In-game AA settings question

[Poacher886]

In the game you can adjust the AA slider 5 notches....i dont get this as AA is normally valued at 2x / 4x / 8x / 16x / 32x, i find it very difficult to beleve they are offering 32X AA, so what does each notch on the AA slider equate to??

Thanks

[Walle]

Off-2X-4X-8X-16X perhaps?

[Poacher886]

Could be? does any of the modders actually know the answer to this?

[Walle]

I'll keep an eye on this thread, if no one knows the answer, I could test the theory by grabbing a screenshot from the docks with the slider set to left most position and another one with AA forced off in the ATI-tool. The screenshots will have to be taken from the exact same location. Even if no diff can be seen, placing the shots as two layers in PS and using difference as blending mode, as well as tweaking the curve a bit, should bring out the slightest differences.

[Poacher886]

I ask, because my GTX570@1920x1200, with this setting @Max runs the game fine 45-85+FPS (im using TDW Mega-Mod mind) yet as low as 29FPS if im looking at the ocean bed. This is fine and smooth, but it uses ALL my 1280mb of V-Memory!!

Which i think is contributing to the odd stutter when viewing via external cam. If the Max slider = 16xAA, then that might explain at my res, the high use of V-Mem.

[THE_MASK]

[VIDEO]
AntialiasingLevel=16; 0=none, 1=non-maskable, 2=2x, 4=4x, ...

[Poacher886]

[VIDEO]
AntialiasingLevel=16; 0=none, 1=non-maskable, 2=2x, 4=4x, ...

Sorry Sober, are you saying it goes like this on the slider.

0 / 2x / 4x / 16x ???

[jwilliams]

Sorry Sober, are you saying it goes like this on the slider.

0 / 2x / 4x / 16x ???


0 / 0 /2x /4x etc.

[Pintea]

0 / 0 /2x /4x etc.

Actually it's 0/2x/4x/8x/etc.

That 1x in the config file is for compatibility purposes only, since it's a valid input for the graphics card.

[Poacher886]

Oh dear, im not convinced on this,

Lets take this from the top.
The AA slider has five settings from 0. Going by what your saying that makes it 0-2x-4x-8x-16x-32x AA, and unless someone can convince me otherwise, i refuse to accept that a game that does'nt even supply AF settings is offering 32xAA.

An amount i've never seen in any game in over 20yrs of playing them!

[Pintea]

Oh dear, im not convinced on this,

Lets take this from the top.
The AA slider has five settings from 0. Going by what your saying that makes it 0-2x-4x-8x-16x-32x AA, and unless someone can convince me otherwise, i refuse to accept that a game that does'nt even supply AF settings is offering 32xAA.

An amount i've never seen in any game in over 20yrs of playing them!

Then I'll have to look closer into it, i'll let you know.

BTW, some of the newer GPUs offer 32x AA + the game doesn't supply AF settings, but it's enabled by default :)

[Poacher886]

I realise that modern hIGH-END gRAPHICS cards have 32xAA..my GTX570 does!, but this is normaly offered as a special feature of high-end cards and requires to be fed via the drivers. For a game to offer this is unheard off by me!

As for the lack of AF option, i've heard that it is enabled automatically...but at what level..8xAF? / 16xAF? who knows.

[Pintea]

I realise that modern hIGH-END gRAPHICS cards have 32xAA..my GTX570 does!, but this is normaly offered as a special feature of high-end cards and requires to be fed via the drivers. For a game to offer this is unheard off by me!

As for the lack of AF option, i've heard that it is enabled automatically...but at what level..8xAF? / 16xAF? who knows.
AF = 8x

[Poacher886]

I have 16xAF forced on through drivers anyway. Interestingly, before setting off for a campaign while in the U-Boat Pen, i took the FPS @ Max AA slider, then took it down one notch and checked the FPS...it was exactly the same!!

Now if this was coming from 32X or 16X or even 8X i would have expected a noticable difference.

Im amazed A. the game does'nt actually state the AA value and B. No-one has questioned what the values are to date!

[RickC Sniper]

No-one has questioned what the values are to date!


Perhaps because most of us just turn it up as high as we can until it affects frame rates. My slider is maxed out. Whether that is 16x or 32x to me is just semantics.

[Pintea]

OK I have looked into it and (as some of you have noticed) it actually is:
0x 1x 2x 4x 8x 16x (max 16x)
Where 0x and 1x mean NO antialiasing. That must be a bug which relates to querying the video card's AA settings, where 0x and 1x are listed as valid options.

About the AF filter, the reason why you're not seeing any performance changes is that the texture filtering is not the bottleneck, so therefore no performance can be gained/lost from changing it.

[Poacher886]

Nice one, that clears that up then!!

That said, if Max is 16XAA, then when i turned it down a notch to 8XAA i saw no difference in FPS. NOw 16X to 8XAA should make a huge difference!!....AA is normally a FPS killer!

[Pintea]

Nice one, that clears that up then!!

That said, if Max is 16XAA, then when i turned it down a notch to 8XAA i saw no difference in FPS. NOw 16X to 8XAA should make a huge difference!!....AA is normally a FPS killer!

That must be because the AA is not where the bottleneck is. You may be bounded by CPU performance or by the huge vertex count in the scene.

SH5 is also very CPU hungry, so if you have less than necessary CPU performance, you may put in whatever video card and settings you may like, performance is not gonna improve.

[Poacher886]

That must be because the AA is not where the bottleneck is. You may be bounded by CPU performance or by the huge vertex count in the scene.

SH5 is also very CPU hungry, so if you have less than necessary CPU performance, you may put in whatever video card and settings you may like, performance is not gonna improve.


What you saying is right for lower resolutions, where the CPU will restrict the G-card flying at full rate, but even the most modern technoligical graphics intence game these day's is always restricted by the GPU at resolutions of 1600x1200 and above.

Of course im not talking extreme mis-matches i.e GTX580 paired with a P4 1.8mhz, but guessing you have paired your graphics card with a similar quality CPU, then the GPU will be the difference at said resoloutions.


For me i run at 1920x1200 res with GTX570, which will allways fall to the graphics card....my CPU is a Q9550 @ 4ghz, there will be no bottleneck from that CPU speed for any single card available today!!

The I7 CPUS will yeid perhaps 2FPS difference in games, where only running SLI shows there true colours.

So while i wont dispute your suggestion of 16xAA being the max setting, i would still expect to see a healthy difference in both FPS and V-ram used when lowering it a notch to 8x, which i dont.

[Pintea]

So while i wont dispute your suggestion of 16xAA being the max setting, i would still expect to see a healthy difference in both FPS and V-ram used when lowering it a notch to 8x, which i dont.

How are you reading V-ram values, if you don't mind me asking ? :)
As I said before, even if you have more V-ram, it won't increase FPS if that is not the bottle neck.

As for the CPU limit, even an I7 can be the bottleneck....in SH5's case, it's not that much about processing power than it is about bandwidth transfer. The CPU is stalling the game while sending geometry data to the video card. That is a matter of lacking optimization from the game's part.

It is not just a simple matter of "I have the greatest CPU on the market, it sure isn't a limiting factor because I paid a lot of money on it".
There are many many factors that go into a game's performance.

[Poacher886]

How are you reading V-ram values, if you don't mind me asking ? :)
As I said before, even if you have more V-ram, it won't increase FPS if that is not the bottle neck.

As for the CPU limit, even an I7 can be the bottleneck....in SH5's case, it's not that much about processing power than it is about bandwidth transfer. The CPU is stalling the game while sending geometry data to the video card. That is a matter of lacking optimization from the game's part.

It is not just a simple matter of "I have the greatest CPU on the market, it sure isn't a limiting factor because I paid a lot of money on it".
There are many many factors that go into a game's performance.

Im not suggesting the V-ram is limiting my FPS, infact my FPS is actually pretty good..with all the pretty effects included in the Mega_mod im using, and maxed out settings in both game and the Nvidia control panel, @1920x1200 im getting around 58-85+ out to sea, and about 45-60FPS in and around port.

The game is completely smooth, but once in a while i get the stuttering effect (when using external cam), this is almost certainly from running out of V-ram and my PC switching to system ram. I measure my V-ram by using the overclocking tool MSI Afterburner, which apart from measuring temps also records used V-ram including min-max amounts.

With max AA in-game slider, it was measuring a peak of 1279mb (bear in mind i have 1280 on the GTX570. I personally think its switching to system memory at that point causing the stutering, and MSI Afterburner is just recording my ram used as 1279 instead of 1280.!

When lowering the AA slider one less notch, to what you are suggesting is now 8xAA, im getting maybe 5FPS more frames less stutering and a V-ram peak off 1269. A difference, but not to the amount that i would expect from 16x to 8xAA....its more akin to a change from 4x to 2xAA.

As for the CPU limiting factor, sure it could be the games not well optimized where the CPU is concerned, but it is known that SH5 runs much faster for ATI cards than Nvidia, with owners of the much slower than GTX570 OC'd 5870 getting FPS in excess of mine. Thus again it points to the graphics card.

Also its worth noting, that if the CPU is limiting SH5 as much as you say, then it would be the only game im aware of that this is the case at these resolutions...the other game i play is the Totalwar series which is both CPU and GPU hungry in vast amounts....think of rendering individual movements on 10,000 seperate men at once, while providing physix for cannon shot explotions etc all at the same time; yet an I7 @3800 yeilds 2-3FPS extra frames above 1600x1200 than a E8500@3000!!!

Seriously, there is truth in what you are saying, its not all black and white, but years of scanning the effects and reading all the benchmarks of CPU / GPU in games has shown me that at 1600x1200 + resolution, the graphics card will always yeild the most limiting fps difference and the difference between a respectible main-stream CPU and the best is very small in all but CPU benchmarks.

[Pintea]

The game is completely smooth, but once in a while i get the stuttering effect (when using external cam), this is almost certainly from running out of V-ram and my PC switching to system ram.
most certainly

When lowering the AA slider one less notch, to what you are suggesting is now 8xAA, im getting maybe 5FPS more frames less stutering and a V-ram peak off 1269. A difference, but not to the amount that i would expect from 16x to 8xAA....its more akin to a change from 4x to 2xAA.
It is also a difference between your initial post and this one... no improvement is different from a 5 fps/no stuttering change, meaning you are limited in some way by your video card (memory or bandwidth).

Also the in-game area where you make the measurements is very important. Exterior should be much faster (and with a whole other behavior) than interior.

[TheDarkWraith]

no improvement is different from a 5 fps/no stuttering change, meaning you are limited in some way by your video card (memory or bandwidth).

merely looking at fps change is not enough. A 5 fps change at 40fps is a much larger change than a 5 fps change at 100fps. FPS should be used as an indication of 'system speed' very broadly :shifty: