AA for RTS and AA for FPS

[Irish_PXzyan]

Hey guys.

I don't know much about Anti-aliasing settings and I am wondering what should I use for playing games such as Supreme Commander and Crysis or other RTS and FPS games?

What settings are best used for best overall image quality???
Can anyone point me to the right direction??

[lucasweir]

maxxed is always the best in my opinion, but not the best for performance

[Irish_PXzyan]

Is the GTX 280 capable of maxing every game out there?? But sept Crysis tho lol!

[lucasweir]

ha i think youll be fine, just run a fps counter and see what you get i bet its above 60fps with max AA

[ktr]

With your gtx280, you will be able to play all current games maxed out with no problems. RTS defiantly needs AA. As for FPS, if you running the game at the max res of your monitor, you need less AA (for any higher you will not notice).

[Irish_PXzyan]

Thanks for the tips!!

I used nHancer for Crysis, I tried to use AA 2x2 supersampling just to see what it is made of!
I got a massive FPS drop because of it!! I was using 2x and going from 2x to 2x2 certainly dropped the frame rate but almost 50%

I did not even notice any difference??

I will try running Supreme Commander and use MAX out AA and AF and see if I get a frame rate drop!

[lucasweir]

yea i expected crysis, but idk about the other ones if itll make a difference in performance

[Irish_PXzyan]

I was playing Supreme Commander at 16x and it got laggy, I turned it down to 4x and there is only lag when a lot of units are battling it out.
One thing I must ask tho, is why do games allow you to use 16x AA when the game can't even handle it?? Considering Supreme Commander is over 2 years old and not even the GTX 280 can even get good frame rates at this level???

Or maybe this is more to do with my CPU?? But surely my CPU is fine tho?

[hat]

Ah... Supreme Commander is one of those very rare games that is VERY cpu intensive. It does actually use all 4 threads of a quad core cpu. Overclock your CPU some more if possible... That Arctic Freezer isn't even a good cooler anymore. Yeah it's still a "good" cooler, but there are coolers that easily pass it up in performance for around the same price... e.g. Xigmatek.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233012

[farlex85]

Supreme Commander from what I have seen simply isn't able to handle some of it's own situations, things just get too big. I have encountered this as well on SOSE. You can turn down the settings, jack up cpu/gpu speed, lower the res, it doesn't matter, once the game reaches a certain point it just can't keep up with itself.

As for AA, I've found in 90% of situation using the same monitor you do 4xAA is all I need, jumping to 8x yeilds little difference. This won't always be the case though. Just crank it up until you can't see any jaggies anymore.

[Irish_PXzyan]

Thanks for the comments.

I do plan on buying a new cooler for the CPU and hopefully get 3.6Ghz iff possible

But that will be for another day! I have a CPU Cooler already in mind anyway!!

[niko084]

Originally Posted by lucasweir

maxxed is always the best in my opinion, but not the best for performance

I can't stand using it in Supreme Commander, it makes the shore lines big hazy white clouds, its so annoying.

In FPS games though, I always set it pretty much as high as it will go before hurting my gameplay.

[spearman914]

Originally Posted by Irish_PXzyan

Is the GTX 280 capable of maxing every game out there?? But sept Crysis tho lol!

Yea pretty much except crysis and GTA IV. But only go 4XAA. Any higher u won't see a big difference except just a huge performance loss.

[Irish_PXzyan]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I understand AA a bit more now!

[hat]

AA is basically the card resizing the image for you. For example if you play Crysis on 800x600 with 2xaa, you're seeing a 1600x1200 image that's been resized back down to 800x600