Recommended AA/AF settings for HD6950?
 

Can someone recommend me the best antialiasing settings for my 6950?
There are lots of AA modes, and I don't know which ones are the best quality/performance impact of them all. I know you can have more than one AA mode at the same time.
Can someone explain me how to setup the AA with the best AA settings to have the excellent quality without penalizing too much on the performance side?

Which games do you play ? which resolution ? is 30FPS smooth for you or do your aim 100 ?

It's a bit outdated now but this is a good place to start. Also doing a Google for specific things like "wide-tent AA" will lead you to articles and posts with more info about this.

Though Jeager's question is pretty much spot on and what this really comes down to is what settings can your machine handle? Cause in general you want to use the highest AA and AF you can while maintaining playable and smooth framerates. It's about finding that good balance between performance and image quality--e.g. what runs well and also looks best to you. So just test some more too. If you notice 12x Wide Tent AA cuts your frames way down but really doesnt look any better than standard 4x in a particular game then obviously go with standard 4x in that case.

Also note that when they exist (and most games these days have them) it is best to use the in-game AA and AF options and leave CCC on App Controlled as the game knows best when and where such filters should be applied. That said, some games get a nice additional image quality benefit from CCC-enabled AA filters without much of a perf hit. Again, you're really just going to have to test more for yourself and your games and your setup. Download FRAPS if you haven't already to monitor your framerates in-game.

I only care that games run smooth with playable framerates. I play in "single player mode", shooters like BFBC2, MOH, COD, etc and race car games like NFS, etc. I just want smooth gaming at the highest possible settings.
I have a Phenom II X4 955@3.5ghz, 8gb ddr3 ram, OCZ vertex 2 120gb SSD, HD 6950. I play in 1920x1080 resolution.

Then maybe you don't want any AA or AF on at all but your setup can certainly handle it so why not get rid of the ugly jaggies and blurry distant textures?

All those games (except maybe NFS as I don't play racing games) have built in AA and AF so just use those with AF always at 16X (or the highest) and the most AA your machine can handle without the game feeling laggy and jittery is probably going to be 4x. In CCC set Texture Filtering all the way right to highest quality as well.

I always have AF set to 16x. And ever since MLAA introduction, i'm not using anything else.
These two settings are enabled all the time and the image is beautiful and also runs very fast.

Well, with my current rig I have everything maxed and set to quality (Edge Detect MLAA). I am using the 11.1a drivers. My average fps is probably 50 in BFBC2 (@2048x1052) as it caps at around 60 (no vsync) (and stays there most of the time) and drops as low as 35 every once in a blue moon.

Your 6950 has got some performance to it, I would set it to max and then if you notice numbers you don't like in fraps ease off the MLAA.

Really? I do have more homework to do regarding MLAA but my initial impressions and a couple quick tests show that it's relatively blurry and as such is only really good for games that simply can't be forced any other way like Dead Space.

With an HD6950, should be able to run 4xAA constant with everything. 8xAA bring back minimal gains in IQ.

Well most game will run fine with AAx2 and AFx8@1080p, up to you to raise it it you have enough FPS :)

I would not use MLAA until ati stops being stubborn and just copies nvidia's per application setup. It's really not something that works consistently enough to be left on for everything. I'd do 4x aa with whichever setting is the most efficient at the moment.

Each game is different. I usually turn the settings up as high as they go and test it out. If is lags, turn it down a notch... repeat. Some games have huge hits that make a difference and some have huge hits that dont matter, but in most cases you have to play around... I find that Far Cry 2 bogs down the frame rate when you use a sniper scope to zoom in... but not all the time and when it happens, it is still quite playable. I can play Crysis:Warhead with in game AA/AF settings maxed out with acceptable 30FPS+ frame-rates, although my 6950 is modded to a 6970 and overclocked to ccc limits.

Keep your CCC settings at factory defaults. A 6950 should be able to play most games at the highest settings the game settings allow. x16 AF and x8 AA. Now there are some games where you may want to change a CCC setting or two. Oblivion for example, you would want to set AF in CCC to x16. NFS:HP you may want to enalbe MLAA. To keep yourself from having to change the settings each time you play these games, make a profile for them and save the profile icon to the desktop so it's all automatic.

Supersampling provides the best IQ by far, but you can't go much higher than 4X SSAA while maintaining good FPS on a single 6950. CFX setup would allow u to do 8X SSAA in pretty much any game.

It works really well in games like Left 4 Dead. Makes the game look much better, and it will work fine even with a 5 series card and that game. :toast: