that it doesn;t work work in just change AA 'Quality' to 'Adaptive'

That will then apply super sampling to the transparent objects in the game like tree's, fences...etc...etc....

4xMSAA+4xTRSAA produces a very clean image and 8xMSAA+8xTrSSAA is, in my opion on level with super sample AA without the massive performance drop.

Have you managed to get either working in BF4 or Thief?

jimhaumman · 6 Mar 2014 at 14:21

Agent Orange said:
Yep uninstall current monitor driver and re-install in device manager using 'have disk' option and point it to the .inf file. CRU still just doesn't work for me, even with the 'include extension block' unchecked which I was unsure about previously. The regedit trick @Matson posted on here a while ago works a peach for me though.

Having played around a bit more with graphically demanding games like Metro LL, Crysis 3, BF4, AC4 etc I've noticed that on my 1080p monitor, running at 1530p is equivalent to 4-8X AA with lower drops in FPS. 1530p downsampled with no AA literally looks the same (to me) as 1080p with 8X AA. If I can put 2 or 4X AA on I will but it's barely necessary. It's even better in older games where you can downsample and add AA.

When I uninstall driver (generic PNP monitor),monitor disappeared from device manager list./scan for hardware changes/monitor shows up with the same driver
"have disk" is only in add legacy driver,when I using this option again in common hardware types can't see monitor/show all devices can't find dell/what shall I look for then?

Matson · 6 Mar 2014 at 15:16

Agent Orange said:
Yep uninstall current monitor driver and re-install in device manager using 'have disk' option and point it to the .inf file. CRU still just doesn't work for me, even with the 'include extension block' unchecked which I was unsure about previously. The regedit trick @Matson posted on here a while ago works a peach for me though.

Having played around a bit more with graphically demanding games like Metro LL, Crysis 3, BF4, AC4 etc I've noticed that on my 1080p monitor, running at 1530p is equivalent to 4-8X AA with lower drops in FPS. 1530p downsampled with no AA literally looks the same (to me) as 1080p with 8X AA. If I can put 2 or 4X AA on I will but it's barely necessary. It's even better in older games where you can downsample and add AA.

I have to agree with you... iv ran games using 8xSSAA 4xSSAA 8xMSAA and I prefere downsampling.
When I use SSAA it just seems too smooth and blurry for me but with downsampling everything looks so much sharper and you also lose a lot of the jaggies.
Plus running Crysis 3 @ 1530p with no AA looks great and I seem to get much less of a fps drop than I would if I was using AA.

almighty15 · 6 Mar 2014 at 18:07

LtMatt said:
Have you managed to get either working in BF4 or Thief?

Don't have Theif so can't try it... Not tried SGSSAA in BF4 but I know Adaptive transparency super sampling works in BF4 as I use it.

Agent Orange · 6 Mar 2014 at 22:42

jimhaumman said:
When I uninstall driver (generic PNP monitor),monitor disappeared from device manager list./scan for hardware changes/monitor shows up with the same driver
"have disk" is only in add legacy driver,when I using this option again in common hardware types can't see monitor/show all devices can't find dell/what shall I look for then?

Ok sorry bud gave you a slight bum steer before. Try this:

Right click PNP Monitor in device manager, select properties, go to the driver tab, click update driver, click browse my computer for driver software, then click let me pick from a list, then have disk and find that new .inf file.

That should work for ya mate.

jimhaumman · 7 Mar 2014 at 14:50

Agent Orange said:
Ok sorry bud gave you a slight bum steer before. Try this:

Right click PNP Monitor in device manager, select properties, go to the driver tab, click update driver, click browse my computer for driver software, then click let me pick from a list, then have disk and find that new .inf file.

That should work for ya mate.

No it won't work.
When I do as you wrote I get info that driver is up to date.

Matson · 8 Mar 2014 at 13:24

Did you ever manage to get it working?. im running all games at 1530p now and they look great and the frame loss isn't too bad compared to using AA.

LtMatt · 8 Mar 2014 at 13:43

almighty15 said:
Don't have Theif so can't try it... Not tried SGSSAA in BF4 but I know Adaptive transparency super sampling works in BF4 as I use it.

Can you try both in BF4? Always looking for ways to improve the image quality and i know AMD's supersampling is the best out there. Do you use enhance or override to setup SS and Adapptive?

Matson · 8 Mar 2014 at 14:23

Matt do you find that supersampling always kind of blurs the image too much... Iv used it in a few games and yeah it smooths out jaggies but to me it always looks too smooth and a little blurry...but downsampling on the other hand makes everything look so much sharper since your essentially running a higher res on the same size screen and much less of a performance drop to.

Running crysis 3 @ 1530p looks and runs great if I ran it at 1080p with supersampling it would be verging on too slow.

rolypolyman · 8 Mar 2014 at 16:50

Used CRU, its so simple, playing Dishonoured at 1440p on my 1080p 27" monitor and I have to say it looks great, like a 1440p monitor but half the price! Now the downside, 1440p on the desktop the text looks terrible, any fix for that?

tommybhoy · 8 Mar 2014 at 17:26

Increase text scaling, or just run 1080p on the dektop.

@Matson,

Downscaling's looking sharper than SS for me too.

Matson · 8 Mar 2014 at 18:54

rolypolyman said:
Used CRU, its so simple, playing Dishonoured at 1440p on my 1080p 27" monitor and I have to say it looks great, like a 1440p monitor but half the price! Now the downside, 1440p on the desktop the text looks terrible, any fix for that?

Crank that up to 1530p

didn't notice much performance difference.
I just run 1080p on desktop as like you said the text looks rubbish.

rolypolyman · 9 Mar 2014 at 23:35

Matson said:
Crank that up to 1530p didn't notice much performance difference.
I just run 1080p on desktop as like you said the text looks rubbish.

Took your advice mate and it just so happens that 2720X1530 is the max res that Dishonoured plays at, my god it looks amazing, Thanks!

almighty15 · 30 Jun 2014 at 21:00

almighty15 said:
I get signal distortion running anything higher then my native resolution.

Sucks balls... I just used super sample in the CCC anyway.... Works in most games tbh...

Just to say that the cause of this was me using DVI, it maxes out at 2560x1600 and I was using resolutions above that which is what caused the image problems.

Running display port and get no distortion at all.

oldestgregg · 30 Jun 2014 at 23:05

What exactly is this? Sorry to ask the noob questions but I have a dell 1400p and was wondering if I could use it or if I should use it and what would the benefits be?

tommybhoy · 30 Jun 2014 at 23:51

It's a downsampling utility for your monitor, your tricking your monitor to run a higher resolution than(in your case) 1400p giving better IQ, it's more demanding on your gpu as it thinks it's running whatever resolution you set.

It's the easiest tool for AMD but if your an Nvidia user, you can downsample other ways:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

What is downsampling

Downsampling, also called OGSSAA : Ordered Grid SuperSampling AntiAliasing, is in this case the concept of rendering the game at a much higher, custom made, resolution than your monitor is capable of displaying and subsequently having the GPU rescale the image ( as in downsample ) to that of your monitor's native resolution to which the end result is a "cleaner", sharper and less aliased image.

Why

King of all AA methods, affects virtually every kind of aliasing but it's also very taxing which is why we have other less demanding alternatives, SMAA, MLAA, FXAA etc. Sadly we are in a position where we have pc-games shipping with "AA on/off" options or have AA implementations that leads much to be desired making people use other forms of externally forced AA.

We're also at a point in this "generation" where the discrepancy between pc and console hardware is bigger than ever giving pc-users a much larger performance overhead. What I mean by that is that there are a lot of people out there with hardware that can run many/most new games and virtually any older game at higher resolutions than 1920x1080 while still maintaining an acceptable framerate even though 1920x1080 is still the standard resolution of most of our monitors.

Using downsampling you almost never will have to worry about a game's image quality being ruined by lack of AA since it works in almost any 3D game out there. Compared to other types of AA solutions like SMAA/FXAA-injectors or "Nvidia Inspector AA" you won't need to fiddle with settings or files at all, when it comes to downsampling via custom resolution once you got it up and running it's just a matter of using that resolution in any game and presto you got yourself some AA brewing. It is worth pointing at that downsampling still works great with those aforementioned AA methods ( injectors, inspector etc ) and whatever kind of AA solution/s the games you want to play offer, you can mix,match and stack AA to your heart's content.

oldestgregg · 30 Jun 2014 at 23:54

tommybhoy said:
It's a downsampling utility for your monitor, your tricking your monitor to run a higher resolution than(in your case) 1400p giving better IQ, it's more demanding on your gpu as it thinks it's running whatever resolution you set.

It's the easiest tool for AMD but if your an Nvidia user, you can downsample other ways:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

Ah I see. Ill have to see what my 780s can manage or more to the point my monitor can handle. Thanks for that