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MSAA or SSAA

RichardH754

RichardH754

RichardH754

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19 Nov 2009
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I normally use SSAA as i think it looks a bit better.

Performance is a lot slower with SSAA on though!

Which is best for Crossfire 5870s?

Just tried MSAA and performance is great + i can`t see the difference!
 
MSAA is multi-sampling and SSAA is super-sampling, they are two very different kind of AA technologies, SSAA may give a sharper and more crisp image but is very very performance heavy and make cards work hard.
 
SSAA, imagine taking the resolution of your monitor and rendering it at 4 times the size (that's 2x SSAA). Really heavy on graphics card RAM and performance, especially at high resolutions..


MSAA, imagine doing a similar thing, but only on some of the pixels of the image. SSAA is incredibly wasteful, but will eliminate jaggies with all certainty. MSAA is far more optimal, but won't necessarily get rid of all of them.

If it happens to work well with the game you're playing though, then thumbs up to MSAA and enjoy the extra fps :)
 
I really don't know with some people who insist they can tell a massive difference between say 2/4x normal AA and 8-16x, or SSAA.

If you're playing at a fairly high res and actually playing the game rather than sitting staring at a wall trying to spot the difference then beyond 4xaa at 1920x1200 theres very few games that it makes a noticeable difference in, if any.

In reviews they'll use a tiny one inch section of a high res screen and zoom in massively to show the difference, in normal screenshots its ruddy hard to tell the difference and the performance hit isn't worth it.

Generally I play with whatever settings let me play with an FPS thats smooth in that game without the min fps dropping to silly levels. If 8xaa gives 60fps average but drops to 20fps semi often and 4xaa will never drop below 40fps with the average at 80fps or something, the choice is made. If i'm hurtling along at 200fps, I'll whack on the higher settings for the "just in case" factor but really so few games when actually playing and running around, can I see the difference. Low/high settings for textures and shadows, yup, anything above 4xaa and the difference is so small as to be pointless.
 
One thing to bear in mind is that SSAA can easily blur textures since all sharp edges within a texture are filtered too by combining several samples. MSAA only smooths the edges of geometry.
 
SSAA is an old technology. Back in 1999, I remember first enabling it on my GeForce 256 32MB DDR where it was playable in 640x480 32bit and 4xSuperSamling in Need For Speed Porsche.
 
I'd go with MSAA - SSAA is a bit like cutting off your head to cure a headache...

For most stuff 4x MSAA is enough to remove the sub-conscious perception of jagged edges when actually playing on any modern resolution. The only reason really to go any higher is 32x on nVidia as its implemented slightly differently to the normal MSAA and increases the quality of the filtering overall which does make for a slight but perceptibly clearer/cleaner image overall.
 
It can depend on the game. I remember looking on SSAA when playing through Dragon Age (couldn't get it working on my 4870 :() because of the amount of jaggies on the shaders (armour, etc). Another case is Borderlands when forcing MSAA on ATI cards doesn't add AA to the cartoon outline around everything. In both cases, SSAA is the best way to go, since it gets rid of ALL jaggies (apparently NVidia's implementation is different and results in less jaggies on shaders, but is worse in other ways).

I'll be looking forward to SSAA on older titles when I get a 5000 series card :)
 
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