HD58X0 and SSAA in older games?

Yes, but is SSAA more memory heavy then MSAA? I thought SSAA renders the picture twice or more and downscale it?

 

You're still storing n amount of samples.

 

Typically, SSAA renders the scene at a higher resolution and then downsamples the result. This requires n times the amount of memory for n sample SSAA. MSAA is similar in that it also needs n times the amount of memory for n sample MSAA. The reason being that you have to store all color and depth values for each pixel.

So, MSAA and SSAA use the same amount of storage. So what is the advantage to MSAA? MSAA only computes one color per pixel per draw. Thus, you save on pixel shader work. The drawbacks are that not everything gets filtered since MSAA will only filter pixels that got covered by edges from multiple triangles.

 

Thanx for explaining

 

What's the exact situation of support with ATI's AA?

i.e. all combinations of running on D3D9, OpenGL, radeon 5000 series, radeon 4000, and even the previous 3000 and 2000 series. It could extend that far back, if it's merely a driver feature, as ATI made a similar realease in the past (adaptative AA working on radeon 9600/9700)

Or does it need some hardware features from the RBE?
I wonder if the strict specs on a DX10.1 pipeline means all 10.1 hardware should be able to support sparse supersampling.

I've been playing counterstrike 1.5 again (no matter how old it's the absolute best game ever even if servers are few). but 1.6, or HL are the same exact engine.
It's the one game where you really notice texture filtering, with this stuff, IQ settings make the difference between decent-looking and total garbage.

Anyway I'm not satisfied with the G80 "perfect" filtering even though it's miles ahead of G7x. Even with 2x2 supersampling mixed with either amount of MS there's still texture shimmering.
that issue is of totally disproportionate importance to me . I've even tried a positivie LOD bias.

 

Btw, is 2x2 nv's SSAA comparable to ATI's 2xSSAA? in term of IQ en samples?

I have the idea NV does a better job on transparant objects and ATI on specular objects?

 

NV's 2x2 SSAA is 4 samples per pixel, so no.

 

Thanx

 

Do you mean that ATI's 2x SSAA is equal to Nvidia's 1x2 or 2x1 SSAA mode in nHancer (of course, ignoring the differences between ordered-grid, rotated grid, and sparse grid)? I'm a bit confused here..

 

For the most part Dragon Age: Origins, Quake Live, and and Street Fighter IV look stellar with 4x and 2x SSAA respectively at 1440x900. I haven't noticed any problems with those games, not obvious ones anyways besides the broken depth of field in DA:O which is all blocky, weird and ugly.

In Mass Effect 1/2, BioShock, RtCW, and SW:KotOR however SSAA isn't fully working. The image quality is way better than if I used MSAA, even straight up edges look noticeably better than MSAA. But certain things in Mass Effect and BioShock don't get any visible anti-aliasing, specifically on transparent textures with bright lights, rim lights around characters or objects, and even straight up bright lights. In RtCW and SW: KotOR only certain surfaces receive anti-aliasing, and in SW: KotOR most transparent textures aren't getting anti-aliased.

Is it supposed to be like this or is there something wrong with my drivers? I have 10.4, I tried 10.5 but it resulted in all kinds of weirdness in my games with grey textures. Also in Win XP SP3. Don't know if that makes a difference.