Nvidia FXAA/Antialiasing setting

[chivs688]

I have a GTX 480 and with the recent driver update, there is now an option to enable FXAA in the Nvidia Control Panel.

I have set this to On, as I would like to use FXAA as my antialiasing.

However, underneath there is still the setting for "Antialiasing - Mode" and then "Antialiasing - Setting".

What I thought was that by putting the "Antialiasing - FXAA" setting to On, then this would be the whole antialiasing set for my settings. However I still have to set an option for the other two settings mentioned above.

So this is where I am confused as to what to set the others as. Do I set them as Off, as I have the FXAA setting on, and my games will have the antialiasing?
Or am I not understanding the setting correctly?

Any help much appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[chivs688]

Anyone?

 

[Lordgrayone]

Depends
If you want to just use FXAA then you can turn the other one to off or you can leave it to application controlled and you can then use the in game options aswell.

I have never tried FXAA so could not comment on which is best to use.

 

[yashiro]

In global settings:
Leave Anti-aliasing Mode and Setting as Application Controlled.
Leave Anti-aliasing FXAA as Off.

Then enable FXAA on a PER GAME basis. You will get all kinds of weirdness if you apply it globally.

Forcing the 'Anti-aliasing Mode' and 'Setting' is usually a bad idea. Use in game options to enable Multi-sampling instead.

You can have both Multi-sampling and FXAA enabled at the same time as they work differently on rendered scenes.

 

[chivs688]

In global settings:
Leave Anti-aliasing Mode and Setting as Application Controlled.
Leave Anti-aliasing FXAA as Off.

Then enable FXAA on a PER GAME basis. You will get all kinds of weirdness if you apply it globally.

Forcing the 'Anti-aliasing Mode' and 'Setting' is usually a bad idea. Use in game options to enable Multi-sampling instead.

You can have both Multi-sampling and FXAA enabled at the same time as they work differently on rendered scenes.

What kind of weirdness do you get by applying it globally? And by this do you mean weirdness in other applications rather than games?

The reason I wanted FXAA was from what I can gather from researching it a bit FXAA is the best image quality compared to performance hit to any other antialiasing type, and as a lot of games don't have the option for FXAA I thought it would be good to force it through the Nvidia settings, then set the AA setting in game to off, leaving me with good antialiasing but without much of a performance hit.. am I right with this logic?

And also, just to check, if I have FXAA set to on, and the others to application controlled, then in a game set AA to off, will I be getting FXAA in the game? Or nothing?

P.S. I've had FXAA set to On since the driver update and haven't noticed any weirdness at all with anything, so should I might as well just set it to on globally if I'm not noticing any issues?

 

[Kelt]

I just set FXAA to on globally and leave the other aa settings to default. No weirdness for me.

 

[arc@css]

I've only tried a couple of games with FXAA applied so far. I set it globally and have had no problems.

 

[no_1_dave]

Some games may give funny artefacts if you have it on globally, very rare though but there are games that don't support it. Personally I'd set it in the individual game profile. FXAA works differently so you can use it as well as using normal AA. There are some surfaces/shaders that FXAA doesnt work on so you still get jaggies now and then. I find it's best to use FXAA + 2 normal AA but set the normal AA using the in game options.

 

[Rroff]

I'd definitely only use FXAA via application specific profiles. A lot of games will render with blurry text if they don't specifically support FXAA when FXAA is forced on and you may get odd results in desktop applications that use hardware surfaces especially the above mentioned blurry text.

While a fair few games you can get away with forced FXAA for best results it really needs native support so that the game renders the stuff which looks fine with FXAA before the FXAA pass and then renders the stuff that doesn't work so well with FXAA on top of that.

 

[yashiro]

What kind of weirdness do you get by applying it globally? And by this do you mean weirdness in other applications rather than games?

It breaks some games and desktop applications. If you are OK with it and you REMEMBER you have applied it globally in the event of any faults then it's fine.

The reason I wanted FXAA was from what I can gather from researching it a bit FXAA is the best image quality compared to performance hit to any other antialiasing type, and as a lot of games don't have the option for FXAA I thought it would be good to force it through the Nvidia settings, then set the AA setting in game to off, leaving me with good antialiasing but without much of a performance hit.. am I right with this logic?

Yes that logic is correct. FXAA provides the best performance/quality ratio.

And also, just to check, if I have FXAA set to on, and the others to application controlled, then in a game set AA to off, will I be getting FXAA in the game? Or nothing?

You should get FXAA, yes. You should be able to notice if it's active or not anyway