How important is AA?

daninthemix

daninthemix

daninthemix

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First off - I run 1920x1200.

Just wondering how important AA is to all of you. I find it's the one thing that can really kill my frame rate if I crank it up.

Crysis plays around 20, maybe 25 fps when I have the AA on 16q but shoots way up when I drop it to 4x.

Other games are the same.

What's a reasonable level of AA?
 
AA and AF are literally the last things on the list of settings i like to turn up. If a game is running perfectly with everything else turned up, then i'll start looking at adding AA and AF.

It's ultimately going to be down to the preference of the user though. I'm not all that fussed by jaggies as long as the res is reasonable enough, whereas on the other hand i know of people who are driven mad by them. I honestly can't tell the difference between 4x and 8x if the res is running at native.
 
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Streeteh said:
AA and AF are literally the last things on the list of settings i like to turn up. If a game is running perfectly with everything else turned up, then i'll start looking at adding AA and AF.
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yep same here. But then, i've been gaming at 720 for a while so don't really notice any difference with AA
 
AA is the only setting up until very recently that I was willing to compromise with to some degree. Though with the next card I might be a little less forgiving since I want to enable slightly higher levels in future. I haven't yet tried Dx11 so I can't comment on things like DoF or tessellation, though I have a pretty good idea what to expect.

AF has always been set to the highest and always will be.
 
Vital imo. I usually avoid games when you can enable AA tho their are exceptions due to gameplay i like with not much choice of other titles.

I mean if the jaggies arnt really bad and barely noticable then i might not be too bothered but almost most games have jaggies and i really have to use AA to make em look smooth gfx even if its just 2x as some games have really bad jaggies (large ones) which are far too distracting and make games look untidy.

AF i usually use 8x AF because i cant visually see any benefit from x16 AF.

I feel so sorry for console gamers. Their in desperate need of AF because its blury textures right near you imo (think of the road textures in car games) about the front of the car then after its all blured textures. Which i couldnt see playing a game with blury textures imo. And AA, damn jaggy some of the console games it really ruins the visual enjoyment.
 
it depends on your resolution how important AA is, on high resolutions turning off AA has no discernible effect on image quality.

AF effects the quality of distant textures but does not effect textures that are near, it usually comes with little fps penalty so I generally max out this setting.
 
I leave AA off completely for more demanding games.

I don't notice the jaggies, but I started my gaming journey on an Atari 2600, so jaggies are like an old friend to me :p
 
i did notice a fair bit of improvement in Crysis at 720 actually. but i think that anything higher than x4 was taxing my 5850 a little.
I find motion blur to make more of difference, picture quality-wise tbh.
 
It's very important to me. Even at 1920x1200 the jaggies bother me. First thing I do with a new game is set 2xMSAA, then get everything else up as high as possible. If I can go higher, then I'll try setting super-sampling or edge-detect.

I can play games with no AA, it's not too excruciating. Depends on the title really. If you're looking off into the distance a lot, like in an MMO or some FPS then it seems important. But games like Civ5 and SC just don't need it as all the models are relatively "close" to the camera.

I can't stand when there's like a rope or pole in the distance and it's basically just a zig-zag line of 10 or so pixels. It's really distracting.
 
SkeeterUK said:
I feel so sorry for console gamers. Their in desperate need of AF because its blury textures right near you imo (think of the road textures in car games) about the front of the car then after its all blured textures. Which i couldnt see playing a game with blury textures imo.
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try playing GTA iv and tuning motion blur on/off. with it on it looks like the 360 version, but with the push of a button it turns off and improves the picture 100fold imo.:)
 
With all the different elements moving in modern day games 1920x1200 on a 24" monitor really doesn't require any AA for me. Way too busy concentrating on playing than the jaggies, and if it's something whereby i'll notice them, it's probably too slow and boring to interest me anyway :)
 
Even in a lot of games with 4-8 AA enabled, I still see a lot of annoying jaggies.

I usually try to use 16x with 8x supersampling forced through my drivers if i can.
 
Adrianr said:
With all the different elements moving in modern day games 1920x1200 on a 24" monitor really doesn't require any AA for me. Way too busy concentrating on playing than the jaggies, and if it's something whereby i'll notice them, it's probably too slow and boring to interest me anyway :)
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Same here, playing on this resolution AA is rarely a big issue.
 
Pighardia said:
try playing GTA iv and tuning motion blur on/off. with it on it looks like the 360 version, but with the push of a button it turns off and improves the picture 100fold imo.:)
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I play gta4 and its horrible with jaggies. The hi def thing (sharpens the game) makes the jaggies a lot worse. I usually have to keep the p key thing turned on so it blurs the jaggies (not that good tho) even tho i dont like the blured image its better than jaggies. GOD WILL RS EVER GIVE US AA ON THIS GAME GRR!!!

Sry had to. :p
 
I do like my aa, bfbc2 i play with 8x msaa, 16x af, runs extremely well on my sli setup, moh i play with 32x aa, bit less demanding than bfbc2. Fps is always consistent in both games.
 
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Playing GTA 4 earlier with x2AA ionly game at 1650 so need a little AA on, but tbh i dont mind too much about jaggies either as i grew up with them.

Its the ultimate Frame rate killer, so low as i can get away with !
 
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I game at 1080p on a 24" monitor and I agree with what has already been said and that AA is the last thing I max out.

I always set AF max because there is hardly any performance hit and for me hitting around 60 fps is what I aim for and I only really enable AA if doesn't greatly affect my framerates.
 
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