Anti-aliasing

What does this do? I heard it taxes your graphics card a lot but you notice no difference ...

 

Removes jagged lines from graphics. Smooths out those jaggies.

Google is your friend!

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_11.html --great website

2x is usually enough, as higher levels of AA will have results that are barely noticeable, yet will tax your card down to unplayable levels...

 

it does tax your F.rames P.er S.econd but you do notice a difference.

It smoothes out edges so they dont look pexilated. for example if your looking at a wooden pole in a game, the edges might look rigidy with AA off..but at x2 or x4 you will notice they will be smoother.

Now here will be certain games you will notice it more than others but really its just a personal preference...if you dont notice the diff then just leave it off if you want higher FPS.

 

Oh OK thanks. I've turned it on for COD4 to 4x and I only notice a difference in the main menu ... Guess I'll leave it off.

 

like the above poster said,2x is enuff..but leave it off if you want its your game! =)

 

Eh depends on the game really. Assassin's Creed looks absolutely awful without AA but other games it's not really that noticeable. If your card can handle it, run it.

 

AA kills the evil jagged edges. Death to them all!

 

It's good, really makes everything look smoother, but apart from resolution it's the hardest on your graphics card. You might be better off increasing other settings like ambient glow, particle effects etc, as these will really make a difference to the atmosphere of games. AA only makes everything look more realistic.

 

jaggies cut my eyes.

in cod4 your gun is much smoother and real looking, not boxy at all. but then not everyone has such eye on detail

 

Anti-aliasing is a wonderful thing...provided you have the graphics power to use it. In Call of Duty 4 I find it makes a big difference, but my graphics card seems to try to strangle itself if I ever turn it on in World in Confict (then again this game doesn't really need it). The advantage in having a lower res screen is that games look at there best on the screens native resolution plus since your native resolution is low the performance hit is minimal (such as my 1280v800 screen).

The worst is when you play a game like BF2 which lacks widesreen support, where you either have black bars on the sides or a stretched image where anti-aliasing can just make more of mess.

 

I've noticed it doesn't make much of a difference on bigger resolutions.

 

That's because larger resolutions produce a higher quality/sharper image by default with far less jagged lines.

When people start regularly playing games at 1900x... resolution, AA is hardly needed.
For resolutions above that, the jagged lines aren't even visible to the human eye.

My guess is that AA was primarily made for smoothing out lower resolutions such as 1280x800(1024) and a resolution above.
Anything in the 1900x range won't really benefit from AA.
AF (anisotropic filtering) perhaps, but even at high resolutions it's not that needed, as again, the higher resolution provides far better image quality/sharpness.

 

If you are looking to improve the visuals of the game, I would suggest using 4xAF instead of any AA. 4xAF makes textures at an angle look much nicer with minimal fps hit. I don't like AA any higher than 2x as it starts having huge performance hits after that.

 

increasing AA while lowering resolution is a cheap way to get a few more fps without giving up too much visual quality. Everything else has been covered already.