FSAA and Ansio?

[woodman19_99]

Alright, time for a noob question. I am sure that I could go to some deep dark part of the web and find a very technical explanation of these two terms, but I thought I would try here first. What I want to know is what do these two things really do? Do they really improve the quality of the games graphics or what? Playing Rallisport Challenge, Test Drive, C&C Genrals, RF 2, SOF 2, and similar games, will I notice a huge difference? The system in question is the first one in my sig as the second doesn't quite have the graphical oomph (yet ). ANy explanantions would be appreciated, although not too technical, I am only a Finance major

[venom650_19]

The system in your first siggy should be more than adequate to play around with the FSAA/Ansio settings. Those 9700PRO's are perfect for it.

FSAA takes all the edges of the 3D objects and basically smooths them out. If you look really close at the edge of a buiding/car/person in a game, you will see jagged edges(Aliased). Now, FSAA(Full Screen Anti Aliasing) takes those images and does passes over them via whichever setting you have enabled 2x,4x,6x, etc... 2x will take 2 passes, 4x takes 4 passes and so on. Each pass smooths the image more and more until its about perfectly clear at max settings. Newer games (BF1942, No One Lives Forever, Unreal2) look absolutely incredible with FSAA cranked. The hit on the framerate is usually pretty big. Although with the new Radeon boards like yours, its a walk in the park. It takes FSAA and Aniso with no problem at all with a very minimal effect on the framerates.

Anis(Ansiotropic Filtering) is a little different. I dont know the exact way it works or what it's SUPPOSE to do since I've never researched it . I do know that it makes the images a lot better. It makes them grainier and makes everything look more tactile as if you could reach out and touch it. Hence, making everything far more realistic than when it is disabled. It gives everything a lot more detail with every setting it has, whether it be 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, or 16x with our 9700PRO boards. Again, difference in framerates is usually pretty dependant on the video card. Aniso doesnt have as much of an impact as FSAA. Older boards may choke with higher settings while our Radeon's will still fly with it enabled.

This is as easy as I could explain these, one of the other members here could probably go into more depth if needed. Also, maybe someone could go into Aniso a little deeper to explain how it actually works.

[woodman19_99]

Wow, the graphics can get even better? Sweet. That was a very helpful explanation of FSAA. I will have to go home and try that out and see what happens. At least I have some clue on the features of my card. Anyone want to take a shot at Ansiotropic Filtering?

[venom650_19]

Dont forget to make sure that TruForm is enabled too

I found this article on Aniso: The Naked Truth

That explains it in great detail.

[woodman19_99]

Thanks for the link. That answered my questions but left me with a nice headache after reading the 2nd page. But it was very informative, even if I didn't understand some of the technical mumbo jumbo

[Intel_Peep]

Anisotropic filtering is a way to make the textures in the image more true to the way they are supposed to be drawn in a 3d scene where the perspective is such that you are not looking at them "straight on" so the shape has to change. For example, if you were to be looking at the ground, as it gets further away, the texture will need to be drawn smaller and smaller, and it will not be square. Without AF, the texture will look very washed out after it is a certain distance away. With AF, the video card will go through and re-draw these textures with more accurate details in them. I guess this is the best way to explain it.

As for FSAA, I think that Venom covered that about the best it needs to be done.

This picture, from Toms Hardware page, shows the difference in a driving game of the different AF modes:



And this one shows the difference with FSAA enabled:



Both of these were obtained from Tom's Radeon 9800 review, which can be found here.

Best Regards, Intel_Peep

[Dr. Data]

I personally think Aniso helps the image quality with less a performance impact and is more useful in gaming than FSAA.

That however is a personal preference I suppose.

[Todd a]

Tom's Hardware suck. They won't let you link pictures. You must goto their site to see the pictures. They started doing this about 1-2 years ago.

[SexyMF]

Was it Toms Hardware that faked the 3GHz Pentium review??

[evetsrim1]

Tom's Hardware Guide never faked any review, in fact THG along with BXboards is the father of other hardware review sites today, Aces, Anandtech, Hexus, etc. Tom Pabst, a doctor, of THG is very bright but opinionated. I to this day consider their views the most advanced. Anandtech often retracts their reviews due to dumbness.