What AA and AF settings do you use?

K

krosfyah

Guest
can someone please explain what difference it makes in HL2?

Ok so i'm running the game FINE on my setup (Athlon 2500 XP Barton, 512meg RAM, 9700 Pro). However, while in the middle of Water Hazard, i suddenly thought "hold on, why is this hardware intensive game running so damn well on my medoicre setup?" and checked my advaced settings.

AA was bilinear and AF was off! "No wonder!" i thought so i cranked it up to trilinear AA and AF x8 (i think?). Needless to say everything virtually ground to a halt! However, i did have a little play around and suddently light reflections on barrels went from just mediocre, to "omfg that looks like real life!". I figure this was as a result of the AF. However, i went from silky smooth gameplay to stuttery 1min + load times between sections so turned them back to what they were - AA bilinear and AF off.

What i was wondering is, what is a good compromise? Anyone experimented with these settings? What different will bilinear/trilinear make to the human eye? If anything?

I want that damn real life looking light reflecting barrel shining, OG shiznit back! Can anyone help me?! (with the technical issue i mean)

Thanks to anyone who comes correct with the realness (i.e. provides something of use to this dilemma of mine)
 
Well, that all depends on your preferences and style of play (i.e. rush! KILL! or more of a defensive, HL1 approach - look at that wall! Don't that just look nice!). I got the same vid card as you do (9700 Pro), but my CPU is a little better (A64 3200+) and I can run all that at 4x aa and trilinear with no probs. The thing is:

AA = elimination of jagged lines at the edges of polygons
AF = smoothing out far-away textures, when you look at them at a sharp angle.

It's up to you to decide what's more important.

Regards,

DZ

edit: AF is the biggest resource hog... and it does not give you that much in terms of IQ (Image Quality... not what you thought)... So go with 4x AA and 2x AF... That's what I say...
 
I use 4x AA and 4x AF cause its good enough to remove the jaggies.
 
2x AA
4x AF

I also run in 1280x960, so I don't see the need to have AA any higher, and I don't want to put a massive strain on my 9800 Pro either.

However, I figured AA was more requiring than AF...
 
None.

My system lags sometimes, and I run 1280x1024...

Time for some more OCing. :D

Actually if you look up reviews, the low drop in frame rates is definitely not uncommon for my type of setup.

Thinking I'm going to lower detail level soon...
 
Bobcat said:
2x AA
4x AF

I also run in 1280x960, so I don't see the need to have AA any higher, and I don't want to put a massive strain on my 9800 Pro either.

However, I figured AA was more requiring than AF...
Click to expand...


Well, not with HL2. Just try measuring framerates with AA and AF separately (at different resolutions)... I did - surprised was NOT the word! But, seriously, AF was ALWAYS more demanding than AA. Just read some techie stuff on the net.
 
krosfyah said:
AA was bilinear and AF was off! "No wonder!" i thought so i cranked it up to trilinear AA and AF x8 (i think?).
Click to expand...
I think you've got 'em backwards.
AA=Anti Aliasing = 0x - 8x (+temporal),
AF=Anisotropic Filtering = Off (Bi/Triliner) - 16x (according to hl2 options).

2x Temporal AA is a good option for ATi. Supposed to look like 4x with 2x preformance. On my 9800 I run AF at x2 or x4. On CSS, sometimes Triliniar.
 
I use no AA because im on a laptop running 1280x800 so i dont really see that much of a difference when I use it, so I just crank up to 16xAF cuz I can handle it
 
I use 16AF and 4AA, on 800x600 and it runs great on my 9600PRO (surprisingly, yes)
 
I don't mind jaggies but I hate blurred textures, so no AA but 4xAF for me.
 
well i run at 1600x1200 (only resolution my 19" supports!!) so really i have NO need for AA because theres hardly any jaggies because of the high res. so i put AF up at 4x or 8x. i have model detail set to med though and texture detail set to high (i figured texture detail was more important than model detail for me).
 
hmm, curious. i'm about to purchase a 6800 OC to upgrade from a geforce 2. the rest of the system will be an amd 2500+ and 512 megs of ram, I am expecting to run that in 1024x768 @ high quality. I was just curious to if anyone has that kind of setup, and if they could tell me how much fps they get with those settings (and some AA, I don't care about AF)

thanks.
 
Don't know about you guys/girls but I cut no corners - 1024x768 at everything full, 4xAA, 2 or 4xAF depending on my mood. Considering I'm running an old 17" that should count for something... Average frames ~50...
 
everything at high, 1024x768, 4xAA, 4xAF with my 9600XT 128mb
 
so wait - the higher the AF factor, the less "blurry" pixels i see when i look at a wall close up?

I HATE the blurries, someone save me from them! It's like sooooooooooooo 1997 duuuuude
 
1280x1024
AA 4x
AF 16x
and everything else to max on the Geforce 6800 GT.
 
aa on 2 and af on 4, or the other way around, ill tell you setting when i get it =]
 
Application controlled (non-custom) Right in the middle between performance and quality.
1280X1024
Dell 8200
1g Rdram
2.4g of Intel P4
ATI 9800 pro (128)
Dell M992 monitor

Nice big 19 inch monitor. (wouldn't ever go smaller again) :naughty: Next step will be the flat panel monitor (19 inch of course)

I get up to 120 fps (well maybe not too often with HL2) :smoking:
 
the move from bilinear to trilinear is responsible for the upping of reflection detail
 
4xAA 8xAF 1024x768.

Jst curious but i remember a tread some guys saying that with somecards 9800's, 5900's and lower that 16xAF wasnt even supported only 8x. Is he right? I personally see no difference at 16x from 8x and no FPS loss either.
 
My cousin has a Radeon 9700. His settings are 2x AA and 4x AF @ 1024x768. Most things on high.

I am running a 6800GT and am running 4x AA and 8x AF @ 1280x960 with everything on high. I could go higher now that I have tested things... I went with these settings at first because I did not want an average of 60+fps, but wanted my MINIMUM fps to be about 60fps. I hate the dips...

Some games, like D3, higher resolutions are more important than AA. I have found AA a great help in HL2. It is not ugly w/o it, but it really cleans up the image, where as in D3 I thought 1600x1200 w/o AA looked better than 1280x960 w/ AA. Just my opinion of course.
 
I use a built-by 9800xt 256. I've been playing the game since i got it on high settings and 16x AF and 6x AA. Also use 1280x1024 @ 85hz. I get split second stutters when, for example, a scripted sequence is about to start and 2-3 seconds of stutter after a section load (after the LOADING screen) during the game. That's it. Everything else is smooth and looks incredible. Game runs average of 42fps.

Needless to say this is how the game was meant to be played. I know people dont have money to dish out for a 9800xt 256 (and I didn't either that's why I stole it out of my little brother's new 3,000 dollar Dell and replaced it with my 9700), but I just can't imagine playing it on any lower settings.

Apple cinema display hopefully for christmas. Can anyone say HL2 widescreen? Oh yea.
 
Lol nice pinch : D

I'd love to play in widescreen, Ive seen pics in another thread here and its looks awsome. Only problem would be the gap in between using dual monitors. But a widescreen LCD now tht would be sweet
 
As far as I can see, AF and AA have no impact on image quality. Whether they are on or off, it looks the same to me.
 
I use 4xAA/8xAF.
AA (jaggy killer) takes more of a performance hit than AF. It can vary a lot from card to card.

I can live with some jaggies (2-4xAA) but I don't care for having it off. A lot of people really like AA because they hate jaggies.

Now AF I really dislike having off. I generally always have it set to 8xAF (4x is good too). It's much much more noticeable in games like CS:S as there is a lot of ground to see. HL2 isn't as bad with having AF off. Generally AF doesn't take that much of a performance hit so that's good for me.

AA you have to see if it's better to have higher resolution or use a higher level of AA. Some games take a bigger hit with AA while other games take a bigger hit at raising the resolution instead.
 
having a geforce 6800 gt - i'm playing with 1280 x 960, 4x AA, 8x AF.

I do only have a 2-3 fps drop when playing with these settings (instead of AA and AF off)

Mostly get between 40 and 90 fps
 
AA 6x (max) AF 16x (max)

nVidia GeForce 5800 Ultra 128mb

(Resolution 1280x1024 And all settings max)
 
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