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I played for a while with FXAA enabled and 0x MSAA.
Bumped it up to 8x MSAA and there's a shockingly noticable improvement on distant objects (like trees and houses).
So if you can spare some GPU horsepower, then enable the MSAA and see how you like it.
MSAA > FXAA any day of the week.
Where is that MSAA option?
Let me try this again because I don't see an option for this anywhere at least as far as the game's launcher and such is concerned.
I'm taking this off something I read in passing but wasn't/isn't FXAA more geared towards Nvidia cards and MSAA was more geared towards AMD/ATI cards?
MSAA > FXAA any day of the week.
MSAA is the normal antialiasing we talk about, multisampling antialiasing that is.
No, FXAA is universal. It may have ties with Nvidia, but it works with both Nvidia and ATI cards. You are thinking of MLAA, which is AMD/ATIs equivalent for postprocessing antialiasing, but is ATI only.
It depends. MSAA has its good sides, like overall clarity and lack of blur, but FXAA also antialiases special effects, transparencies AND texture details, with next to no performance hit. Personally I think the pros of FXAA outweight the cons. I kinda like the 2xSAI filter look it gives too.
No, FXAA is universal. It may have ties with Nvidia, but it works with both Nvidia and ATI cards. You are thinking of MLAA, which is AMD/ATIs equivalent for postprocessing antialiasing, but is ATI only.
MLAA is actually a technique first demonstrated by Intel (not sure if it was entirely developed by them or not). The reason was to showcase the ability for the CPU to do AA. AMD implemented it in their drivers using Directcompute by leverage the modern GPUs ability to do more general processing work (which is why it is only available on the newer AMD GPUs).
MLAA is not specific to AMD cards just like FXAA. Developers can implement MLAA in their games just like FXAA. Hard Reset for instance had MLAA as the post AA option before switching over to FXAA in a later patch. DXHR has FXAA and MLAA.
Neither implementation is really biased to either company (at least there is nothing suggesting so). For instance DXHR, an AMD sponsored game which did support more AMD features out of the box, has a lower performance hit for both MLAA and FXAA on Nvidia hardware (not a very big difference between the both mind you). While FXAA outperforms MLAA on AMD hardware, just like it does on Nvidia hardware (again not significantly).
Polonyc2...
Are you turning on 2X Supersampling Transparency AA in the Nvidia control panel?
What is the ATI-equivalent settings of supersampled transparency AA?
I use FXAA with 4x MSAA along with the sharpen mod on SkyrimNexus.
It makes the game sharp but still have very smooth edges. Almost no jaggies at all, it's pretty amazing.
I prefer 8X MSAA + FXAA in Skyrim. Best of all worlds, FXAA really improves the AA on trees and vegetation, without a massive perf hit, and 8X MSAA helps improve polygon edges more. If you have the power, 8X MSAA + FXAA is your best IQ/Performance balance.
So that's 8x aa in the game launcher right, not forced?
I didn't even consider the FXAA route. I'll have to try tonight.
I've been wondering though, what makes Skyrim so much more intense graphically than compared to F:NV? I am able to max everything out (including 100% distance) in NV without even the smallest hiccup in FPS but in Skyrim I'm seeing drops to 30 on mixed high setting at 50-75% distance.
So that's 8x aa in the game launcher right, not forced?
Is the MSAA in game the same as 8XQ AA. I am confused because there is also CSAA but that is a control panel only thing, right?