hd4800's AND AA??!!

[User5]

Is it just me, or does the 4850 handle AA like no other card has ever handled AA before? I remember on my previous video cards, going from 0X to 2X AA meant some hefty FPS increases. But with this card, its almost as if there is NO fps difference.

I am playing Crysis, Oblivion, and Assassins Creed (the 3 most demanding games i have) and they are all playable just as smooth with 0xAA as they are with 4xAA. Whats up with this? Is this like new AA technology or something? Has anyone also found any benefits to the "wide tent", "narrow tent", etc settings over the default "box" setting? I really cant see any differences other than the performance decreasing.

 

[Tempered81]

rv770 handles AA better than any gpu in history!

 

[drinklime]

I turn on the adaptive anti aliasing too it looks awesome

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Actually, the same thing happened with my 9700 PRO back in the day... It barely had performance hit going from 0xAA to 4xAA so I played everything at 4xAA, but yeah its definitely the best AA handling card ever

 

[NickR]

Yeah, AMD is shooting for no-performance drop AA, with the HUGE Memory bandwith.

 

[User5]

Originally posted by: drinklime
I turn on the adaptive anti aliasing too it looks awesome

yeah! i forgot to even mention this. Makes a really nice difference, since this was something that always pissed me off how distorted fine lines would get.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: jaredpace
rv770 handles AA better than any gpu in history!

I'd say that the R300 Radeon 9700 Pro was a bigger leap than what we have with the RV770 4800s. Before the 9700 Pro, using AA on newer games and maintaining smooth/playable frame rates was pretty much an impossibility. Back then even AF wasn't a given like we take it for granted to day, and the 9700 Pro also expanded performance on that.

Although the 9700 Pro debuting as a $400 flagship is a bit different than the $200 (and much cheaper with rebates and other deals) HD4850, so in that light it is a bit different.

 

[taltamir]

R770 hangle standard MSAA (box settings in the catalyst control panel) from 2x to 8x with almost no penalty.
Using tent, wide tent, and edge detect causes similar percentage drops as previous AMD cards (a little better, but still serious).
But as long as you stick to MSAA it is almost free.

 

[zod96]

Is adaptive AA the same as nvidia's supersampling AA? Because I just tried GRID with my 4850 at 8xAA Adaptive and 16xAF HQ at 1680x1050 and it was still avg. about 60 fps I tried the same with my old 8800GT and it was getting about 30 fps using supersampling AA

 

[wolf2009]

i dont know what ATI did but something is great about the AA with that card . now if only non-reference coolers coolers out and if they can lower power consumption with rv870, they would have the best cards .

 

[User5]

I changed the topic to 4800, since im sure the 4850 and 4870 handle AA the same way.

And while the 9700 card may have made it possible to start cranking up the AA/AF, (i actually dont know, this is a wee before my time as my first card was a 9800pro) , what i mean is different here is how little of a penalty there is when cranking it up. I was just shocked by this since I didn't even hear any info about this until i experimented on my own.

 

[zod96]

Yeah once they fix the power issues and when some new 3rd party coolers come out I'll be set I'm waiting for the Artic Cooling one that was just announced..

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: taltamir
R770 hangle standard MSAA (box settings in the catalyst control panel) from 2x to 8x with almost no penalty.
Using tent, wide tent, and edge detect causes similar percentage drops as previous AMD cards (a little better, but still serious).
But as long as you stick to MSAA it is almost free.

Yeah, but for some reason, the drop using those filters is greater than in the HD3X00 series, sometimes it performs identical to the HD3X00 on ultra high resolutions using Edge Detect for example. Seems that the HD 3X00 had a more optimized shader implemented anti aliasing than the HD 4X00 series which have true hardware resolve which is faster overall but has less flexibility and has to resort to shaders to use custom filters, but luckily DX10.1 is here to aleviate the performance impact using them..

 

[solofly]

I'm very happy to report that the ATI drivers have improved big time since the 9700/9800 days (my last Ati card) and the HD4850 is very fast and wonderful card for the money. Don't regret one bit giving Ati another shot...

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: zod96
Yeah once they fix the power issues and when some new 3rd party coolers come out I'll be set I'm waiting for the Artic Cooling one that was just announced..

which one is that?

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Originally posted by: rudolphna
Yeah, AMD is shooting for no-performance drop AA, with the HUGE Memory bandwith.

Except the HD4850 doesn't have anymore memory bandwith than an overclocked 9600GT, 8800GT... certainly has less than a G80 GTS and much less than a GTX, yet it handles AA better... which is VERY impressive.

 

[GakAttack]

wierd... my 2900XT was the same in terms of putting AA on or not... x2 and x4 made no FPS difference for almost all my games, but x8 definately showed a big FPS drop

going to get a 4850 soon for $130 canadian!! can't wait!

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: taltamir
R770 hangle standard MSAA (box settings in the catalyst control panel) from 2x to 8x with almost no penalty.
Using tent, wide tent, and edge detect causes similar percentage drops as previous AMD cards (a little better, but still serious).
But as long as you stick to MSAA it is almost free.

Yeah, but for some reason, the drop using those filters is greater than in the HD3X00 series, sometimes it performs identical to the HD3X00 on ultra high resolutions using Edge Detect for example. Seems that the HD 3X00 had a more optimized shader implemented anti aliasing than the HD 4X00 series which have true hardware resolve which is faster overall but has less flexibility and has to resort to shaders to use custom filters, but luckily DX10.1 is here to aleviate the performance impact using them..

nobody will use DX10.1, period.
They already have to program it in DX9 AND DX10 at the same time, which is a huge pain. And there are tons of ATI and nVidia cards that are only DX10 capable, the market for DX10.1 is extremely small and the benefits are negligible.

 

[terentenet]

Perhaps there is no FPS drop because it's a CPU bottleneck? I can play most games at 1920x1200 with up to 16xQAA & no significant drop.... Give the video card some more work and crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 (if you have the monitor) and you'll get fps loss even from 2xAA...

 

[User5]

Originally posted by: terentenet
Perhaps there is no FPS drop because it's a CPU bottleneck? I can play most games at 1920x1200 with up to 16xQAA & no significant drop.... Give the video card some more work and crank up the resolution to 2560x1600 (if you have the monitor) and you'll get fps loss even from 2xAA...

2560x1600?!!! Dude, I wish I had a monitor capable of displaying 1920x1200!

 

[terentenet]

I don't know if that's the case with hd48xx, but generaly speaking, if you enable AA and there's no FPS drop, it's a CPU bottleneck. I'm just saying, I'm not sure. Perhaps hd48xx really has something with AA and can do some AA with no performance drop.
I game at 2560x1600 and it hurts!!!
Too bad I can't read text on my Full HD 42" LCD scren placed 7 feet away from me, or I'd be using that instead... 1920x1080 with a Quad-SLI setup = 16xQAA, Ultra High everything = LOTS OF EYECANDY!
I can hardly wait a new line of cards, truly capable of gaming at 2560x1600.

 

[taltamir]

it will be funny if the reviews sayings "free AA" just didn't realize they were CPU bound.... funny and sad

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: taltamir
R770 hangle standard MSAA (box settings in the catalyst control panel) from 2x to 8x with almost no penalty.
Using tent, wide tent, and edge detect causes similar percentage drops as previous AMD cards (a little better, but still serious).
But as long as you stick to MSAA it is almost free.

Yeah, but for some reason, the drop using those filters is greater than in the HD3X00 series, sometimes it performs identical to the HD3X00 on ultra high resolutions using Edge Detect for example. Seems that the HD 3X00 had a more optimized shader implemented anti aliasing than the HD 4X00 series which have true hardware resolve which is faster overall but has less flexibility and has to resort to shaders to use custom filters, but luckily DX10.1 is here to aleviate the performance impact using them..

nobody will use DX10.1, period.
They already have to program it in DX9 AND DX10 at the same time, which is a huge pain. And there are tons of ATI and nVidia cards that are only DX10 capable, the market for DX10.1 is extremely small and the benefits are negligible.

Yeah, and since you are Gabe Novell or John Carmack, the developers will obey your rules. More than 3 important Developing Houses confirmed the use of DX10.1 like Valve. If all people around would think as you, probably we would still using DirectX 9 SM2.0b. DX10.1 is the future and more implementations of it in games will come. You seems to forget that DX10.1 games will work flawlessly on DX10 cards, the developer just have to make sure to avoid DX10.1 feature calling when running the DX10 data path. :disgust:

 

[taltamir]

0-20% faster at doing the exact same thing on a few cards is hardly "the future". Most developers are still using DX9 exclusively. Very few actually use DX10.
DX11 hardware will also be required to support DX10.1
Will those DX10.1 games come out before or after DX11 hits the market?

Those DX10 and DX10.1 titles will also work flawlessly on DX9 hardware as long as the developer makes sure not to use DX10 calls on DX9 hardware... oops that is called writing two different codes to do the same thing on different hardware! Having a seperate executable for DX9 and 10, or the same executable (or seperate ones, their choice) for DX10 and DX10.1 do not change the need to write different code to do the same thing... which is exactly what I said... and costs extra money (programmers) for a diminishing return.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: taltamir
0-20% faster at doing the exact same thing on a few cards is hardly "the future". Most developers are still using DX9 exclusively. Very few actually use DX10.
DX11 hardware will also be required to support DX10.1
Will those DX10.1 games come out before or after DX11 hits the market?

Those DX10 and DX10.1 titles will also work flawlessly on DX9 hardware as long as the developer makes sure not to use DX10 calls on DX9 hardware... oops that is called writing two different codes to do the same thing on different hardware! Having a seperate executable for DX9 and 10, or the same executable (or seperate ones, their choice) for DX10 and DX10.1 do not change the need to write different code to do the same thing... which is exactly what I said... and costs extra money (programmers) for a diminishing return.

Wrong, a strictly DX10 game won't run on DX9 hardware, it require two different type of datapaths for that and is completely different from DX10.1 and DX10.0. Read what DX10.1 brings to the table because you look ridiculous, is not only the performance improvement, is also more flexibility due to less restrictions, that allows to use effects that could not be possible in real time before like Global Illumination thanks to the Cube Map Arrays, also there's more Vertex Shaders Inputs/Outputs, Gather4 which can improve the performance greatly when shadows are used (Specially on ATi hardware since nVidia has an excellent shadowmap acceleration), Separate Blend Modes per Multiple Render Target which improves the performance using Deferred Rendering greatly. Additional LOD Instructions, Multi Sample read and writes (nVidia already supports this but is not exposed on DX10.0, only in OpenGL or when the developer codes for it). Pixel Coverage Mask which incurrs in a performance impact on G8X/G9X hardware since Shader Anti Aliasing is heavy in computing power, and increased precision for floating point operation. So is more of a diminishing return, DX10.1 is what DX10 was supposed to be, like DX9 SM3.0 was for DX9.