Which is more important: High Resolution or AA+AF?

[diesel23]

I read all about AA and AF and what they do. At hardware analysis it kinda made me think when they said:

"these cards will not be able to play with AA and AF turned on at anything but a 1024x768 resolution, which usually looks, and performs, worse than without 4x AA and 8x AF at 1600x1200." (cards were 9800pro and 6600gt and FX)

So does this mean higher resolution will give better results than AA and AF turned on? I usually play at 1024x768, so Im better off just upping to a higher res?

Help me out here..ARGGHHH

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Higher resolution is always better for any kind of game. AA makes significant visual quality difference in racing/simulation/adventure games and practically useless in all First Person shooters and many 3rd person shooters.

Personally, AF never made any kind of difference to me.


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[Cyrus]

In term of quality, I must say that higher resolution (much, not a little) provides better one. Since it isn't math calculation trick like any filtering techniques. That means every pixel on the screen is produced as what it should be. The downside of not using any filtering (like aliased image) can be solved by adding more pixels (a lot more I mean). You can obtain the maximum sharpness of the image by having no filter applied.

Unfortunately, besides using much more memory capacity and graphic processing, you'll need monitor that support higher resolution as well. But that's not something easy to decide either. Monitor that support higher resolution is mostly bigger. Which means that you may need more than 21" monitor to satisfy you. For most user, that's too big.

That's why to increase image quality on limited devices, filtering techniques such as AA and AF are being used.

Anyway, I'm not an expert on graphics. But that's what I've been thinking all this time, since I had the same question as yours before. If anyone find it wrong, please correct it because I also want to know the truth.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Cyrus on 12/11/04 03:15 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[cleeve]

Resolution and AA (antialiassing) are kind of linked. Both will reduce "jaggies", but raw higher resolution is preferable out of the two because it actually offers more detail for far-away objests, instead of blurring the jaggies like AA does.

AF (Anistropic filtering) is in a different category, and I highly disagree with Spitfire as to your ability to see it.
AF corrects texture blurring that otherwise occurs as objects stretch into the distance. I find AF to offer a very obvious increase in visual quality, as the textures it effects are far more clear than with AF off.

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<b>Radeon <font color=red>9700 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 332/345)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>3200+</b></font color=red> <i>(Barton 2500+ o/c 400 FSB)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>5,354</b>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Maybe my R9000 doesn't have good AF quality?

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[cleeve]

Should be just as good as the X800's AF quality, just will slow your card down more.

Try this... run your favorite first person shooter at a save point where the landscape goes off into the distance. Take a look at the textures on stuff in the distance that is angled to the camera (like a flat landscape, or side of a building)

Then shut it down, turn on 8x AF, and load that save point. Reexamine the landscape textures and textures on other objects that blur into the distance. They should be MUCH sharper...

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9700 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(o/c 332/345)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>3200+</b></font color=red> <i>(Barton 2500+ o/c 400 FSB)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>5,354</b>