AA AF someone tell me!!!!!!!!

[Guest]

When I get Half-Life 2 with my new comp, is AA and AF enabled and what is it?

 

[Axyon]

You control it from your graphics card settings, AA (Anti-Aliasing) smoothes off jagged edges in-game, and AF (Anisotropic Filtering) sharpens textures that are at an angle or far away. Both put stress on your CPU and graphics card, which will usually result in a big drop of FPS.

 

[GJaaGular]

What kind of video card is your new system gonna have?

 

[Meteor_of_War]

Also look at these two links below for comparison benchmarks with FSAA and AA enabled & disabled in HL2.

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030912/half-life-05.html
http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030912/half-life-06.html

 

[Aknot]

AA needs to be downloaded and installed I do not think it will come with HL2......o You are not refering to Americas Army. Sorry.

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by Aknot
AA needs to be downloaded and installed I do not think it will come with HL2......o You are not refering to Americas Army. Sorry.

Uh, he means Anti-Aliasing.

 

[dæmon]

Looks like I'll be playing on low details if even those high end cards are struggling to get beyond 40fps :/

 

[Aknot]

Originally posted by Abom|nation
Uh, he means Anti-Aliasing.

I know just trying to inject a little humor..........

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by Aknot
I know just trying to inject a little humor..........

Well, you could always try to make it a little more obvious next time :hmph:

 

[BigE]

Originally posted by Aknot
I know just trying to inject a little humor..........

Which miserably failed

 

[Ahnteis]

Originally posted by Abom|nation
You control it from your graphics card settings, AA (Anti-Aliasing) smoothes off jagged edges in-game, and AF (Anisotropic Filtering) sharpens textures that are at an angle or far away. Both put stress on your CPU and graphics card, which will usually result in a big drop of FPS.

In newer games, these settings can also be done in-game rather then having to go to your graphics card settings.

 

[Axyon]

Some new games, it's not very common though.

 

[AmishSlayer]

Just a question... why can't the Radeon 9600 run the benchmarks with AF 8x on ? Does the 9600 not support AF that high?

 

[Guest]

how do you change video card settings, my video card is a Radeon 9800 Pro I think it's 256 mb.

 

[Mopo]

Originally posted by AmishSlayer
Just a question... why can't the Radeon 9600 run the benchmarks with AF 8x on ? Does the 9600 not support AF that high?

I believe they had to cut out some 9600 Pro tests, considering 9600s arent what everyone is wondering about, due to serious time constraints. I believe they only had 20-30 minutes to do all the tests, and Firingsquad mentioned that they had to team up with testers representing various websites in order to get done in time.

BTW If anyone is wondering, FSAA = Full scene anti-aliasing.

 

[A2597]

actually, its not just new games...

G-Police, 1997, or 1998, had in game antialiasing...

shoot, its graphics would hold even today, and it ran smoothly on a 300mhz PC with 4x AA at 1024x768 max details..

now THAT was an engine...

 

[poseyjmac]

remember though the radeon cards like the 9500 pro, 9700, 9700 pro, 9800 pro can use AA and AF without as BIG of a performance drop as other cards. there is still one but not huge.

i have a 9700(overclocked to beyond pro speeds), when i turn on AF 16x there is barely a difference, yet its a huge difference in looks, but only in games with big textures(like hl2 is gonna have). AA on the other hand, after 2x its pretty taxing. but to be honest if you are a resolution of 1280x1024, 2x AA is fine, you wont notice it.

before you turn on a setting that takes away framerate , play the game for a while, and see if you still notice it visually, if you dont, then u might as well turn it off. i can always tell when AF is on, but AA just blends in, and when you are moving around frantically killing things you tend to forget about it. 640x480 with 6x AA though is always noticeable

 

[not28]

Originally posted by dæmon
Looks like I'll be playing on low details if even those high end cards are struggling to get beyond 40fps :/

Me too. I'm running a GF4 4600 ti and I'm afraid to see what kind of performance I'll be getting...

 

[X-Vector]

It also depends on the game, I never cared much about FSAA until I played Tron 2.0 - I use 4x FSAA even at 1280x960 resolution.
Tron 2.0 is a bit special though, due to the typical visual design it contains lots and lots of straight lines and that's why FSAA makes such a difference.

To be honest, I think I'll only enable any FSAA in HL2 if it's practically 'free'; a smooth framerate will be more important to me knowing that the game will already tax my system heavily enough when not using FSAA.

 

[A2597]

yea, 2-4x, maybe even off...
but AF stays on! I can't live without it anymore, and at a marginal cost, it is SOOOO on for me

 

[X-Vector]

AF is on for me too, especially when I see how quickly the floor textures start to blur in the screengrabs from the Bink E3 videos.