How To Use AA and AF

I

ilkhan

[H]F Junkie
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depending on the viewing format (FP/3rd) you can see better detail or can see more area...high res can look a LOT better, because each dot represents less area, details are a lot easier to see.

Imagine a square inch of paper devided into 4 zones, black top left and bottom right, white the other 2.

Now imagine the same square inch devided into 16 zones, with every other 1 being black/white. Each area is a smaller area, so you can put more details into the same viewing area right?

The paper is the screen and the black/white areas are the pixels, more pixels, more detail.
 
Originally posted by xxaaqq
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And out of curiosity...
Have any of you played Need For Speed: Underground at 1280x1024 with AA4X and AF8X?
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yes. :confused:

not sure what im suppose to say about. it runs well at that setting. any higher would be just out of comfort range with fps.
 
Originally posted by GLSauron
depending on the viewing format (FP/3rd) you can see better detail or can see more area...high res can look a LOT better, because each dot represents less area, details are a lot easier to see.

Imagine a square inch of paper devided into 4 zones, black top left and bottom right, white the other 2.

Now imagine the same square inch devided into 16 zones, with every other 1 being black/white. Each area is a smaller area, so you can put more details into the same viewing area right?

The paper is the screen and the black/white areas are the pixels, more pixels, more detail.
Click to expand...

That makes sense to me. Thanks for the clarification.
 
Again, thanks guys. I'll try to update my findings when my video card finally gets here. I did the ATI Trade-Up program... way back on December 22nd, and I'm still waiting for my new Radeon 9800 Pro to get here. What I believe I'll be doing is turning AA4 and AF8 on in the Control Panel, and just leaving it there, and running my games at either 1024x768 or 1280x1024 with maximum detail, resolution dependent on how smooth the games run.
 
good idea. You should know that 1024x768 is going to run alot better than 1280x1024 with those settings, as 1024 is only display a number of pixels in the hundred thousands while 1280 is displaying in the upper millions ( dont have the exact figures at hand) much more intensive than the jump from 800x600 to 1024x768.
 
I have exactly 2 choices for gaming, 800x600 and 1600x1200. Aren't 20" 16x12 native LCDs great? :D

Seriously, 8x6 sucks for space and 16x12 gets crappy framerates :(
 
i played through halo at 800x600 and without AA my eyes were bleeding. My heart gos out to you GLSauron
 
Originally posted by Pandaman
good idea. You should know that 1024x768 is going to run alot better than 1280x1024 with those settings, as 1024 is only display a number of pixels in the hundred thousands while 1280 is displaying in the upper millions ( dont have the exact figures at hand) much more intensive than the jump from 800x600 to 1024x768.
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So there is a great jump in visual quality between 1024 & 1280. I'll have to try that. I just thought that any res higher than 1024x768 would seriously hurt framerate.
 
As already noted, application preference is only going to work for you if the game supports these settings with the game's video configuration. Only a couple of games that I have played come to mind for support that. Those would be Serious Sam and SOFII.

The thing to remember is that once you find a setting that works for a particular game, because you will likely find that the same setting won't work with all games (at least to your satisfaction) is that the driver supports saving profiles for these settings. Once you find the settings you like, type the name of the profile in the box and save; you have to do this under the appropriate OGL or D3D because it saves these profiles separately based on API. Then when you go to play a game, you simply select the profile for that game and all your settings are there.
 
Originally posted by GLSauron
I have exactly 2 choices for gaming, 800x600 and 1600x1200. Aren't 20" 16x12 native LCDs great? :D

Seriously, 8x6 sucks for space and 16x12 gets crappy framerates :(
Click to expand...

You make that sound like a bad thing. Actually, this is the very reason I bought a 20" LCD. Looks at it this way: with a decent graphics card, 1600x1200 is no problem. If a game is too demanding, then you drop the resolution to 800x600 and max out the AA and AF and everything still stays sharp. What options do other people have? Can you quarter 1280x1024 into 640x512? Can you quarter 1024x768 into 512x384? Probably not, and even if you could those really are way too low. The 1600x1200 and 800x600 options seem perfect to me.
 
Ah yes, 1280x1024 is not quite double the pixels that 1024x768 is. Anyway, my video card is actually in my state now... should get it on Monday... yay! I'll have to look into profiles. Sounds like a good thing, as long as it's not a pain when switching between games (oh god I'm lazy :))
 
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