Hey Guys. Since we all know that the game is hideously CPU limited, i wanted to check how the engine handles the different AA modes. i chose oblivion over Skyrim because it has much more foliage, leaves etc (transparent textures) that show better how bad these games need AA. taken on modded oblivion with Qarl's TP3 on Radeon 6870 hardware.


/EDIT: since this is about Skyrim and not Oblivion let me show you the glory of 4xSSAA in Skyrim
http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/4752/tesv2011121000235793.jpg


No anti aliasing:
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http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/6530/noaac.jpg
Nothing really needs to be said. The game suffers from serious pixellation and brings pain to the eye.
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4xMSAA
[indent]http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/5238/4xmsaa.jpg
the jaggies on the level geometry are gone, but the ugly foliage pixellation remains.

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16xMSAA
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http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/5558/16xmsaa.jpg
not much an improvement over 4xMSAA, still ugly. the leaves and grass are pixellated and the rocks on the left side show some shader aliasing.
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4x Adaptive Anti-Aliasing.

[indent]
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8840/4xaaa.jpg
Now this is where it should start to be interesting. AMD's adaptive anti aliasing performs multi sampling on transparent textures and does indeed make them look smoother. the pixellation on leaves and grass are more or less gone but still visible. still, a significant improvement over traditional multisampling, but the grass is still somewhat pixellated (it looks even worse when in motion). shader aliasing still present in full glory[/indent]

16x Adaptive Anti Aliasing

[indent]
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/7004/16xaaa.jpg
definitely an improvement over 4x Adaptive AA, but still with the same issues.
[/indent]


4x Super Sampling Anti Aliasing

[indent]http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3159/4xssaa.jpg
This is the king of all the AA modes on AMD hardware. Obviously looks worse than 8xSSAA or 16xSSAA, but it can still run games like Oblivion or Skyrim without any extreme performance drops. No pixellation, whatsoever. Not a single unevenness. No shader aliasing, no transparency ugliness, nothing, not even when in Motion. Radeon 5900 / dual 5800 / dual 6800 / 6900 hardware recommended.[/indent]


2x Super Sampling Anti Aliasing

[indent]
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3526/2xssaa.jpg
4xSSAA's small brother. There is notably more aliasing and I'd say it's rougly equivalent to 4xAdaptive AA. the devi'ls in the details though. When in motion, 2xSSAA shows its superiority over 4x Adaptive AA. There's less flickering and a generally smoother experience. This AA mode should run perfectly well on a single Radeon 6800 / 5800 class card. [/indent]


As you can see, at least in the case of AMD Radeon owners with 5900+ GPU power, 4xSSAA is the AA mode you want to go for in Skyrim or Oblivion. Radeon5800/6800 class users should consider 2xSSAA over 4x AAA. Either way, do not use FXAA unless your GPU is too weak to handle real AA modes.

Yeah, I don't see it (whatever it is).

check the aliasing on the grass and leaves. super sampling even at 2x provides a superior quality over any other AA modes.

Ok, the difference is striking. Looks like a completely different tree when comparing the foliage:

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3159/4xssaa.jpg

vs

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/5558/16xmsaa.jpg

also, the leaves on the distant trees get blurred with adaptive anti aliasing. it 'removes' pixellation, but also details. with 4xssaa, distant leaves are rendered down to the tiniest detail.

Ok... side track.... and not to be taken too seriously.... your power supply is "Super Flower"?!?

I like a blend...4xMSAA + 2xSS transparency...for my set up, rids most jaggies on clear lines, fixes the leaves, but does't kill the fps.

For AA demos like this, uploading in maybe a png format may make it a bit easier for some viewers to see the differences. Good post

lol yes, that's the brand. it's pretty unknown but i think they're manufactured by enermax.

mine looks like this http://i1.tinypic.com/2u607es.jpg

it has 2 PCIe 6 Pin and 2 PCIe 8 Pin connectors as well as 12 SATA/Molex.

What is the performance hit from AAA and how can I get AAA in my game? I liked how that looked.

LOL... sorry; the brand name just makes me giggle like a little school girl.

Anyway, looks like a nice ps, being modular and all.

that's the sadness about AMD's AA mode. nVidia users can define separate settings for multi samples and transparency SUPER samples. AMD has either traditional multi sampling, Transparency multi sampling locked to geometry multi sampling or full SSAA.

i'd love to be able to define seperate transparency supersamples and geometry multi sampling. Also, AMD offers supersampling only for DX9 and OpenGL 2.X. AMD really has to catch up with nVidia in that regard.

Then again, it's well known that nVidia's drivers are far superior to AMD's. I still hate nVidia as a company though.

This AA mode is specific to AMD. It can be enabled in the Catalyst Control Center (the slider that controls AA quality, not the number of samples).
If you're on nVidia, you can enable transparency supersampling which is superior to AAA (adaptive anti aliasing) but still inferior to real SSAA.

the performance hit over traditional multi sampling is negligible, i'd say at around 10-15% perhaps. keep in mind that the transparent textures such as leaves, grass etc. tend to flicker much more in motion than with SSAA (in which case there is no flickering at all)

Okay, thanks! I'll check on transparency SSAA then since im on nvidia

Would be nice to get some other AA modes in there for comparison. FXAA, SMAA, etc. Essentially AA from outside the game's engine.

indeed, it would be. oblivion doesn't support FXAA though and i was too lazy to do the comparison in Skyrim. MLAA doesn't get captured on screenshots because it's a post processing method (and it looks extremely ugly, FXAA does a much better, but still poor, job.


also: transparency SSAA causes a noticable performance hit, while adaptive anti aliasing does not.


also: i've found oblivion with the Qarl's TP3 mod to be roughly equally taxing on the GPU as Skyrim.

I much prefer the look of FXAA to any AA setting to be honest.

I like SMAA myself. Currently requires dll injection however.

I have no idea what you are talking about, to me all those pictures of Oblivion look the same.

Hmmmm.... just noticing, respectfully, that these links get 404s:

SomeWelshGuy.com | Donate via PayPal

Anything > jaggies. Perfectly sharp, square-patterned pixellation is just about the most unnatural thing possible in an image that's supposed to represent nature

Well, that and dragon bones wobbling about like they're made of balloons.

Note that Nvidia does have a cheap "transparency antialiasing" mode too, they just call it "Multisample" in their Antialiasing - Transparency settings. It's not nearly as good as AMD's cheap tAA, though. Only seems to work when texture images are being scaled up, so it does nothing from a distance. Kind of looks like it's just messing with multisampled pixel coverage when texture samples are near the selected "transparent" alpha level, so it's very reliant on the textures having just the right kind of alpha gradient near their transparency edge.

2x Sparse-Grid Super-Sampling for Transparency Antialiasing is darn cheap for a lot of effect. Need Nvidia Inspector.

Actually it's not easy to tell on screenshots, and no, youtube videos don't really show it either, unless it's in super HD quality, but even then the video compression won't let you see it as good. It can be very noticeable while playing the game, but those who tried and tested different settings understand the picture comparsion. As I said, it's more apparent in game, screenshots aren't much telling. It's true for every game, not just Skyrim or Oblivion.

p.s. to the OP, don't forget, even if you "disable" AA in Skyrim, it's not truly disabled. i think it's still uses a certain level of AA, regardless if it's turned off in the game launcher.

The PrintScrn button while in Skyrim takes a lossless bitmap screenshot, unlike Steam which uses a lossy JPEG image. Normally JPEG is fine, but in this case we need the accuracy of bitmaps to be entirely sure.

but..

MSI afterburner gives me PNG, also lossless, at a fraction the file size.....cant see diff at full zoom, 1700% BMP & PNG are the same ...JPEG on the other hand, wow that's bad...

The game intercepts the "Print screen" and saves the BMP in your Skyrim directory. I like to keep that directory clean . The BMP saved by the game is huge..6+ MEG.

My PNG's are less then 1 meg. and look the same. Also MSI lets me choose where to save the files. Also has a slider to Pick % of Quality. Saves as ..BMP, PNG & JPEG.

Im with ya on this!

i did a lot of testing to see what i could get between performance and quality. im using a hd 6850. the MSAA would get me more frames, but there was a texture problem. random objects would would lose their finer skin, or flicker in and out.
running the game with the SSAA that all went away. the game looks a lot better. although i do get some frame hits in areas(Marcarth)....nothing to major, and well worth it!

waiting for a price drop on the card, then ill try the crossfire.