New Catalyst has advanced AA options for us all !!!

[_33]

Catalyst 6.5

Adaptive Anti-Aliasing for ATI Radeon® 9500 and above

Adaptive Anti-Aliasing smoothes out the surfaces in an entire scene unlike Multi-Sample which works only on edge surfaces. Adaptive AA has the ability to work on transparent or opaque texels, like those that comprise a surface texture. Previously this feature was available on the ATI Radeon® X1000 family products. Starting with Catalyst® 6.5, Adaptive AA support is now available to ATI Radeon® 9500 products and above.

 

[yogurt_21]

well that just bumped the value of the r480's, in my opinion, adaptive aa can look better than sm3.0 pretties.

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

How much will it hurt performance?

 

[_33]

I used to swear at Temporal AA because of the lag it created in FPS games, but now it's a different kind of story . I'm downloading HL2 Episode 1 ATM, after, I'll install this new Catalyst and try this out and see how it performs in games. Hopefully it won't be slicing the framerates in half! But that could well be...

 

[mikechinym]

looks like its very nice,i will update it and try first.

 

[_33]

Couldn't enable Adaptive AA yet :shadedshu

WTF !

 

[_33]

OK I enabled the AAA functionality it in ATI Tray Tools in Advanced Tweaks. Then I went in the 3D profile and I enabled it there also and up to 6X. I launched Serious Sam 2 and played for a bit on one of those jungle levels. It was really flawless, and I couldn't find ANY pixelisation. So I think it works. Thoe some moments the game was quite choppy, mind you I ran at 1360x1024 16x aniso and 6X AAA and dual screen was enabled with MBM5, ATT and THIS web page was on too . So, if I disable second screen, the game could probably be playable at that setting.

Good job!

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

Is there a test that you can run. like in CS:S, you can run a test to see how many FPS you get.

 

[_33]

I don't have webspace, but here are some JPGs I took from HL2 in gameplay. There are no framecounts, but it's just to show AAA on my X800GTO2 that seems to be fully at work.

So that's:

* High quality mip mapping
* High quality texturing
* Catalyst AI high setting
* Trilinear filtering optimized
* 16X anisotropic filtering high quality mode optimized
* 6X AAA quality mode
* 1360x1024 resolution

HDR active and everything set at high in the game setting. And BTW, my nick is in the first screen capture

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

I can't enable it though. How did you enable it. I'm really frustrated.

 

[_33]

I can't enable it though. How did you enable it. I'm really frustrated.

It is impossible to enable it in the ATI program at first if you already have your setting managed by ATI Tools. What you have to do is enable advanced AA modes from ATI Tools and then you go in profiles / settings and you set the AAA on and levels up.

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

Sorry, but I can't see it. Can you post a pic or tell me where to go from the start?
Thanks

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

Can I have both ATI Tool and ATI Tray Tools at the same time?

 

[_33]

Sorry, but I can't see it. Can you post a pic or tell me where to go from the start?
Thanks

This is with ATI Tray Tools, but I am sure ATI Tool has the same things, just in different menus. If you're using ATI Tools, look in the Driver Tweaks and set the Adaptive Anti-Aliasing to Quality instead of Off.

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

OK, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing is enabled. Can it still be application controlled?

Also, I enabled High-Quality AF. Should I disable it or leave it enabled.

 

[_33]

OK, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing is enabled. Can it still be application controlled?

Also, I enabled High-Quality AF. Should I disable it or leave it enabled.

I believe AAA falls in the same category as the regular AA. ANISO is always better ON, I don't think it's a major performance hit and it permits to have clearer backgrounds when hunting in your FPS, clearer targetting. I noticed the biggest performance hit on my system is having the bigger textures as 256 MB for GFX and 1GB for RAM is slim for all the high quality settings of the game, but the graphics card can handle AAA for sure

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

I believe AAA falls in the same category as the regular AA. ANISO is always better ON, I don't think it's a major performance hit and it permits to have clearer backgrounds when hunting in your FPS, clearer targetting. I noticed the biggest performance hit on my system is having the bigger textures as 256 MB for GFX and 1GB for RAM is slim for all the high quality settings of the game, but the graphics card can handle AAA for sure

It still won't let me enable it in CCC. Only in ATI Tray Tools, but not in CCC. It's grayed out. Should it still work?

 

[_33]

It still won't let me enable it in CCC. Only in ATI Tray Tools, but not in CCC. It's grayed out. Should it still work?

Yes, when you will reboot, CCC should have the function enabled. That is exactly what happened to me and ATT fixed it, but was the source of the problem in the first place. ATI didn't figure out that we'd use these tools

 

[_33]

I noticed in Farcry that AAA 6X quality setting makes the game incredibly slow with my 256MB card. I was wondering maybe it's the lack of memory on the card... I lowered to 1024x768 with all HIGH settings, still slow. So I came down to compromises and removed the AMD enhanced patch for Farcry, and it was still slow, cuz I was thinking maybe it's those bigger textures making the diff, but it's not.

So probably I'll have to setting to something like 4X AAA quality, if not, performance mode even............

===========================================================
10 mins later............

Tried 6x AAA at performance setting in 1024x768 with all features set to max and the rest is all at quality setting and it's fully playable and smooth. I'll have to try 4X AAA at quality and see if that's better overall and see if I can raise the resolution a bit.

The major problem in image quality when set at performance setting is you get a little shimmering effect for example on the boat level of far cry, you get some shimmer on the orange boat when you look at it from the ground, at eye level. The shiny places shimmer a bit. That is something I wasn't getting in quality mode.

 

[DRDNA]

The only thing I noticed is a decrease in performance in 3Dm05 but the performance in games seems about the same or an unnoticable change.So far for my cards the 6.3's have been best!!

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

In ATI Tray Tools, I set AAA to Quality, AA to "Let App. Decide", and I set AF to "Let App. Decide". That look good?

 

[yogurt_21]

lol drdna on the x1800's adaptive aa in no sweat we're trying to see if the x850's can handle it without becoming unplayable.

33 can you try running hl2 with and without adaptive aa and see what the frames are like? set the launch options to -console and use the command cl_showfps 1 to view the framrate.

it won't average them like fraps, just recored what you think are the highs, lows and mids.

 

[Azn Tr14dZ]

Yeah...I can see better quality in the game. Especially in DoD:S, in the map Argentan, the bricks look more realistic, and they don't flicker when I move my crosshairs. I'm sure in HL2 the fence looks better too. Haven't tried 3DMark05 or 06 yet. I don't think it will make a difference because AA is App. Controlled.

 

[_33]

lol drdna on the x1800's adaptive aa in no sweat we're trying to see if the x850's can handle it without becoming unplayable.

33 can you try running hl2 with and without adaptive aa and see what the frames are like? set the launch options to -console and use the command cl_showfps 1 to view the framrate.

it won't average them like fraps, just recored what you think are the highs, lows and mids.

Just played some Doom 3 6X AAA performance aniso 16X and FULL gfx features in game, it looks awesome and very smooth at above 1024x768!

I'll try what you mentionned in HL2 tomorrow after work.