Anisotropic Filtering. What Is It?
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Goombatommy
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yes turn it on, and it improves distant texture quality.
Yatta
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Anisotropic Filtering allowes for sharper quality of textures further ahead. For example, in Half-Life or Counter-Strike, textures a few meters ahead might appear blurry while textures on which you are walking on appear sharp. Anisotropic filtering makes everything sharper overall, and you Radeon 9700 Pro (which I also have) will do a great job even with it turned up to 16X. 
Hopefully I'll be able to play HL2 with 2X Anti Aliasing and 16X Aniso.
Hopefully I'll be able to play HL2 with 2X Anti Aliasing and 16X Aniso.
Goombatommy
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truthfully, you can crank 16x AF without any performance hit (pending on your system), but when you start cranking AA up, thats when it begins to lag. But yea, that should look good. Try a little higher with the AF tho.
Goombatommy
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nope.
Goombatommy
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Im not too sure on Trueform, but its supposed to enhance image quality as well. I'd keep it enabled in both D3D and OGL settings.
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Bridger
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Is the ATI 9600 a decent card? Just recently aquired one, thinking of replacing my GF4 Ti 4200. 9600 is a DX9 card right? Just not quite as fast as 97/800?
Mr Neutron
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depending on the game, AF CAN make a big difference in the appearance of textures, especially ones far away. One big difference is it counteracts texture crawl. Fiddle around with the different settings to see if you can notice a visual difference in a game you favor. Start with the highest and work your way down. In general, AF is much less of a strain than AA, and the 9700-9800's are much better about performance loses with these features turned on than any cards before them.
Future drivers from ATI will enable you to associate settings with each game so that you won't have to change them every time you switch from one game to the next.
BTW. Since you don't know much about it, I'll ask if you've at least disabled vsync and fixed your refresh rates?
Future drivers from ATI will enable you to associate settings with each game so that you won't have to change them every time you switch from one game to the next.
BTW. Since you don't know much about it, I'll ask if you've at least disabled vsync and fixed your refresh rates?
Mr Neutron
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The 9600pro should be 'decent' with HL2, but yes you should definitely use it instead of the 4200, pro or not.
mannyfresh027
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truform is nurbs patching, which isnt available in all games.
basically, it smooths out models by increasing the polygon count, and it has a very small performance hit.,
you can enable it on player models in ut2003 with some .ini and driver settings. i have it enabled and its pretty nice
basically, it smooths out models by increasing the polygon count, and it has a very small performance hit.,
you can enable it on player models in ut2003 with some .ini and driver settings. i have it enabled and its pretty nice
Mr Neutron
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2x AA can actually worsen quality with some games by making them blurry. I believe this is because it only sample in one axis, not both like with 4x.
There are a few games where high AF settings will give you a noticable performance loss. Also, I believe having AA on as well exacerbates the performance penalty of AF. I may be wrong about this last bit.
Isn't truform problamatic, rounding stuff that shouldn't be rounded? I've never tried it.
There are a few games where high AF settings will give you a noticable performance loss. Also, I believe having AA on as well exacerbates the performance penalty of AF. I may be wrong about this last bit.
Isn't truform problamatic, rounding stuff that shouldn't be rounded? I've never tried it.
Javert
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TruForm also strains the system and drop the fps heavily, so I advise not using it unless you have a VERY good computer.
AF and AA have been refined since their inception and can be turned on as long your system and graphics card can support it.
AF and AA have been refined since their inception and can be turned on as long your system and graphics card can support it.
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Xtasy0
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Originally posted by Tyrion
Yeah, Vsync keeps the framerates close to each other, instead of having 30 once then 60 then 35 then 55 then 25..it just keeps it at 30.
Which is good,depends.
VSync Limits your framerates, to whatever your refresh rate is. it doesn't "keep" your FPS up.
now, vsync can be good, it prevents texture tearing, but if you don't have triple buffering enabled then you might get framerates that drop from constant xx down to half that because of the way double buffering works, so, VSync + triple buffering = good. but then theres the other side, it you simply want the highest framerate possible, irregardless of if your monitor can display that many frames per second then by all means disable VSync.
Truform is a pretty big performance hit with radeon 9x00 cards simply because its done in software, whereas on a card like the 8500 truform is done in hardware.
and yeah, AF isnt a very big performance hit, AA is.
Mr Neutron
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For performance with vsync on, it's a matter of the frames being generated and displayed at the same time: asynchronicities can cause hiccups if the the vid card has to wait on its framebuffer before moving on to the next frame. That's how triple buffering helps, by dedicating more memory to the frame buffer.
The lower your refresh rate, the worse tearing without vsync. Around 85 and below you'll start seeing noticable flaws. Around 105 and up you'd be hard pressed to see any flaws at all. Therefore:
<85 = vsync yes
85-105 = see which one you like best because here you will see occasional tears with vsync off but also noticable hiccups (or slide-showiness) in performance with vsync on
>105 = vsync no
The lower your refresh rate, the worse tearing without vsync. Around 85 and below you'll start seeing noticable flaws. Around 105 and up you'd be hard pressed to see any flaws at all. Therefore:
<85 = vsync yes
85-105 = see which one you like best because here you will see occasional tears with vsync off but also noticable hiccups (or slide-showiness) in performance with vsync on
>105 = vsync no
Kenny
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Something that I don't get:
Why do we have an extra option for AF. Why are textures blurry if you look further. Why can't they make it sharp in de whole level?
In a other way, why is AF not standard if it doesn't have a big performance hit?
(bad english, i know)
Why do we have an extra option for AF. Why are textures blurry if you look further. Why can't they make it sharp in de whole level?
In a other way, why is AF not standard if it doesn't have a big performance hit?
(bad english, i know)
X
Xtasy0
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it's not really a feature used by alot of games i guess, or people dont care for it. it certainly makes the grenades in HL look strange, i know that for sure, i've always turned truform off.
just to give users a choice, also, on older video cards AF could be a performance hit that a user can't deal with, whereas with a radeon 9x00 it's pretty much acceptable to use 16xAF or 8xAF in all games.
dawdler
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Papa Lazarou
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If you have a decent enough graphics card, you can whack up the AF in your display properties before loading up the game. You can do AA too....
I find it works best in OpenGL.
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Xtasy0
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the AF settings are done in the videocard drivers display settings.
Kenny
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I don't get what you guys are saying, could anybody show a picture with:
1. Bilinear
2. Trilinear
3. 2 X AF
4. 16 X AF (No AA, so we can see the difference)
5. 4 X Anti Alliasing (no AF, so we can see the difference)
I know, it is al lot of work, but I would appriciate if somebody does this.
I will check the internet now, maybe somebody else did it before.
1. Bilinear
2. Trilinear
3. 2 X AF
4. 16 X AF (No AA, so we can see the difference)
5. 4 X Anti Alliasing (no AF, so we can see the difference)
I know, it is al lot of work, but I would appriciate if somebody does this.
I will check the internet now, maybe somebody else did it before.
dawdler
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Somebody has surely done it (reviewers). Sadly, I dont have a good game to do it with. But what one only need to know is this: You dont want bilinear. Trilinear for cards that arent fast enough to do AF. And AF on the rest. 2xAF is not much worth it. You want higher, its not that much loss in performance.
I can answer one of them though, with a very good example:
http://w1.855.telia.com/~u85528876/bfcomp3.bmp
This is the image all Nvidia-RULEZ-FSAA-sucks-gets-blurry people need to see. The lower picture is a MUCH MUCH MUCH better show of what the tower details really looks like. It doesnt blur it. It actually makes it more detailed. BUT this is also with 16xAF. So I cant say with 100% certainty it would look the same without AF. But I beleive so.
Edit: Well, they have right when they use FSAA on Nvidia. But so correction: Nvidia-RULEZ-FSAA-sucks-on-ATI-worthless-gets-blurry people
Kenny
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:dozey: Just found something:
4 X AA 8 X AF
No AA No AF
It's hard to see the difference. Yeah... the AA is visible, but not the AF.
Another one:
4 X AA 8 X AF
No AA No AF
Okay, the difference here is great (look at the mountains), but in the middle of the action, I don't think anybody would notice. On this single frame, you start to focus on it. Anyway, it's a cool option.
In my opinion, you can see the AF and AA better from a further look. So don't be ;( if you can't get the AA and AF on. Only if you already have it, and when you turn it off, you will starting to miss it.
All the pictures where taken on an 9800 Pro. I bought one too :cheese: .
, Another gamer from the Netherlands :bounce:
4 X AA 8 X AF
No AA No AF
It's hard to see the difference. Yeah... the AA is visible, but not the AF.
Another one:
4 X AA 8 X AF
No AA No AF
Okay, the difference here is great (look at the mountains), but in the middle of the action, I don't think anybody would notice. On this single frame, you start to focus on it. Anyway, it's a cool option.
In my opinion, you can see the AF and AA better from a further look. So don't be ;( if you can't get the AA and AF on. Only if you already have it, and when you turn it off, you will starting to miss it.
All the pictures where taken on an 9800 Pro. I bought one too :cheese: .
, Another gamer from the Netherlands :bounce:
dawdler
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Except that not using 16xAF is stupid. It comes at a VERY low cost compared to 8x (ie nearly none), and it cleans those angles better....
I've got another I have shown before:
http://w1.855.telia.com/~u85528876/EF2Compare.bmp
Look at the cieling. And the box. And the walls. Its dark, but clearly visible.
