Ati Crossfire capable of 14X FSAA

[silence]

so INQ is right?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I think Dave is hinting to the fact higher AA sampling rate will be achieved via supersampling

I didn't think ATi used supersampling. :?

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

Remember,Matrox Parhellia was able to output 16xFAA (Fragment AntiAliasing). I wonder why noone impliments this method... It works where it suppose to. Thats on edges of objects only.

Because it wasn't able to detect all edges all the time.

Wasn't that because it only took one z sample per pixel, with more samples the edge detection rate would improve wouldn't it?

I'm curious to know as well, why was Matrox the only one to go down this path, was it too expensive/inefficient in terms of required transistors?

 

[trinibwoy]

Do NDA's expire at the same time that products are officially announced?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Do NDA's expire at the same time that products are officially announced?

Generally, but most NDA's expiration date is also covered by said NDA so those bound to it can't tell you when it expires. :?

My fave thing is when the NDA expires and they push the launch back a week or so. That intervening interval gets very tempting for people to tease and leak tidbits.

It's probably also why we get so much more detailed info the closer we get to product launch.

 

[KimB]

Wasn't that because it only took one z sample per pixel, with more samples the edge detection rate would improve wouldn't it?

The edge detection didn't have anything to do with z testing from what I can tell.

 

[DeanoC]

Do NDA's expire at the same time that products are officially announced?

Some NDA's are permenant (i.e. Even years after the product is released your not allowed to talk about it)...

 

[Geo]

I think Dave is hinting to the fact higher AA sampling rate will be achieved via supersampling

I didn't think ATi used supersampling. :?

Well, they haven't been. But as you probably also know, there has been a pretty vocal minority clamoring for it in their own community. And my memory is that they've been saying they could if they wanted to, they just had it fairly far down the list on their resource priorities. So maybe they saw an opportunity to knock off a couple chickadees at one stroke.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Some NDA's are permenant (i.e. Even years after the product is released your not allowed to talk about it)...

Really? Do you demand extra in your contract depending on how demanding the NDA is?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Again, you're not thinking about how two boards can potentially operate together (do a searh on the site, I've discussed it before).

 

[cloudscapes]

As I mentioned on EB, I think they should invest time in fixing AA for textures using an alpha-test.

 

[digitalwanderer]

do a search on the site, I've discussed it before

Are you talking about this one?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=446029#446029

It's technically not pure multisampling if two chips are rendering the same tile, since they will process vertices twice, and fetch textures twice. If I did the same thing on a single chip (render an MSAA tile twice, the second with altered sample positions, then combine) you'd call it hybrid-SS/MS. It's an MSxSS method, combing say two or more 6xMSAA buffers. I don't see the large gain or any inherent difference in scalability.

Vertices are processed, up to the clipping level at least, per chip on each system regardless of MSAA or not; the only time this isn’t the case is (one any solution that we’re aware of) is AFR.

As far as the application is concerned it is behaving exactly the same as an MSAA solution, its just able to go to more samples than can natively be achieved by a single chip - this would be of benefit in a consumer implementation. All of this is catered for by the hardware level and there is a transparency between what it happening on one chip with 4x MSAA and what it happening on 4 with 24x MSAA – the subsample distribution pattern logically works in the same way.

But this doesn’t, of course, preclude a mode whereby the texture subsample center is offset per chip rendering that tile to achieve the same benefits of mixed MS+SS AA.

 

[Jawed]

It'll be interesting to see how restricted the list of games supporting "MS+SS AA" is.

Also, I wonder if Crossfire SS will only work with R520-based cards.

Jawed

 

[Richard]

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying things but I get the 8x, 10x and the 12x but how are they pulling off 14x?

Is it really that hard to put two and two... erm, six and eight together?

Nope, except I was under the impression that 6xAA was the highest you could get now. Considering crossfire will work with R4xx cards and all.

 

[Xmas]

Nope, except I was under the impression that 6xAA was the highest you could get now. Considering crossfire will work with R4xx cards and all.

Dave's and demirug's comments imply that I was wrong on that point.

They are naming convention cock-up modes. (Although they are done to make it a little easier for the end user to understand, which is a little understanable to some degree)

 

[Demirug]

It'll be interesting to see how restricted the list of games supporting "MS+SS AA" is.

Also, I wonder if Crossfire SS will only work with R520-based cards.

Jawed

How many games have a problem with nVidias hybrid AA modes?

 

[swaaye]

I got myself a Dell Inspiron 9300 which has a Geforce 6800 Go in it. I will say that ATI's AA is definitely superior to NV's, and that the 8X AA (SS+MS) mode is really a sham overall. It's VERY slow (plain 4X MSAA has relatively little performance impact) and doesn't improve visuals much. NV's 4X AA is less capable than ATI's 4X. How NV let themselves get beaten in AA with two generations is beyond me...

I also found that by moving from 'Quality' mode to 'High Quality' image settings that some bad AF artifacts/shimmering went away in KOTOR. I wouldn't call settings that do that anything remotely like 'Quality'. It's pretty sad for a 6x00 series to have to resort to that I'd say. I don't remember ATI's cards doing it, even though we all know they have optimizations too.

HL2 has annoying AF shimmering even with HQ mode. So, I wonder if they have some forced app settings there, or if there's something about the game or that particular texture. I was down on the railroad tracks on the gravel ground. It's early in the game. Just got pistol.

 

[Dave Baumann]

How many games have a problem with nVidias hybrid AA modes?

I doubt there are many new titles that have issue with SSAA now, but certianly older titles would - IMO the reason they don't have issues on newer boards is becuase of the unified driver, which makes it very easy for them to attached the compatibility list so SSAA modes across all new and old boards. ATI don't do SSAA on single boards ecuase their "UDA" started with R300, meaning the SSAA compatibility fixes they had for R200 were never brought across.

However, when we think about dual boards there are reasons why these type of issues go away. Think of why Voodoo 5 operated an SSAA mode but never had any compatibility issues.

 

[Demirug]

Dave, my own research about this problem so far let me believe that you don't need special application dependent fixes for SSAA. There are some special cases (like already transformed vertices) you need to take care about but this is not application specific.

I fully understand why you bring Voodoo 5 back in the game now but maybe we should think about an other think too. In the Voodoo timeframe we don't have shaderdriven fullscreen effects. Today more and more games use this kind of effects. How well will a copy to texture downfilter work with a Voodoo 5 like SSAA solution?

 

[Ailuros]

HL2 has annoying AF shimmering even with HQ mode. So, I wonder if they have some forced app settings there, or if there's something about the game or that particular texture. I was down on the railroad tracks on the gravel ground. It's early in the game. Just got pistol.

I guess you're rather describing alpha test aliasing; can be cured with Supersampling, ideally with 4x samples or more.

Pick a lower resolution than usual and enable via Rivatuner it's 16x AA mode, which is a combination of 4xRGMS+ 4xOGSS. Quite slow but alpha test aliasing gets more effectively cured in HL2.