Where do I find an FXAA injector for ATI/AMD graphics cards?

Hi,

For the G73 laptop in my sig, I'm looking for an injector that will allow me to employ FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) in all my games, especially DX9 games and others that only support MSAA natively. And obviously it's gotta work on an ATI graphics card. Unfortunately, a Google search didn't turn up anything definitive.

Also, is there a difference in quality and performance between FXAA and SMAA (Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing, a pixel shader AA similar to FXAA)? Which one is better? I've already got an injector for SMAA but it's quirky.

 

I don't think a universal one exists for ATI/AMD. You can get ones for specific games, but the only universal FXAA solution I have ever seen is the newly released one in the Nvidia 300+ drivers which can inject Nvidia FXAA into pretty much any game not already using it.

MSAA is still higher quality though, so for older games you are better off with it unless you really need to the performance boost of FXAA.

 

there is a universal FXAA injector that works on all cards; it intercepts DX calls and does its post-processing magic. also SMAA tends to have better image quality (as far as my eyes are concerned!) but with a little bit more performance hit. (@YodaGoneMad: it's different from MSAA.)

you can download a ready-made FXAA injector from here which includes a GUI for tweaking some options. the original one is coded by "some dude" (that's his nickname) and is available from this thread (originally in german); make sure you download version 10. you can tweak the settings in the files to find your proper settings. it's easy.

 

Thanks for the links. Looks like I won't be using FXAA or SMAA after all because, for whatever reason, I get lower frame rates running FXAA and SMAA than I do running 8x MSAA in my games that don't have FXAA built-in. And the image quality between FXAA and 8x MSAA is hardly noticeable.

 

I would lean towards MSAA anyway. We could argue about quality all day, but I find MSAA to be highly preferable.

MSAA adds edge detail (actual correct detail), FXAA destroys some detail across the entire image, primarily around the edges. I dislike the slightly blurry look of images that come out of that effect.

 

that's good to know, but were you responding to me?

 

not a fan of FXAA either, haha

 

you can tweak the settings and lower the amount of sharpening and/or color enhancement (or completely disable them). for me, the performance hit of FXAA is negligible.

 

I recently tried using Inject SMAA from mrhaandi's crypto corner: injectSMAA.

It might be the same SMAA injector that you were using. If so, then this post might not be all that meaningful to you, but it may be useful to others.

I'm sorry because I have not tried Inject FXAA yet, but I plan to. My experience only involves Inject SMAA.

I took Inject SMAA for a spin yesterday while playing Mass Effect with a slow 10 watt Intel 1.6ghz SU9600 + ATI Mobility HD Radeon 4550. Usually, playing such a game with AA (2x forced on using Catalyst or higher) for such a weak system results in an unplayable experience. However with Inject SMAA, there doesn't seem to be a noticeable lag. I found it to be a great solution because the experience is still playable while eliminating most of the jaggies. It seems to be a cheap and resource-efficient way to enable AA for outdated and weak systems.

I've read that some folks who've used Inject SMAA since the earlier versions have experienced some blurriness along the lines of FXAA. However, with the latest version 1.2, I have not experienced the said blurriness.

 

Yes, that's the SMAA injector I was using. As far as I can tell, the image quality and performance imipact between the SMAA Injector and the original FXAA Injector by "some dude" is about the same. And in the games I've tested, both of these still lower frame rate more than 4x/6x/8x MSAA, although that may just be my particular system. Also, these don't appear to work at all in some games, such as TF2.

 

The trouble I usually have when using MSAA forced through drivers is that it applies the AA to EVERYTHING - UI elements and menus included. If the game supports MSAA/FXAA natively, this does not happen. Would the above injector do this on a 6950?

Sent from my Triumph using Tapatalk

 

Yes, using an FXAA or SMAA injector in a game that does not natively support FXAA will blur the menus and text as well, although the difference is most apparent at lower resolutions or larger text fonts. I personally didn't mind it when I was trying out the injectors but some people can't stand it.

 

First off, MSAA generally only applies to polygons, or at most the rendered scene, even when forced in the control panel - it isn't a post processing effect. Second, even if MSAA is applied to text, it wouldn't be a problem because MSAA doesn't use a destructive method to eliminate jagged edges (renders extra detail and then supersamples).

FXAA can be applied to the entire image like you described, and it can cause wonky text.

 

Right, my bad. For some reason I thought Syberia wrote FXAA instead of MSAA causing the text blurring. MSAA doesn't have the potential to blur text like FXAA does. Technically, MSAA is just a more optimized form of supersampling that only supersamples part of the image, usually polygon edges.

 

And even if you did full screen supersampling, it would make text look better, not worse.

 

Right. I keep forgetting that 2D graphics can be supersampled as well as 3D graphics.

 

Now that you mention it, I suppose it depends on how the text is rendered. But if the image you are supersampling is generated by stretching the original, then you aren't *really* supersampling anyway.