Antialiasing question.

[Hunt12]

Simple question, I have never used this feature, I have just recently finished building my gaming rig, will put it in sig soon. Basicly should I have it on? or is it used for low quality machines?

I currently put on ultra settings in doom 3 and Alias was not on so I put it on x16 with no system decrease in performance, so was wondering if it was good, like I said im new to having a great computer so bare with me, ty.

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

Simply put, anit aliasing smoothes out the edges of objects on screen to make the whole presentation crisper. you should notice some difference between no anti aliasing and x16 anti aliasing

http://www.richleader.com/images/Pulse/bargainbin/bargain_bin_review/anti-aliasing.png

look at that example to see what i mean.

This is done by

a) rendering an image of a greater size than the monitor then shrinking it down so any jagged edges are less visible

or

b) combining slightly different images that are rendered separately, each adding more information to further anti-alias the image.

 

[Nukem]

See... you can teach and old Salt like me new tricks... to be honest I kinda, sorta knew what it was, but never knew the actual answer... Cool! See now I can go play some more with my GPU...

 

[Hunt12]

Hey thanks, time to turn anti on all the way baby!

 

[Nukem]

Now I have heard that turning it too much can cause freezing of severe lag in games. to play with the setting first before you go crankin it up...

 

[Hunt12]

Yes have everything maxed out example doom 3 gave a warning that this setting was extremely high and might cause severe lag...something like that, but I have np in any place at all. Basicly couldnt be happier with my system .

 

[The General]

yeah i can run ultra settings 1600x1200 / 16x AA 16x AF @ around ... ehh well 70 fps

in windows its a little slower, like 55


but when i turn off the AA i get like 120 so AA does decrease FPS dramatically, its just harder to notice when you have high FPS without and still high FPS with ... because well, they are both high


you might be going from 500 frames per second to 120 and it wouldnt be as noticeable as 70 to 40, yet the percentage decrease is way more on the unnoticed one.

 

[[SF]MKM]

i always go with 2x AA as i dont see any big difference between 2 and higher.