Running MSAA and FXAA

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apcs13

apcs13

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Oct 2, 2013
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Hello, I just had a quick question for anyone who knows a fair bit about Anti-Aliasing, I know people generally prefer MSAA over FXAA, but what about running them both at the same time? My PC can handle ultra settings in BF4, which puts MSAA at 4X and Post Processing (FXAA) at the highest level, and I can run it smoothly. My question, however, is would it look better running it just with MSAA? I have heard that FXAA produces a blurred image, and running both is unnecessary, and if this is true, why not squeeze out a few extra FPS? thanks!
 
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Yes you can run MSAA, FXAA, and even TrSSAA all together at once. I generally leave FXAA on as it has minimal impact on performance.

Of course, like anytime you want to optimize your game settings, its best to play around with different options. Basically, I try to turn on everything I can, then scale back from there to get my FPS up to an acceptable rate. Generally, the MSAA and TrSSAA are the first to get lowered, but as mentioned, I tend to leave FXAA on at all times.

You could also try to automatically optimize your game settings with Geforce Experience, if you wanted to give that a try.
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Austin Durick

Austin Durick

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In your case I would stick with the MMsaa 4X since it helps remove jagged edges around distant and close up objects giving the game a smoother look. As far as Fxaa go's turning it on will basically make explosions and particles look better but with MSAA 4x enabled there is no need for FxAA and turning it off will greatly improve FPS.
 
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bystander

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MSAA and FXAA fix things differently. MSAA only fixes edges around defined objects. It will not fix textures, it will not fix transparencies, and it will not fix shader aliasing.

FXAA is a post process AA method. It takes a completed image, analyses it, and attempts to fix what it can figure out on the image. This method will fix aliasing on transparencies, textures, shaders and around objects, but it will not fix sub-pixel aliasing. It can mess up text a bit, and cause images to look a bit blurry.

SMAA is similar to FXAA, but generally considered better.

I personally do not like to use FXAA. It is sort of better, but I'd rather not have sort of better at lower FPS. Each person must figure out for themselves whether it is worth it. Using both FXAA and MSAA will improve the image quality, assuming you are ok with the downsides of FXAA.

If you want to learn more about AA, read this: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/122/1
 
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17seconds

17seconds

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Yes you can run MSAA, FXAA, and even TrSSAA all together at once. I generally leave FXAA on as it has minimal impact on performance.

Of course, like anytime you want to optimize your game settings, its best to play around with different options. Basically, I try to turn on everything I can, then scale back from there to get my FPS up to an acceptable rate. Generally, the MSAA and TrSSAA are the first to get lowered, but as mentioned, I tend to leave FXAA on at all times.

You could also try to automatically optimize your game settings with Geforce Experience, if you wanted to give that a try.
 
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apcs13

apcs13

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Okay, I tested in BF4 specifically, and turning on FXAA literally had NO performance impact (which is kind of weird), and it did make the game look a little bit better, so I'm just going to run both. Thanks for the contributions!
 
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Kratos47

Kratos47

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It depends on what you personally prefer and the impact of it varies from game to game. Both MSAA and FXAA are used to remove jagged edges.

MSAA basically calculates the edge pixels of your 3D models which is comprised of several polygons with the pixels adjacent to it. With 2x settings, it's calculated by doubling the resolution and then scaling it to fit your resolution. 4x quadruples it etc. So this process overall puts a lot of performance impact.

FXAA is different. It's an algorithm which doesn't require that much computing power. It basically smoothens the image altogether to remove jaggies. So plenty of players playing games on high resolutions don't prefer this since it actually blurs the textures in some cases and can result in poor HUD elements which aren't sharp enough. Wiki mentions this disadvantage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_approximate_anti-aliasing
 
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