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I would like to know more about "Anti Aliasing" & "Anisotropic Filtering"

  • Thread starter Thread starter TechnicalFreak
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TechnicalFreak

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Hi

As the title say, I would like to learn/know more about Anti-Aliasing and also what is the difference between that and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing?

And what's the difference between Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering?

Which one is best suitable for giving "eye candy" but not "hog" the system to much?

I tried to find the answers on the net, but can't seem to find a simple answer.

On both my systems I have the options for the above, I have never used them.
The first system has a Radeon 9800SE card, the second system has a HD3870X2.

Today however, I'm going to test first on the old system under BF1942 to feel the difference.
And later tomorrow I shall test it on my new system..just don't know what game to test.


Thankful for any replies given.


Have a wonderful weekend and happy easter!
 
good place to start: http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html

good description of AA/AF on page 11


in general, AA will decrease overall performance quite a bit, as it reduces the jaggedness of lines. For the most part, increasing your screen resolution will work the same way, but won't typically have the same performance hit. AA works best with low screen resolutions.

AF won't typically hit your performance too hard, depending on how fast the video card is, and how much memory the card has - AF in general increases the detail of textures at a distance. But, if you have your game settings to use high quality textures, AF can cripple a system with a card only stouting 256MB or less.

ATI cards also have a bunch of optimizations that will allow for faster AA/AF without too much of a performance hit. If you have ATI Tray Tools or CCC installed, a lot of these settings can be changed. Use of the Temporal AA option, for example, might help you achieve a a x4 or x8 AA level, while only having in-game options set to x2.
 
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Well Anti Aliasing just smooths out the jagged edges on like the side of buildings and charecters while Anisotropic Filtering makes textures that are farther away less blurry. I cant tell the difference past 8x ASF but 16x is nice.
 
AF tends to hog a bit more resouces then AA, but the objective is to balance quality to performance. One thing for sure is that AA and AF loves memory on Gcards, more memory the better (at least 512mb).
 
wikipedia has good articles
 
This is a good article to start with. You can read more here
 
AA when it first arrived was to reduce jaggies at lower resolutions.. the theory being higher resolutions could not be run.. we are talking 640 x 480 as opposed to say 800 x 600.. back then jaggies were really jaggies.. he he

the problem was.. it never worked cos the performance hit was the same as going to a higher resolution.. it seems ten years later it still dosnt f-cking work.. he he he

trog
 
So much information... This will take me some time to read.

Thanks everyone.
 
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