Morphological AA (MLAA) The Good, Bad & Ugly

There has been an explosion of excitement with AMD's newest driver set for the Radeon 6xxx cards the 10.10a hotfix driver set.

The reason why is because of the brand new feature called Morphological Anti-Aliasing aka MLAA.

Whats all the rave about?

Its the first AA mode that has virtually no hit on performance at all. The most seen is about 1fps and that itself is within a margin for error.

So thats the good


But the problem is that its not a traditional 3D engine AA mode, it is in fact a simple post processing effect that intelligently seeks out edges and attempts to blur them in with the background. One thing to note, since its a post processing effect taking a screenshot with a program like FRAPS will not show the effect but instead the original unaltered image!

Thats the bad


So as an effect its the first AA mode that will effect the entire screen no matter what its content, this is including and not limited to things like the 2D elements in a game like the HUD.

The MLAA effect looks great on many 3D objects and games, but it very visibly blurs things like sharp 2D text on your HUD and can also blur out and even eliminate file details on 3D elements.

That is the ugly


So what do I have in store for you guys today? Read on!

Well firstly there have been attempts to modify the 10.10a drivers to work with the 5xxx series cards. Some people claim success others like myself do not.

I had the drivers working perfectly and got to see the MLAA working with my own eyes but had some kind of texture corruption I could see in Starcraft 2, and thats about the only game I am playing right now.

Minor patches of texture would vanish and appear at random, and most notably my pylon power field would be missing or only partially there. I tried multiple modified driver sets and did a clean install with no aval.

So I think right now the modified drivers are not successful completely.

After seeing MLAA I can say I actually prefer to game with it off. I do not see the point in trading a few jaggies gone in exchange for a blurred HUD and text elements. I far more notice the blur to details that I ever did the jaggies.

It may work well with games that have minimal HUD elements or less fine text than say Starcraft 2.

To demonstrate the effect on both 2D and 3D I made 2 animated .gifs for you. You can easily see the difference between the MLAA and no AA.

Here is the effect it has on TEXT (click spoiler tag to view image)

Spoiler

Here is the effect it has on 3D (click spoiler tag to view image)

Spoiler

So now you can see the trade off and decide for yourself if its worth it.

I think many will not and save yourself the trouble of messing with hacked 10.10a drivers for now.


So back to when I said I had something special for you....

I said you cant take screenshots of MLAA since its a post processing effect, yet I have comparison screen shots posted...

How did I do that?

I got AMD's MLAA testing program. Its a .exe that runs the filter on a .PNG image and then renders a new image for you with the MLAA effect this is exactly 100% the same thing that happens when you turn MLAA on with the AMD CCC.

I took the time to put together an easy to use package so that anybody can see for themselves what MLAA will look like on their favorite games. This filter program should work on any computer with any video card but I only have 5870 cards in my computers so I cant say for sure.

Download, Extract, read the read me file for instructions and enjoy!


Download ViciousXUSMC's MLAA Testing Package


** The package was created by me, MLAA.exe was created by AMD.

When I found MLAA.exe it had no clear instructions on how to use it. Its command line only so to make it user friendly I created the folder tree, the .bat file and the instructions on how to use it so that everybody can enjoy and test with it.

I only ask that if you want to share with others that you send them to this thread and not directly re-distribute it. Thanks.

 

awesome post, thanks for the info. any chance this will be possible for nvidia cards?

 

Yeah its post processing, Nvidia can implement it unless AMD finds some way to legally prevent them from doing so.

Im sure they will rip the technology and rename it to something different and have it soon.

I hope somebody also makes it into a photoshop filter, since the MLAA.exe is already half way there.

The only dependency it has right now is Shader Model 5.0 and thats part of Direct X 11 so that means in its current state you would need Vista/7 for an OS and a DX11 GPU to run this in game as MLAA. (thats my long way of saying Nvidia cards can support it as far as I can tell)

The program I posted is much slower than real time rendering via the GPU and SM 5.0 it uses the CPU to process it much like a photoshop filter, so you should be able to test what MLAA will look like no matter what your OS or GPU is. Just make sure they are PNG images. FRAPS can take .PNG screenshots and you can get a free trial of it.

 

Another impressive post Vicious, thanks.

Q

 

Excellent read. I'm with you. That kind of imagery would bother me way more than jaggies. Fuzzy HUD's? No Gracias!


Viscious, you are a true notebook Jedi. Thanks for saving me the trouble and hassle experimenting with this when it's clear by your excellent post that I'd just be disappointed in the results.

Well Done.

 

it looks quite good ingame so for it's performance pris it's a grate thing
but for text ....... they could have implemented it elseway so that it's done only on 3d element

 

I saw quite a large performance hit in the original F.E.A.R. Without MLAA, I ran run the game at 4xAA, pegged at 60 fps with vsync on, 1680x1050 resolution. With MLAA, performance would drop to 45-50 fps in certain spots.

 

I'll be the first to say I thought the trade off off a slightly blur HUD versus a much cleaner picture is worth it. That said the last time I played with video drivers I had to reload my rig to factory defaults so I doubt I will be messing around with hacked drivers.

I would love MLAA for GTA IV

 

Yeah to each his own. If MLAA is worth it is definitely subjective and also really changes on a game to game basis.

Thats why I posted the tool so that people can test with there own games, maybe even come back and post some comparison shots.

One thing I cant understand though is all the reading I did last night Starcraft2 is probably the #1 most mentioned game that MLAA is great with and I cant wrap my head around why people would be saying this.

The game has a lot of 2D and text elements because its a RTS game, and the jaggies are super minimal.

The saddest part of it all is that I even gave a "best case scenario" in the comparison shots above the text shot is just the normal screen. But the 3D shot is with the camera fully zoomed in.

At full zoom its still hard to notice the difference without looking closely and nobody plays the game zoomed in. When you are zoomed out everything is so much smaller that its basically impossible to see jaggies, but you still very clearly see the distortion to the HUD.

 

from the pics you posted i still think no mlaa looks better. everything with mlaa on looks fuzzy lol.

 

I'd be more concerned about Nvidia games disabling it.

I sure hope they can make some more improvements on this, it sounds promising being post process and all, but I just don't see it as an improvement.

 

it looks like the image just got shoved through a low pass filter. i would not want that on any of my games.

 

I actually like it...compared to No AA I mean...

Until theres a stable solution to implement it though, I wont worry about it.

Massive rep.

 

You have to see it for yourself. It depends on which games. SC2 really does look good with MLAA. Found L4D2 looks great with it. Fallout New Vegas not bad. Gothic 4 a bit too much overhead performance.

But as others have said, MSAA, SSAA is the recommended way to use AA IF you have the GPU capable. But for mobile users, AA cutting performance by 10-20 FPS on something that is only 40-60 FPS, MLAA is awesome.

For me I just decide, do I want something perfect clarity with jagged edge, or do I want something that looks like it's been filtered a little too much with smooth edges.

I tend to choose smooth edge since the performance is so good with MLAA so far. If performance hit too much, then I turn it off. Cause really the game performing well is the top priority for me, I don't take screenshots to look at the image in detail ever... Reviews that compare AF and quality images are useless to me as I never ever look that hard when I'm gaming. I just want a GPU that can play with the other requirements I have for a laptop.

 

I agree with Ruckus. This isn't very helpful on high-end GPUs, but midrange and low-end ones could benefit greatly.

 

Its only officially out for the 6000 series cards right now and those are midrange cards.

I think also when playing eyefinity resolutions 5760x1200 this could be nice because regular AA is really demanding even on the highest cards for a modern game. I often leave it off for that reason.

 

Sorry, I meant lower midrange in terms of desktop cards.

Yeah, you have a point there.

 

BTW the blurring of text can be rectified. The PS3 version doesn't have this problem because the HUD is processed after the 3D image is. This way the HUD remains crisp. So maybe in the future, this will be rectified for those who want it.

Also for those who are complaining of blurring without actually having seen it for yourself, check out these these two videos and you'll see when MLAA is working, it looks awesome. Also the MLAA has only been released as a feature for HD6xxx. AMD said they will backport, so while it is working by hacking the registry/INF settings, it sounds to me, AMD will optimize it further to work on HD5xxx and MLAA may see improvements.

God of War AA coming to PC/360? - Page 2 | DigitalFoundry | Eurogamer.net

 

On the PS3 its inplimented at the game level. AKA the game supports it and was designed with it.

AMD just made this as an after the fact filter, no way they can impliment it only on the 3D until PC game developers implement it into there game properly.

 

i plan on cross firing 6850 with my new build so MLAA will definitely help out extending the life of that setup when the time comes. All jaggies must die when i play games so this is a nice bonus for me.

 

Dont call me out on it because I am not sure, but I just want to say that I saw something about MLAA not working in crossfire right now.

 

It looks neat and I'm sure we are better with it than without it, but I would much rather use real AA for games and not lose the detail. It might be fun to try it on the desktop though.

 

In a game that does not have much detail to begin with or a loose art style like say borderlands I think it would work pretty well.

 

I feel like 6000 series GPU's should be able to handle 2-4x AA basically for free, with negligible performance loss.

Also, you can just run games in lower resolution and get a similar effect with performance enhancement!

 

lol not quite

 

Can't wait to try this out, with a Mobility 6870.

 

So, this is actually not true based on the benchmarks. Unfortunate.

Introduction - AMD Morphological AA Performance and IQ Review | [H]ard|OCP

Massive performance loss at 1080p + resolutions (massive). Less performance loss at 1680x1050, but still definitely there.

 

=/ yes thats exactly why I posted the link in my thread, my own testing in benchmark tools like 3dmark06 show its around the 20% area. Games seem to vary quite a bit sometimes, but I haven't tested a single one yet that was so low I couldn't tell it was on.

 

MLAA is an awesome implementation. For this reason.

It's not a replacement for MSAA or SSAA as some of you IMO are trying to make it out to be. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is how I view MLAA.

MLAA is great for situations when AA is not readily available or supported by a game. That's why MLAA is a great feature so you can have AA in Batman AA or easier in SC2 which had issues with AA with ATi and it's not even an option in the game panel. Again, MLAA is great if you play Borderlands etc.

If a game has AA built in or has support for MSAA, then use MSAA.

That's what MLAA is about IMO for now. Later in the future when this tech develops more, maybe then it can become a standard or another option to MSAA and not just something to use when MSAA is not available. The way PS3 has implemented it shows that this tech has amazing potential for PC users also. But we can tell, AMD is still developing this with so many hotfix driver releases and we have yet to see a MLAA enabled driver for HD5xxx, which again tells AMD still has MLAA in the development stage.

 

Ruckus, I agree completely that MLAA is not a substitute for MSAA at all. But I was pretty sure that you can force MSAA in any application through the CCC.

 

Some games that use UE3 and few others don't support AA at all.

 

I just looked it up and you can still run AA even if it isn't officially supported:

Unreal Engine 3 and Anti Aliasing (Large images) - Tripwire Interactive Forums

 

some what correct, they only support it under dx10

 

Great article, a few questions come up though. Can you show the difference of a game with all the levels of AA, like Crysis warhead to keep it simple. Take screens of the same screen with all the levels off aa, and then turn it off, take a pic, then turn on msaa , make it a gif , so we can compare it with something else.

The second part is if this really helps lower jaggies, then we can all push our current GPUs a bit harder. take crysis, I get a few more FPS by dropping from 1080p to 900p. I have a 52inch Sharp 1080p native LCD and I notice every little detail, but between 1080p and 900p there is hardly a difference. Dropping to 900p does afford me a bit higher settings and a slightly higher FPS. But now this begs the question, can you go down to something like 720p, and instead of dealing with rediculous JAGGIES, turning on MLAA and getting nearly the same image from the 1080p to the 720p with MLAA? Just curious, someone needs to compile a bunch of screens for use, different resolutions with AA on, AA off, MLAA on MLAA of, and stock image without both off, and also compare frame rate. Who ever does this would be a god.

 

asder00 on the Guru3D forums has modified the Catalyst 10.10e hotfix drivers to work with Mobility GPUs. His modification doesn't require you to disable driver signature enforcement every time you boot. All features in the hotfix appear to be in-tact and working, including MLAA.

Link to the forum post, which contains links to sites where he's hosting the modified drivers.

 

I like the 10.10E driver except that you no longer have the option to turn off the Cat AI.

There is a bug in the 10.10's that messes up pylon power in starcraft 2 and the fix seems to be to turn off the Cat AI and with these you cant do it anymore.

 

The high quality setting in the AI disables the Catalyst Optimizations. High quality provides the best image possible. It's the same as off.

I'm going to try and install the 10.10e mod and then patch with it with TWL's mobility patch and see how SC2 is.

 

Vicious here you go:

10.10e + TWL Mobile Patch

 

Hmm looks good, but is that low ground? the bug is odd in that pylon power is only gone on high ground it looks like it basically goes into the ground to the ground level.

What is the TWL Mobile Patch you speak of? (link)

 

That is high ground.

Not sure if I can link another forum. So google TWL Drivers, first link. If you scroll down on his post for downloads you'll see Mobility Patch v1.00. Just patch it over your 10.10e install. MLAA and the new features of 10.10e remain untouched.

 

Its still an amazing addition for those of us with average to low-end GPUs, i just hope that developers start implementing it so that 2D is not affected, dropping to no AA in Crysis gives a noticeable improvement in performance.

 

I don't see how they can develop it to stop messing with 2D.

 

Just use profiles so MLAA is only turned on the games you want it be used on.

 

OMG OMG OMG, just tried the Guru3D link and i now have MLAA. Man i just keep getting more and more out of this chip. =D

 

I was looking at the readme for the TWL patch, and there seems to be a use/restore function in it. Is it meant to be used only for games and then removed.

Is there any other difference besides the presence of MLAA? Adverse effects?

 

i thought the presence MLAA itself was causing adverse effects? And what is TWL mobile patch?