NVIDIA SSAA/Downsampling

Yesterday having spent several hours tweaking and testing different IQ modes on my new 480sli setup:D, I came to the idea that the best possible image quality one would imagine would be the possibility to combine the nvidia' anisotropy filtering and ati's SSAA* (super sampling anti-antialiasing). So I decided to go to the nets and post this idea somwhere to drag some attention to the matter. And here's what I have found:

1.Nvidia SGSSAA is already possible but only in dx10-dx11 titles:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7...ames/Practice/

Some discussion on the anandtechforums:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29734245


2.The Downsampling (same thing as SSAA if you ask me:)) and ToMMTi SSAA Tool.
There is already a special tool that makes it possible to use the SSAA or Downsampling in any dx10-dx11 game, it also carries a number of imrovements like minimizing the SLI microstuttering for example...

Here is the link to program:
http://www.tommti-systems.de/start.html

Link to the forum thread in which the creator of the tool takes part (originally in german):
http://translate.google.com/translat...02&sl=de&tl=en

Thread on another forum:
http://translate.google.com/translat...&sl=auto&tl=en


This is a great news for anyone who cares about the image quality IMO.

I always thought ATI had the best AF? Since Nvidia is angular dependant. while ATI's is angular independent.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

I always thought ATI had the best AF? Since Nvidia is angular dependant. while ATI's is angular independent.

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Well who has better AF is an arguable question. I personally think nvidia has better AF and ATI has better FSAA quality.
But this is not the point here - the point is that it would be really welcomed if nvidia started to officially support the SSAA. And it looks like the situation is heading that way. Well, it's leaning toward it at least:)

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

I always thought ATI had the best AF? Since Nvidia is angular dependent. while ATI's is angular independent.

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its not that simple. they are about the same.

i wonder why nvidia doesnt officially support ssaa :confused:
cheers... will give this a try on my 260s :)

I would like to see the performance hit you get when you turn SSAA on, specially on 480's in SLI.

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Originally Posted by Chumbucket843

its not that simple. they are about the same.

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Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...X480/480AF.png

HD 5870:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/.../5870/5870.png

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
"screenies"

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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Correction. Although ATi hardware can do angle independant AF ATi chose not to use it in the games. The only thing that can "activate" AIAF on ATi are the AF quality testing proggies. Hell, in Crysis they even disabled trilinear filtering atleast that seemed to be the case with the 10.2/10.3's. Over-zealous optimizatiions, or...

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Originally Posted by QuadDamage

Correction. Although ATi hardware can do angle independant AF ATi chose not to use it in the games. The only thing that can "activate" AIAF on ATi are the AF quality testing proggies. Hell, in Crysis they even disabled trilinear filtering atleast that seemed to be the case with the 10.2/10.3's. Over-zealous optimizatiions, or...

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proof?

After looking at the images in the link from the OP all this does is blur the image at a performance penalty. Instead of sharp looking jaggies you have blurry ones. Meh...

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...X480/480AF.png

HD 5870:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/.../5870/5870.png

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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Sweet game bro.

KIDDING KIDDING.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...X480/480AF.png

HD 5870:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/.../5870/5870.png

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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When you're playing such games I bet ATI will have superior AF but in real life scenarios, NV and ATI have pretty much the same AF quality.

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

After looking at the images all this does is blur the image at a performance penalty. Instead of sharp looking jaggies you have blurry ones. Meh...

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So you prefer colours that are not nicely flowing in eachother? Like jpeg with 50% quality? And polygon shapes when you want a circle?

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Originally Posted by munim

Sweet game bro.

KIDDING KIDDING.

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Originally Posted by annihilat0r

When you're playing such games I bet ATI will have superior AF but in real life scenarios, NV and ATI have pretty much the same AF quality.

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Ofcourse you will not notice a lot when playing games, i just meant ATI has superiorty in theory. Just by looking at the technology. That you notice it in games, is something completely else.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

So you prefer colours that are not nicely flowing in eachother? Like jpeg with 50% quality? And polygon shapes when you want a circle?

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Like I said, all this does is blur the jaggies. It by no means improves antialiasing. I am of the opinion that if AA was properly written into the game 4x MSAA is all you really need.

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

Like I said, all this does is blur the jaggies. It by no means improves antialiasing. I am of the opinion that if AA was properly written into the game 4x MSAA is all you really need.

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I was talking about AF, not AA. :welcome:

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Ofcourse you will not notice a lot when playing games, i just meant ATI has superiorty in theory. Just by looking at the technology. That you notice it in games, is something completely else.

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When you take screenshots and examine them in detail still ATI and Nvidia are pretty much the same. In some cases Nvidia is even better.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

I was talking about AF, not AA. :welcome:

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The post that you replied to had nothing to do with AF. I am talking about AA. Since you replied to me that is the topic of conversation. :yepp:

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

The post that you replied to had nothing to do with AF. I am talking about AA. Since you replied to me that is the topic of conversation. :yepp:

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Apologies, i thought you were talking about the images i posted.

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Originally Posted by annihilat0r

When you take screenshots and examine them in detail still ATI and Nvidia are pretty much the same. In some cases Nvidia is even better.

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Can you post some, cause every image i have seen with AF if better on ATi, but this is pretty subjective stuff i think.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Apologies, i thought you were talking about the images i posted.

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No worries, I edited my post to make it a bit more clear.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...X480/480AF.png

HD 5870:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/.../5870/5870.png

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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Those tunnel shots don't tell the whole story:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=248755

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Originally Posted by ElSel10

Those tunnel shots don't tell the whole story:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=248755

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not that crap again :shakes:

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

After looking at the images in the link from the OP all this does is blur the image at a performance penalty. Instead of sharp looking jaggies you have blurry ones. Meh...

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You're looking at the wrong images:D The advantage of the SSAA is that it makes the picture look crystal clear and sharp with no antialiasing whatsoever (including the transparency aa) so there is nothing that can blur the image and so it becomes so clear.
But at teh expense of huge perfomance drop. I'm testing it in crysis rigth now and while in 1920x1200 8qxfsaa+2xtraa it gives me 35fps on average, with ssaa it is probably 5-15fps ..... I'll post more exact figures a bit later.

NV has better overall AF quality ever since G80. In fact, there have been no visible changes of the AF algorithm for the past four years -- GF100 outputs virtually the same texture quality as the old G80. The problem with ATi's case is the severe under-sampling, visible in most high-frequency/detailed textures all over the place, like subtle shimmering and sharp MIP stage transitions. The angular pattern -- being invariant or not -- should not be used as exhaustive quality measurement.

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Originally Posted by BoredByLife

Not if you look at these pictures:

GTX480:
[IMG]irrelevant pseudocircle[/IMG]

HD 5870:
[IMG]irrelevant circle[/IMG]

You can see the ATI cards have superior AF.

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that's a synthetic image quality test. it tells you very little about a filter.

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It is pleasant that the overall image of a HD 5000 flickers less than it does on the Radeon HD 4000/3000/2000. The so-called Banding, transitions between textures, is less obvious. After extensive tests and direct comparisons we conclude that the HD 5000 AF is equal to the Nvidia driver default ("Quality” including "Trilinear Optimization”) - except some games like Crysis. With HQ-AF without "economy measures” a modern Geforce still filters more homogenous than a Radeon HD 5000.

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http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=5

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Originally Posted by KingOfsorroW

You're looking at the wrong images:D The advantage of the SSAA is that it makes the picture look crystal clear and sharp with no antialiasing whatsoever (including the transparency aa) so there is nothing that can blur the image and so it becomes so clear.
But at teh expense of huge perfomance drop. I'm testing it in crysis rigth now and while in 1920x1200 8qxfsaa+2xtraa it gives me 35fps on average, with ssaa it is probably 5-15fps ..... I'll post more exact figures a bit later.

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This is not correct based on the images in that link. When __SSAA (TSSSA) is applied it makes the jaggies blurry. To imply that it's "crystal clear" is just an inaccurate stab at my post to create an argument :down:. One thing you avoided when replying to my post is that TSSAA doesn't remove the jaggies. They are still there making the use of it moot.

Some numbers from built in crysis gpu benchmark:
dx10 32bit 1920x1200

SSAA (no aa/traa) 3890x1400 (1920*2x1200*2)
min: 7.16
average: 19.38
Max:20.64

8Qx, 2xSStraa 1920x1200
min:23,59
average: 35,36
max:38,31

4x,2xSStraa 1920x1200
min:28.02
average:41.70
max: 45.37

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Originally Posted by Scorpio[pt]

not that crap again :shakes:

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What part of it is crap? People post those tunnel shots of perfect AF, while shots of real world gameplay tell a different story.

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Originally Posted by ElSel10

What part of it is crap? People post those tunnel shots of perfect AF, while shots of real world gameplay tell a different story.

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Bug/cheat (which is game specific) vs. the used technology for AF.

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

This is not correct based on the images in that link. When __SSAA (TSSSA) is applied it makes the jaggies blurry. To imply that it's "crystal clear" is just an inaccurate stab at my post to create an argument :down:. One thing you avoided when replying to my post is that TSSAA doesn't remove the jaggies. They are still there making the use of it moot.

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In that review:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7...ames/Practice/

They compared the different modes of tssaa which gives exactly teh blurring you are reffering to. They say that the transparency anti-aliiasing is now rendered all over the screen, but it's not that the image itself is rendered multiple times... The thing is that TSSAA is not the SSAA. It is basically an addition to nvidia' usual FSAA which is MSAA or combination of the MSAA and CSAA... Note that I used teh minimal amount of the TSSAA in the tests - reason: because I dont see the real need in going above that value as the settings of 4x or 8x of the TSSAA makes the picture extremly blurry. But this, is not the SSAA. The full screen SSAA doesn't use msaa or csaa nor does it need the TSSAA.

Do you have oblivion installed? If so you don't have to own a dx10 compatible gpu to see the difference between msaa+tsaa and the real ssaa. All you need is download and install the nhancer and select the supersampling mode in the fsaa modes list and set it to 2x2. Disable the transparency AA (TRAA) and see the difference in picrure quality by yourself. Well you can actually do this in any other game it's just that in oblivion you may see the difference exceptionnally well.

EDIT: I made a correction in the first post so that people don't get confused by the SGSSAA in the first link. :doh:

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Originally Posted by KingOfsorroW

In that review:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,7...ames/Practice/

They compared the different modes of tssaa which gives exactly teh blurring you are reffering to. They say that the transparency anti-aliiasing is now rendered all over the screen, but it's not that the image itself is rendered multiple times... The thing is that TSSAA is not the SSAA. It is basically an addition to nvidia' usual FSAA which is MSAA or combination of the MSAA and CSAA... Note that I used teh minimal amount of the TSSAA in the tests - reason: because I dont see the real need in going above that value as the settings of 4x or 8x of the TSSAA makes the picture extremly blurry. But this, is not the SSAA. The full screen SSAA doesn't use msaa or csaa nor does it need the TSSAA.

Do you have oblivion installed? If so you don't have to own a dx10 compatible gpu to see the difference between msaa+tsaa and the real ssaa. All you need is download and install the nhancer and select the supersampling mode in the fsaa modes list and set it to 2x2. Disable the transparency AA (TRAA) and see the difference in picrure quality by yourself. Well you can actually do this in any other game it's just that in oblivion you may see the difference exceptionnally well.

EDIT: I made a correction in the first post so that people don't get confused by the SGSSAA in the first link. :doh:

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The article in and of itself is discussing __SSAA (in this case SGSSAA). In which they used TSSAA to example the effects thereof. What was provided (not implied) is the discovery of SGSSAA and used TSSAA in the photo examples. This is what I responded to in my 1st post in this thread. Albeit I didn't go into any extreme detail about.

From my understanding supersampling blurs textures because it is applying anti-aliasing to shaders, alpha textures, etc. While it has the potential to sharpen edges. SSAA is a brute force method of AA. In the article it's implied that a negative LOD was used (as is usually the case when SSAA is used). Yet the image still looks blurry. In the end IMO, the image still looks blurry at a costly performance hit. I've seen it and honestly don't see any benefit from it.

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Originally Posted by Eastcoasthandle

The article in and of itself is discussing __SSAA (in this case SGSSAA). In which they used TSSAA to example the effects thereof. What was provided (not implied) is the discovery of SGSSAA and used TSSAA in the photo examples. This is what I responded to in my 1st post in this thread. Albeit I didn't go into any extreme detail about.

From my understanding supersampling blurs textures because it is applying anti-aliasing to shaders, alpha textures, etc. While it has the potential to sharpen edges. SSAA is a brute force method of AA. In the article it's implied that a negative LOD was used (as is usually the case when SSAA is used). Yet the image still looks blurry. In the end IMO, the image still looks blurry at a costly performance hit. I've seen it and honestly don't see any benefit from it.

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You still don't understand. The article discusses the SGSSAA. Not the SSAA. The SSAA probably blurs something but it doesn't come even close to the blur of any other aa method simply because it doesn't apply anti-aliasing to anything in particular and/or selectively, it simply renders the whole image several times - that's why it is called a "brute force AA". And that is SSAA. Which makes the image look crystal clear as much as it is possible at all. Really, try it for yourself instead of typing.

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Originally Posted by KingOfsorroW

You still don't understand. The article discusses the SGSSAA. Not the SSAA. The SSAA probably blurs something but it doesn't come even close to the blur of any other aa method simply because it doesn't apply anti-aliasing to anything in particular and/or selectively, it simply renders the whole image several times - that's why it is called a "brute force AA". And that is SSAA. Which makes the image look crystal clear as much as it is possible at all. Really, try it for yourself instead of typing.

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I see, despite what I've posted you still want to argue. It's clear I understand but ultimately the images in the article are still blurry and using that technique (with SLI configuration at that) comes at a performance penalty. Which is what I originally said in post 10 :up:

What blur ?

TSSAA X4
http://pics.computerbase.de/2/9/2/4/3/22.jpg

MSAA X4
http://pics.computerbase.de/2/9/2/4/3/23.jpg

look at the floor to see the SSAA effect.

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Originally Posted by IDANPE

What blur ?

look at the floor to see the SSAA effect.

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The blur referenced in the OP article. :D
Oh and look at the jaggies on the grated flooring towards the steps. Looks exactly the same to me. :yepp:

not to me..
but yes, u need at least X8 TSSAA to see it without any jaggies.

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Originally Posted by IDANPE

not to me..
but yes, u need at least X8 TSSAA to see it without any jaggies.

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Which is what the IQ pics show in the OP's link. The very thing I commented on when I said that the jaggies looked blurry. So we are back to square one, thanks!

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Originally Posted by fellix_bg

NV has better overall AF quality ever since G80. In fact, there have been no visible changes of the AF algorithm for the past four years -- GF100 outputs virtually the same texture quality as the old G80. The problem with ATi's case is the severe under-sampling, visible in most high-frequency/detailed textures all over the place, like subtle shimmering and sharp MIP stage transitions. The angular pattern -- being invariant or not -- should not be used as exhaustive quality measurement.

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The weird thing about your statement is that back when the G80 came out everyone was accusing nVidia of cheating with af. The reality is that ATI has always always always had better image quality than any other competitor. Other aspects like drivers are a different story of course.

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Originally Posted by RVWinkle

The weird thing about your statement is that back when the G80 came out everyone was accusing nVidia of cheating with af. The reality is that ATI has always always always had better image quality than any other competitor. Other aspects like drivers are a different story of course.

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This statement couldn't be farther from the truth. Nvidia's angle-dependent AF algorithm used in G80, G92, GT200 and Fermi runs circles around ATI's algorithm used in the R600, RV670 and RV770.

Now supposedly ATI has bested the algorithm used in Fermi with RV870, being angle-independent; however, in real world usage it is impossible to tell the difference, and in fact there is even picture evidence suggestion it still isn't as good as Nvidia's algorithm used in anything outside that tunnel program. This would suggest that in order to make up for the performance impact of a fully angle independent algorithm, textures are being undersampled compared to Nvidia.

I have no idea what SSAA looks like on NVIDIA's hardware, but having messed with ATI's SSAA, I concluded it's a pile of blurry mess.

I suppose if I wanted to clear jaggies that way I could play games with my glasses off.

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Originally Posted by Cybercat

I suppose if I wanted to clear jaggies that way I could play games with my glasses off.

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Built in SSAA at no performance penalty (though possibly with a mild headache, I guess) :D

im lost in all the acrynyms being thrown around.

i do like how they can apply AA to any object with one of the methods (TSAA?) but im sure its very costly. might as well be like rendering 600fps, but do 60fps with 10 different pixel centers to average out.

AA being object specific does suck when theres alot of object which will look very jagged. but im sure the raw bandwidth needed to clean up those things is just too much for games like crysis. but an older game (like HL2 maybe?) where you can get 200fps at the highest settings, it might be worth it to clean up those extra items. but isnt that kind what catalyst AI is suppose to do? even though it sucks at it. all i know is that little walk through with the metal fence in CCC, always looks like crap with any setting.

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Originally Posted by Cybercat

I have no idea what SSAA looks like on NVIDIA's hardware, but having messed with ATI's SSAA, I concluded it's a pile of blurry mess.

I suppose if I wanted to clear jaggies that way I could play games with my glasses off.

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dont jump to conclusions! that issue was fixed in ATi cards in november or so. before if you didnt manually adjust the texture LOD it would be blurry because of lower res textures. SSAA provides the best image quality possible.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=6

actually it's kinda ironic.

DX10/11 doesn't let you set LOD as far as I know so SSAA will introduce blurring (nV's SSAA only works on DX10/11 as of now)

DX9's SSAA on Radeon 5ks have LOD offset so they're not that blurry anymore (but different compared to refras still); nVidia cards can get the same effect through nHancer I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Chumbucket843

dont jump to conclusions! that issue was fixed in ATi cards in november or so. before if you didnt manually adjust the texture LOD it would be blurry because of lower res textures. SSAA provides the best image quality possible.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=6

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I tried it VERY recently, in World of Warcraft.