Ati Crossfire capable of 14X FSAA

[russo121]

According to the theinquirer http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23522

"...With its new technique ATI will be able to do 8x, 10x, 12x and even 14x FSAA. That surely sounds insane but if you want to have even better picture quality this is one choice that you will have. A 14 times Full Scene Anti Aliasing sounds like an interesting idea now when most of people are using 4X only...."

 

[jvd]

14x fsaa temporal ... 28x fsaa effective ? wozzaaaa hehe

 

[KimB]

Gah, this is just getting f'in ridiculous.

Fuad is just talking out of his ass for the umpteenth time, and 14x + 2x temporal is not even remotely close to 28x FSAA effective (in fact, as you increase the number of samples, the effect of temporal AA will decrease).

 

[Richard]

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying things but I get the 8x, 10x and the 12x but how are they pulling off 14x? Btw, if this story is true I'd much rather have 2xSSAA on the master + 6xMSAA on the slave than higher MSAA modes.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I see it as 6x MSAA on the master and on the slave, with offset patterns, so that the combined output gives 6x MSAA plus 2x SSAA -> you end up with 12x AA.

If 10x and 14x are true then I have no idea

 

[Ailuros]

This one won't offer much of a performance difference but will let you use more then six times FSAA. That is the current limit with ATI cards while Nvidia can do some kind of 8X mode.

Sounds like the "AA-scaling mode" on simFusion; while geometry won't scale, AA sample density will. On a quad chip simFusion it's possible to reach 24x sparsed MSAA (4 chips * 6x).

What the end user gets is roughly single board R520 performance in such a case, just with twice as high AA samples. I've no idea what the odd sample amounts could stand for or if they're for real, yet 12x sparse MSAA (12*12) will be absolutely possible even on R4xx dual board configs.

VSA-100 mode

 

[KimB]

I see it as 6x MSAA on the master and on the slave, with offset patterns, so that the combined output gives 6x MSAA plus 2x SSAA -> you end up with 12x AA.

Having both cards render the entire scene and combine via supersampling = BAD. It's just a horribly inefficient way of doing things. Not to mention you wouldn't be able to do this with two different video cards.

 

[Frank]

Ah well, knowing the source, the 14x was probably a mistake and should be 13x instead.

 

[Ailuros]

Ah well, knowing the source, the 14x was probably a mistake and should be 13x instead.

Why not 13.5x ? <shrugs>

 

[Blazkowicz]

Having both cards render the entire scene and combine via supersampling = BAD. It's just a horribly inefficient way of doing things. Not to mention you wouldn't be able to do this with two different video cards.

I agree, of course it's bad, but it's easy and you could afford to do that on lots of games, especially when you are CPU limited (not hard with such ridiculous high power, even in HL2..)
(yes, impossible with different card).


also, it's a shame that nothing other my voodoo5 deals with the alpha blending issue

 

[nAo]

Wow! 14x is a big number.. supersmooth edges but still flickerin tree leaves

 

[Dave Baumann]

Wow! 14x is a big number.. supersmooth edges but still flickerin tree leaves

Think a little...

 

[tEd]

richard huddy recently mentioned to developers that they could use alpha to mask functionality to AA alpha test on radeon9700 and above but they need to use a backdoor probably because the API doesn't directly supports it or something.

 

[bloodbob]

Think a little...

I'm obivously dumb I can't think of how 14 samples would slove the problem and I can't see how 14 samples would indicate that ati isn't just doing doing MSAA any more.

 

[Geo]

I don't recall seeing this here. Pcpop claiming they have ATI's Crossfire logo. . .

http://www.pcpop.com/doc/0/90/90386.shtml

 

[Blazkowicz]

richard huddy recently mentioned to developers that they could use alpha to mask functionality to AA alpha test on radeon9700 and above but they need to use a backdoor probably because the API doesn't directly supports it or something.

does anyone know if WGF 1.0 will support that? (couldn't that be used for anti-aliasing of fonts?)

 

[Ailuros]

richard huddy recently mentioned to developers that they could use alpha to mask functionality to AA alpha test on radeon9700 and above but they need to use a backdoor probably because the API doesn't directly supports it or something.

If it works in UT1/D3D w/o having to force it on the API then I can imagine what it is.

In such a case you get virtually antialiasing on alpha tests for free, but I can't imagine that they'd encount it as AA samples.

 

[Ailuros]

Wow! 14x is a big number.. supersmooth edges but still flickerin tree leaves

You know I have something quite mean in mind, yet not directed at ATI but a major ISV....

 

[Rys]

12 geometry samples plus two texture samples

P.S. While I have access to the information, I still haven't had time to read it, since I'm out here in Taiwan working. That said, I have seen an ample grid that showed mixed mode 6 SGMS + 2xOGSS, which is what I'm basing my query on

 

[bloodbob]

12 geometry samples plus two texture samples

By that logic the existing ati 2x,4x,6x should be called 3x,5,7x. And non AA should be called 2x.