Whats the difference between...SMAA...TXAA..MSAA

[roachyuk]

Ok so ive started to play Crysis 3...oh my it is graphic hungry i have a gtx670 and am wondering when i use the nvidia experience program it sets the textures to smaa low 1x....there are also txaa or msaa...so what i was wondering whats the difference between all of these textures...and which is the best to use....thanks...oh and there is fxaa aswell

 

[Rusty0611]

They're different ways of smoothing jagged edges. I'd use TXAA if I were you.

 

[roachyuk]

yeah...it says 1x 2 x or 4 x..,,also whats the best for anti aliasing x4 x8 x16...thanks

 

[Rusty0611]

Higher is better but obviously requires more grunt. TXAA is a nice balance between performance and image quality.

 

[roachyuk]

do you play crysis 3?

 

[Rusty0611]

I've got it but I haven't played much yet

 

[roachyuk]

im gonna give it a go liked the other ones so think ill like this...thanks for you info ill have a play after with the txaa see what its like.....

 

[Orangey]

FXAA = blurry but fast

As for all the others:

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/que...the-different-anti-aliasing-multisampling-set

 

[almoststew1990]

I also thought that fxaa was done on the cpu not gpu?

Other than that I've been wondering a lot about all the different types. Very h ul read! I always assumed the different types like cmaa were more graphically demanding but obviously not...

 

[andybird123]

I also thought that fxaa was done on the cpu not gpu?

Other than that I've been wondering a lot about all the different types. Very h ul read! I always assumed the different types like cmaa were more graphically demanding but obviously not...

nope, still done on the GPU, but it's done after everything else and is basically just like a "blur" filter in photoshop = fast but not very accurate and just makes everything blurry rather than antialiased

I found SMAA to be the best balance of picture quality and performance hit in Crysis 3

 

[Rroff]

FXAA = blurry but fast

As for all the others:

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/que...the-different-anti-aliasing-multisampling-set

I kind of like FXAA, its only (significantly) blurry if its forced on or not properly support in a game, in a game where its properly implemented there is a slight dulling of textures but as a compromise you tend to get overall image stability comparable to the upper end solutions and reasonable filtering of jagged edges at a fairly small performance hit. End of the day I'd rather use a high end solution that has the same level of image stability but even on current hardware they tend to hit framerates hard.

 

[roachyuk]

so throwing a second card in sli will improve the visuals then...

 

[Arthur Hucksake]

There has been a weird shift in my usage of AA over the past year or so.

I use to be in a hurry to enable MSAA in every game, now I don't bother. The built in FXAA stuff really is pretty impressive.

 

[arc@css]

Thank goodness for FXAA.

 

[Chrisoldinho]

A lot of this is personal preference, but for me in most games it's SMAA set on "high" (defined using RadeonPro). I typically compliment this with 2x MSAA, but this is game dependant.