Video card AA vs software AA

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rds1220

rds1220

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Sep 10, 2011
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This is something that I've been thinking about for awhile. You know how games now have an option have an anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in the actual game. Well I have a few questions:

Is it necessary to use the in game AA and anisotropic filtering? I mean does it really do anything or add any performance if you have AA and anisotropic filtering set to the max on the video card control center.

Does one take presidence over the other? Can having both set to the max hurt performance? I guess what I was thinking is will the games AA try to compete with the video cards AA and cause a conflict that will hurt performance.
 
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R
Neither? Both? It's an effect that is applied when an image is being rendered based off information about that image provided by the game (or after it has been rendered in the case of post processed AA like FXAA). Whether it's a setting in the game or your drivers that's asking for the AA to be applied doesn't matter (assuming they both apply the same strength of the same type of AA).

However, it's generally best to use the games settings because those are the ones the developers programmed the game to use and tested to make sure they work. Sometimes though it gets slapped on as an afterthought so you only get limited, poor in-game AA options. It's times like that where you might try using a different type/strength of AA via your...
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rakadedo

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Nov 14, 2012
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They are most definitely not the same. Many games engines that use deferred rendering are incompatible with several types of AA that you might try forcing on via the driver.

Depending on the type of AA used, you can have them work together (SSAA + FXAA, SMAA is a mixture or Morphological AA and MSAA).

Generally speaking though you should stick to the in-game AA unless it isn't doing a good enough job for your taste, in which case you should turn off the in-game and try various forced driver settings. If neither are satisfactory your next best step would be to look into an AA injector (Such as SweetFX).
 
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rds1220

rds1220

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Sep 10, 2011
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So does the graphics engine from the gaming software work in co-ordination with the video card (when the AA is not set in the video card control panel) or is the gaming engine AA sort of it's own little entity and the video card just goes along for the ride doing it's thing rendering images?
 
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rakadedo

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Nov 14, 2012
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Neither? Both? It's an effect that is applied when an image is being rendered based off information about that image provided by the game (or after it has been rendered in the case of post processed AA like FXAA). Whether it's a setting in the game or your drivers that's asking for the AA to be applied doesn't matter (assuming they both apply the same strength of the same type of AA).

However, it's generally best to use the games settings because those are the ones the developers programmed the game to use and tested to make sure they work. Sometimes though it gets slapped on as an afterthought so you only get limited, poor in-game AA options. It's times like that where you might try using a different type/strength of AA via your driver. It might work perfectly with minimal performance cost, or it might make the game unplayable until reverted, or anywhere between those two extremes.
 
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