[GTX1080] No Anti Aliasing

[Warrgarbl]

For some reason anti aliasing does not work anymore on my GTX1080, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. At first, I thought it was just the Blizzard games acting up (Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm) since at least Diablo 3 has a relatively new x64 client, but as of now I am unable to activate it in any game.

So far, I have globally resetted all Nvidia driver settings, did a complete reinstall, wiped it with DDU and reinstalled it, removed my old 2 GPUs from the device manager (display hidden devices), used DDU again and did an additional manual cleaning of whatever leftover stuff I could find, had a look at Windows energy settings, ran sfc /scannow... yet, still no anti aliasing, and it's driving me crazy (in a mild way). I really dislike the jaggies.

Do you guys have any other idea I could try to get my AA working again?

 

[OneCool]

Have you tried forcing it in the driver setting.

 

[eidairaman1]

Reinstall your games, worst case send the card back

 

[hertz9753]

For some reason anti aliasing does not work anymore on my GTX1080, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it. At first, I thought it was just the Blizzard games acting up (Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm) since at least Diablo 3 has a relatively new x64 client, but as of now I am unable to activate it in any game.

So far, I have globally resetted all Nvidia driver settings, did a complete reinstall, wiped it with DDU and reinstalled it, removed my old 2 GPUs from the device manager (display hidden devices), used DDU again and did an additional manual cleaning of whatever leftover stuff I could find, had a look at Windows energy settings, ran sfc /scannow... yet, still no anti aliasing, and it's driving me crazy (in a mild way). I really dislike the jaggies.

Do you guys have any other idea I could try to get my AA working again?

It is probably a new driver issue. You are using Win 10 and it forces new NVIDIA drivers to install.

 

[Aenra]

No. I have the latest ones and i can use AA on my 1080 fine, Blizz included; it's not the Nvidia drivers.

 

[johnspack]

Dual boot with win7 or 8.1. That'll solve it.

 

[Warrgarbl]

Have you tried forcing it in the driver setting.

Yes, doesn't work either.

Reinstall your games, worst case send the card back

I've been considering a hardware issue, but it seems kind of unlikely to me that the only thing that is defective is the AA. Worth considering, though. I originally had a GTX1070 which I sent back two times due to defective fans. Kind of bad luck if the GTX1080 I was sent as a replacement is defective, too.

It is probably a new driver issue. You are using Win 10 and it forces new NVIDIA drivers to install.

Actually, I've disabled that already. From experience (system engineer) I can say that it's mostly an issue for notebooks, though.

No. I have the latest ones and i can use AA on my 1080 fine, Blizz included; it's not the Nvidia drivers.

Well, that's good to know.

Dual boot with win7 or 8.1. That'll solve it.

I've actually been considering to reinstall WIndows 8.1; I already dual boot Arch Linux and I don't quite feel like adding yet another OS.

Thanks so far, guys! I'll see if I can grab a different GTX1080 from our spares stock to see what happens.

 

[GoldenX]

You're not using an insider build, right?

 

[Warrgarbl]

You're not using an insider build, right?

No, not interested in that. If anything I'd use that on some secondary / tertiary machine. Good thought, though.

EDIT: Actually, I'm still on 1511. I dislike some changes of the 1607 update and saw no benefits, so I disabled the 1607 update until the creator update comes along. Might want to check that out, though. Maybe downgrading to 1511 after the initial installation broke something (quite likely, actually).

 

[THE_EGG]

No, not interested in that. If anything I'd use that on some secondary / tertiary machine. Good thought, though.

EDIT: Actually, I'm still on 1511. I dislike some changes of the 1607 update and saw no benefits, so I disabled the 1607 update until the creator update comes along. Might want to check that out, though. Maybe downgrading to 1511 after the initial installation broke something (quite likely, actually).

I went back to 1511 after the anniversary update turned my PC into a quicksand simulator (tried installing it when it came out and again a couple of weeks ago with the same results). I do not think the AA issue is caused by going back to 1511 - though that being said I don't think it can be ruled out either. I'm a little unsure what could be causing it. Have you tried your 1080 and run some games in another machine?

 

[Aenra]

Sorry, but just to be sure this isn't heading the direction i'm thinking it's heading..

- Have you tried FXAA? Does that work?
- When you say 'unable to activate it', what exactly does that entail? Greyed-out option(s) in the ctpl? Not even clickable? Clickable/alterable but no visual changes?

 

[Warrgarbl]

I went back to 1511 after the anniversary update turned my PC into a quicksand simulator (tried installing it when it came out and again a couple of weeks ago with the same results). I do not think the AA issue is caused by going back to 1511 - though that being said I don't think it can be ruled out either. I'm a little unsure what could be causing it. Have you tried your 1080 and run some games in another machine?

Not yet, might do that soon. I have another PC at work with a GTX970 where AA seems to work, so I could swap the GPUs some time this week.

Sorry, but just to be sure this isn't heading the direction i'm thinking it's heading..

- Have you tried FXAA? Does that work?
- When you say 'unable to activate it', what exactly does that entail? Greyed-out option(s) in the ctpl? Not even clickable? Clickable/alterable but no visual changes?

Actually, I didn't try FXAA yet because I really don't like FXAA at all. It's usually either 4x+ MSAA or SSAA for me. As for the settings: They are perfectly click- and selectable, but they just do not have any effect, be it the ingame AA of the various games or the AA settings of the control panel.

 

[Aenra]

Wait wait.. forget about whether you like it or not, lol, try enabling FXAA from the ctpl, check for visual changes ingame, so we can see if all forms of AA are out or just the one in particular

And just to be sure; speaking of ingame.. you mean that with the ctpl left at "let the game decide" and an ingame only changing of AA, you still get nothing?

(edit: i don't like FXAA either for the record. It and transparency are the two dumbest nuvidya "tweaks" ever. In my opinion!)

 

[Aenra]

(@ mods: purposefully making a separate post, so that he sees it. Sorry)

You have Linux too right? Load that and try a GPU stress test there, one where the user can set the AA levels. See if the issue persists in both OSs?
Am not too familiar with GPU stressers, but something like this one should do, has versions for both Linux and Windows: https://unigine.com/products/benchmarks/heaven/

 

[Warrgarbl]

Yes, I will do that when I get home from work and school today (late in the evening), and yes, let the application decide and enabling AA ingame. Nothing works. As for why FXAA exists... yay for consoles and their comparatively limited computing power.

As for Linux I never really looked into any sort of graphics since I have developed a habit of working on Linux and gaming / entertainment on Windows, but I'll see what I can find. If all else fails I'll hook up another HDD and do some sort of fresh Windows 7 / 8.1 install just to see what happens. Thanks for your help!

EDIT: I've installed the proprietary drivers on Linux, though, since out of the box the GTX1080 wasn't properly supported. Oh, and for testing AA I could just install Steam and try one of my games.

 

[Aenra]

You could try it in other games (tbh, this is the first thing i'd have done, my mistake for concluding it'd already been tried) from Windows, but you should test it in Linux too; the one i linked above runs on it and has user-defined AA settings, so you won't need to install any games there to check what's what. If everything's fine from Linux, we'll at least know it's software-related.

And in the off chance the 'yes, i will do that' refered to the stress testing alone, don't forget to try FXAA under Windows as well

 

[Warrgarbl]

Trying it in other games was the first thing I've done, especially because I play all kinds of games so it is kind of unavoidable. That being said I do know the Unigine Benchmarks, I use(d) them at work If I find the time today I'll examine the AA under Linux. I have Steam installed on Linux anyway (in the interest of... science) and have a game or two installed.

 

[Mussels]

manually install Nvidia drivers and tick the 'clean install' button, that'll probably fix things.

 

[P4-630]

manually install Nvidia drivers and tick the 'clean install' button, that'll probably fix things.

^This.

Must be a driver issue.

 

[Warrgarbl]

Been there, done that. A clean reinstall was one of the first things I did. I even removed all traces of previous installations via DDU and manual checking before reinstalling on the second attempt.

EDIT: I also regularly check my system for malware using Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and have been getting 0 results for several years, so a malware related problem is rather unlikely.

EDIT2: Maybe I should dig through my registry and examine programs I installed recently. I've been looking for a video editing software for a friend of mine and have shotcut installed (which can be directed to use the GPU to offload transcoding). Maybe there is something persistent that influences the GPU - but I'm just taking a wild guess.

 

[Aenra]

If AA runs fine with Linux booted, remember the Microsoft way. Shortcut missing? Format the PC!

Microsoft. Providing solutions since 1985. Customers always first.
lol

 

[Warrgarbl]

Haha, well, there might be some truth to it. Recently I had to reinstall several key components of my Lenovo tablet's Windows because the downgrade from 1607 liberally uninstalled necessary things... I still suspect that this might be the problem. I might try a 1607 upgrade before wiping the system - although I am not terribly opposed to that, my install is more than 3 years old and sometimes I just like to have a clean slate again.

 

[Warrgarbl]

So, I tried two games on Linux and Anti Aliasing worked just fine. I'm going to boot into Windows later and see if I can find something.

 

[Derek12]

Obviously no hardware issue would cause AA to be "permanently" disabled. it can cause artifacts, low FPS, crashes, but not that

I am inclined to think some software or registry setting is messing up with Nvidia settings even after a clean install.
Do you have some "special" program that could cause such behavior?
Did it happened only after the downgrade to 1511? did you installed something?

 

[Warrgarbl]

Well, I'll be damned. Seems like all my tinkering last night paid off, I have AA back in Windows. Beats me why, though. I did multiple reboots last night and still had no AA... I'll poke around some more to verify that AA is working 100% correctly. If I find something I will let you know, in the interest of those who might have a similar problem in the future and need a solution.

EDIT: So, I was unable to find a reason for this. For those who have the same problem I can only suggest to go through the steps I took to fix it, and to have a close look whether AA is, in fact, working, but almost unnoriceable due to bad ingame AA.