384-bit ways to squint your eyes.. or AA vs Better Textures

19 April


Hi guys.. wanted to share some info about 'AA' for those who are new to gaming..

Sometimes menu options are little like trying a new restaurant, you open the menu and don't know what's good. And if it's ethnic food..you don't know what all those strange words are ..

AA is 'anti-aliasing' it's designed to trick your mind into thinking far away objects are blurry but still have definition.. in a small way, it's something your eyes do in real life. not every game is good at AA implication, and makes mistakes (this is on the software level) but many games are.


using AA can make close things blurry too, but on a much smaller scale. It rounds the hard edges of pixels.. Imagine a 8-bit retro ball made from pixels and one using AA.

Memory bit bus bandwidth also plays a role on how well the card can effectively use AA..the GTX 660ti and the GTX 670 only have 1 feature change but it's an important one, the 660ti has a 192-bit bus and the 670 has 256-bit bus, the cards otherwise are identical.

Why did Nvidia do this? to mark a price point, because the bit bus is designed to enable certain AA levels..which I'll explain.

depending on the game..

64-bit bus = no AA.
128-bit bus = no AA to x2 AA
192-bit bus = x2 to x4
256-bit bus = x4 to x8
384-bit bus = x8 to x16
512-bit bus = x16 to ?


The smaller the bit bus the more it 'chokes' the effectiveness of the VRAM and the AA. But if you SLI or XFire.. you get double the bit bus coz each card counts as a single bus. .. if you have enough shader cores to handle high AA settings and a decent bit bus.. (256-bit) then you can use AA comfortably without a huge impact on your frame rate.. however if you don't ..and even heavy OC'ing you card.. I mean you'd have to be able to 'toast bread on it hot' to match a card with a bigger bus. The higher the AA the more heat inside the GPU if the card can't shoot out those images fast enough, also overclocking the card.. ooffft! ..so if you wondering why you card is stuttering.. try without AA on.. ?

When I open up the menu.. I think 'yeah I want it all!'
like I just hit an all-you-can-eat buffet ..but no. I can play Farcry3 in SuperHD with x2 AA or I can watch it stutter for 4 hours.

hope this fills your mind instead of fills your eyes.. yumm! haha

peace

Dava

addition:

I think its very true how an engine implements AA can make like a 20 frame difference and that's difference between being able to play a game and not. The Source Engine is the lightest engine i know of.. and its also feature complete.. controller compat. AA scaling liquid participle lighting etc.

NVCP.. contains more settings for AA all the way up to-----  

x2 AA

x4 AA

x8 CSAA

x8 AA

x16 CSAA 

x16 Q CSAA

x32 CSAA

--------

SLI

x12 

x24 CSAA

x24

x48 CSAA

x48Q CSAA

x96 CSAA

Your settings might show up differently, as I have 3 way SLI, or it could be different in the the AMD catalyst control center. It's under the [Anti-Aliasing Mode] 'Enhance the application'.


but ultimately I feel.. higher quality textures are always better than.. a bit of trickery.