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MLAA + GPU-accelerated browsers = failboat?

D

dderidex

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 31, 2001
Messages
6,328
I'm running the latest Firefox 4 beta, as well as IE9, and I gotta say, with MLAA enabled in CCC....

...text looks like ASS. If I disable 'hardware acceleration' in the browser, it cleans right up.

Can anyone else confirm that? NOTE: you do have to close and re-open the browser after toggling the MLAA flag for the change to be visible.
 
Yes, MLAA also affects hardware accelerated video playback and pictures. Pretty irritating.
 
requiem99 said:
Yes, MLAA also affects hardware accelerated video playback and pictures. Pretty irritating.
Click to expand...

Hmmm - didn't even think about that one, but it makes sense, sure.

LOL - guess it's an easy way to test if an app is really GPU-accelerated or not. "Does it look like total ass with MLAA enabled" > ROFL.

Interestingly, I just tried this in Photoshop CS5, and it looks alright, there. So...dunno.
 
Videos don't actually look bad at all with MLAA it depends on the video of course but some videos actually look better. YMMV.
 
Yup it does, it even does loading screens in games and winamp visualizations.
 
its not that big of a deal, and should have been expected. Its a post-process thing, so anything that is GPU accelerated will have MLAA applied if its enabled. It may not look very good, but its pretty simple to set up a profile so that you can just switch it on before you boot up a game.
 
Should be easy to get AMD to set up a general toggle/quick key to enable/disable MLAA from anywhere.
 
Nightbird said:
Should be easy to get AMD to set up a general toggle/quick key to enable/disable MLAA from anywhere.
Click to expand...

Their profiles are pretty easy... it takes a couple mouse clicks to turn it on, and a couple to turn it back off. don't even have to open CCC.
 
All AMD card owners should use RadeonPro to set up profiles. Much easier than what's built into Catalyst Control Center and has many more options such as using various AA profiles for games. The newest version has support for MLAA so you don't have to worry about blurry browsers and videos.

http://www.radeonpro.info/
 
SicKlown42012 said:
All AMD card owners should use RadeonPro to set up profiles. Much easier than what's built into Catalyst Control Center and has many more options such as using various AA profiles for games. The newest version has support for MLAA so you don't have to worry about blurry browsers and videos.

http://www.radeonpro.info/
Click to expand...

Well there you have it, nice find sicKlown42012! Problem solved, and when/if amd implements that into the driver then issue resolved. BTW reading down from the first post I was going to suggest they implement a .exe specific way to add MLAA to games this way it doesn't run on anything other than games or specific .exe's you point it to so good tool.
 
None of that is surprising since it is a post processor on everything. Over all, just another reason to leave MLAA disabled normally, and use it only when there's a reason.

Over all I find MLAA pretty underwhelming. In some cases it looks ok, but not quite as good as regular AA in my opinion, in others it really falls flat (WoW is a great example). It isn't a general purpose FSAA replacement, it is a special tool for games that just won't play nice with normal AA for whatever reason.

It's a cool technology and worth having, but it isn't The Next Big Thing(tm) and not something to turn on all the time.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
All AMD card owners should use RadeonPro to set up profiles. Much easier than what's built into Catalyst Control Center and has many more options such as using various AA profiles for games. The newest version has support for MLAA so you don't have to worry about blurry browsers and videos.

http://www.radeonpro.info/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! I'll give this a try later after work.

I tested MLAA for a bit in Crysis and Left 4 Dead. It defenetly looks different, however I am not sure it looks any better. The characters in L4D did not look as sharp compared to when I used standard AA. It just seems blured out a tad too much. Still better than no AA I guess. Using a 5870 if that matters.

Oddly on a non related issue. I noticed that with MLAA enabled, my windows experiance went from 7.5 to 6.9. Turned MLAA off, and it went back to 7.5. Not to concerned, just though it was wierd.
 
NeloDiavolo said:
Oddly on a non related issue. I noticed that with MLAA enabled, my windows experiance went from 7.5 to 6.9. Turned MLAA off, and it went back to 7.5. Not to concerned, just though it was wierd.
Click to expand...

Yeah, at the moment, ATI really does seem to smack EVERYTHING with MLAA when it's enabled. It must be running astonishingly late in the pipeline.

Makes me wonder about folding on these cards with MLAA enabled.
 
Exactly, it's the very last thing in the pipeline, which is why it's worth bothering with on a driver/graphics card level. It's for use when traditional forms of AA just don't work, at all, or in some cases when regular AA does work but the performance hit due to some wierd game quirk is unplayably slow. Ideally AA in any form (MLAA too) would be done by the game developers at the best place in the rendering path to get the best visual quality and performance, but that just doesn't happen all the time.
 
Sycraft said:
None of that is surprising since it is a post processor on everything. Over all, just another reason to leave MLAA disabled normally, and use it only when there's a reason.

Over all I find MLAA pretty underwhelming. In some cases it looks ok, but not quite as good as regular AA in my opinion, in others it really falls flat (WoW is a great example). It isn't a general purpose FSAA replacement, it is a special tool for games that just won't play nice with normal AA for whatever reason.

It's a cool technology and worth having, but it isn't The Next Big Thing(tm) and not something to turn on all the time.
Click to expand...


its really only designed for games that dont support AA on AMD/ATI cards and for those games you cant run AA due to performance loss but can run MLAA. its a compremise either you dont get AA or you get slight AA. sure its not for everyone but there are some people that are far less picky about AA but would enjoy having some AA without the huge performance hit.
 
dderidex said:
Makes me wonder about folding on these cards with MLAA enabled.
Click to expand...

I doubt there would be any performance hit because Folding doesn't send any kind of data to the frame buffer. If there's nothing being sent there, there's nothing to apply MLAA to.
 
Weird, I haven't noticed anything outside of games being effected by mlaa with my 6850. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but text looks the same in chrome (haven't tried IE or FF) and videos don't seem any different. Text in game looks like crap though.
 
Sycraft said:
It isn't a general purpose FSAA replacement, it is a special tool for games that just won't play nice with normal AA for whatever reason.

It's a cool technology and worth having, but it isn't The Next Big Thing(tm) and not something to turn on all the time.
Click to expand...

I actually use it as a FS SSAA replacement. SSAA costs too much. MSAA leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to removing jaggies, so I prefer using MLAA in all games where it looks good (in some games it doesn't look good). The softening of textures is also flattering for many games, since some use very hard textures which makes the game look less polished. Stalker CS is a good example of this.

Making a hotkey for this was actually a good idea, since I use it much in games. So, I made one myself in CCC's profile manager and hotkeyed alt+m to mlaa on and alt+n to mlaa off. :)
 
WiLLiSTER said:
Weird, I haven't noticed anything outside of games being effected by mlaa with my 6850. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but text looks the same in chrome (haven't tried IE or FF) and videos don't seem any different. Text in game looks like crap though.
Click to expand...

Only certain programs/browsers are GPU accelerated. Any program that doesn't use the GPU for 2D or 3D processing won't be affected by MLAA at all. Download the latest Firefox(4.0Beta7) or IE9 Beta and you'll see it. Both programs use 2D acceleration for text now. Eventually, Chrome and the other browsers will probably follow suit as it'll help move processing off the CPU and onto the GPU which will help with netbooks and such when APUs become more prevalent.
 
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