Do I need anti-aliasing with native resolution?

As topic.

 

It still does smooth things out a bit, but I'd say it would not be worth the performance hit.

 

What is you native resolution? I'd say it doesn't matter much about your native res, raising the resolution generally gives the same effect as AA anyways, with less performance hit.

 

I game at 1920x1200. And I don't see the difference with AA on except framerate drops.

 

AA is like a drug

Dont use it and you won't need it. Use it, you become dependant. It depends on game too. In AoC I don't use it and I've got no problems but for WiC, I absolutely need 2x. 1680x1050

 

99.99% of the time, me neither. I'd recommend going for native resolution, then Anisotropic Filtering, then a more recent pixel shader version (1 = DX8, 2 = DX9, 3 = DX 9.0c [much better than 2 if you can run it], 4 = DX 10, 4.1 = DX 10.1), then going for VSync, and if you've still got FPS to spare, maybe turning on some antialiasing.

Exact ordering varies, but that's generally about the order I increase things in. Maybe pixel shader before resolution if the game is really demanding.

 

If your playing a demanding game like TES4:Oblivion on a lower end gpu/cpu, its actually smarter to run the game on 800*640 with 4xaa and high textures than 1280*1024+, because it looks and runs better.

But if your GPU & CPU can handle 1920*1200, then there is no reason for AA , unless you have one of those triple Nvidia GTX 260's or the dual 3870's/4870's or something... which is about 75% more money than anyone should be spending on 'video game hardware', alone.

 

I hate jaggies. Ever since the day of Voodoo 5, the first card that offers true AA, I can't live without 4xAA. If I can't play the game with AA without dropping the fps below the level of what I consider smooth, then I would rather not to play the game at all.

 

If you've got an nvidia card, you can turn on 16xAF right away, it doesn't affect performances since the GF4 TI. DX10.1 is supposed to offer free AA (under DX10.1 of course) but I don't even think it will be ever used.

 

Quite true about the statement saying that AA is crack.

I used to play every game on low because my desktop had a crappy graphics card (7300GT) and it didn't really bug me much. However after getting my MBP, I started jacking up the graphic settings including AA, and now I absolutely hate it when I see jagged edges.

 

I dont know how you all manage such high resolutions on a laptop with new games, 1280x1024 is pushin it with settings on high and AA+AF for most things under $2k

 

I run most games with at least 2x AA, aside from Crysis. (CS:S Native, all maxed, 16x AA/16x AF, TF2 same, Oblivion uses HDR which doesn't allow AA, CoD4 2x AA, 16x AF)

 

It depends on the game.

I have been playing crysis today at 1920x1080 and cant see the difference with AA on or off, it uses ultra high resolution textures and polys.

But if I go play BF2142 at 1920x1080 you can see a slight difference with it on and off.

On an older game like Painkiller or Half Life 2 you can really see the difference with it on and off.

So playing at native does not eliminate jagged edges unless the game is made to run ultra high resolutions.

Playing at a low resolution tho can invoke the need for AA, if you were playing a game that would have been smooth at full native resolution and you force it to scale down with a lower resolution, it may corrupt the textures/polys in a way that causes jagged edges, then AA is needed to smooth them out.

So what happens is in general the consensus becomes that high resolution you dont need AA and low resolution you do, but in reality its just game/settings dependant.

Not like I have much an option in Crysis.... 35fps average all high/vhigh 1920x1080 but put 2xAA on and drop to 20fps average....

 

You get that on your C90s?

 

No, he's talking about his desktop.

 

Ah, that makes a lot more sense.

 

I wont even attempt to play Crysis on my C90S lol. 8600 DDR2..... it could play it on lower settings for sure but it would really ruin the games effects to not be playing it on high with a big screen/resolution and a nice sound system.

I just got to the first "strange" part of the game and man all the cool sounds/explosions really rock on my home theater setup. Im surprised the wife didnt yell at me because it shakes the whole house when explosions go off.

Fun Fact: Crysis doesnt need AA really but the only part of Crysis that I saw that could use AA was with the bushes and stuff the leafs were kinda jagged. If you do apply AA it does not even effect those! There is a separate setting you have to manually set in your config file or use the command console to set called edgeAA and it effects the folliage and its not as big of a hit as normal AA so thats what you want to use if anything.

 

A game like Assassin's Creed needs AA to not look like crap, others can do without it. It really just depends game to game.

 

Too bad after 3 missions i quit playing AC it got boring... I never got to play it at high settings tho.

Give me a new Oblivion game where you have nothing but a Ton of dark brotherhood missions

 

I disagree, in assassin's creed, AA doesn't make any difference in WUXGA, although i ran it at 4XAA, well still got 40fps+

 

AC looks great. with Multisampling it looks slightly better, but it isnt essential.

 

Slightly OT (but related) query following from this discussion - for *gaming* would you prefer a 1440x900 native res (15.4" screen) or a 1680x1050 resolution, with a 9800GT?

Petrov.

 

for 15.4", 1680x1050 is perfect.

 

I agree. Ideal resolution IMO.

 

I use it if I can. In Crysis, I obviously couldn't use it, but with COD4 I put it at 2x just because I can....