[Tom's] BF 3: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

[cmdrdredd]

Thanks for contributing nothing. I want to know why MSAA in BF3 blurs everything, with it off everything is sharper. I've tried it many times, with and without post AA. Every time I have MSAA on it's a much softer image (blurry). It contradicts what has been said before so I I'm a bit confused at what's really going on.

 

[MrK6]

Yeah, don't run the game with MSAA on. Not only does it kill performance, but the IQ goes way down. The post AA on High looks great and has a very small performance hit. My single 6950 @ 2560x1600 can run it on High fine.

 

[Silverforce11]

You guys need to read the AT DICE BF3 tech presentation, on AA part. MSAA they use is very optimized and it removes aliasing of few objects, at a cost of causing texture/mesh edge blur.

Post AA on medium gives the best AA without too much blur.

 

[cmdrdredd]

You guys need to read the AT DICE BF3 tech presentation, on AA part. MSAA they use is very optimized and it removes aliasing of few objects, at a cost of causing texture/mesh edge blur.

Post AA on medium gives the best AA without too much blur.

That's what I'm seeing but people claim I'm crazy and the Post AA is doing the blur. I've tried many times as I said...MSAA = blur.

I call it blur but it's more like a softening of the image. Some people are pleased by the look, but I prefer it to be a bit sharper.

 

[houe]

MSAA helps for very thin lines. FXAA doesn't help much with that as far as I could tell. Its not a huge difference and the cost is high so a person has to weight the benefits/costs. If you have the spare power go for it, but if not it is probably the first option to ditch. When I go SLI and run 5760x1200 (or maybe 5040x1050 if performance is too low) I know MSAA is not going to be used.

 

[vshin]

FXAA is so much better than MSAA in terms of price/performance ratio. Every future game should include this in their settings.

 

[Jhatfie]

[H] has a good write up today on various settings. Plus some great pictures showing the differences between MSAA and FXAA. In this comparison, FXAA does look like the colors and textures are a bit more dull, but the image edges are smoother and look better than MSAA.

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMDIwMzk5MHdnZ0RxV0diM2xfN18zX2wucG5n

 

[Powermoloch]

no 6850 CF

 

[houe]

I did my own tests on images involving thin wires and chain link fence. There is definitely an edge is those cases for MSAA. But its like one of those pictures you see in magazines where there are 5 differences between two pictures and you have to find the them. Takes a big of looking to fine.

 

[lehtv]

no 6850 CF

Multiply 6850 framerates by two ->

1680x1050: ~90fps.
1920x1080: ~80fps.

That's about 10 fps better than 6970 or GTX 580.

 

[PCboy]

In what we can call a truly neutral game and game engine, the 6990 shows it is the fastest card out there.

4x 6990s would be marvelous. I wonder when 8 GPUs for gaming will become the high-end instead of the measly 4 we have now. DirectX 12, maybe? (Wishful thinking)

 

[lehtv]

I hope it wont go to that, high end would mean you must have a board capable of quad pci-e x8 and a 1500W power supply :E

 

[3DVagabond]

4x 6990s would be marvelous. I wonder when 8 GPUs for gaming will become the high-end instead of the measly 4 we have now. DirectX 12, maybe? (Wishful thinking)

Some people are insatiable.

 

[Grooveriding]

[H] has a good write up today on various settings. Plus some great pictures showing the differences between MSAA and FXAA. In this comparison, FXAA does look like the colors and textures are a bit more dull, but the image edges are smoother and look better than MSAA.

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMDIwMzk5MHdnZ0RxV0diM2xfN18zX2wucG5n

This basically sums it up :thumbsup:

The entire image looks blurred, all the edges of objects blur into the textures beside them. Performance is great with this mode, but IQ is down the toilet compared to MSAA creating distinct and clean lines between objects.

Look at that bob-wire, it's blur city all around it.

 

[Silverforce11]

Its object in the distance, the trees shouldn't be sharp that image looks wrong. Whats obvious is 4x MSAA does a terrible job at removing aliasing. Look at the cars, its a jagged mess and would irritate the crap out of ppl who dislike aliasing. You may as well leave it OFF for the tiny aliasing improvement at a huge perf penalty.

Post AA on medium offers the best IQ without as much blur as on high.

What it also shows is having post AA enabled, MSAA adds nothing to the scene. Thus turning it on drops performance for nothing. Pointless.

So you can play BF3 with either MSAA and deal with jaggies everywhere or you can enable post AA on medium for almost complete removal of aliasing but at a slight loss in distant texture quality. Which is fine with me, objects in the distance should not look sharp regardless. Heck, some games even add DoF feature to deliberately blur out distant out of focus objects.

 

[tincart]

Those street lamps look pretty bad with MSAA.

 

[Grooveriding]

I don't disagree that MSAA does not do enough to alias everything visible or that it is not performance heavy. But the MLAA/FXAA post-AA settings are atrocious for IQ. Blurred textures is not good IQ.

What MSAA does work on, it does a lot better than post-AA. Even with it costing nothing performance wise, I leave post-aa off. It's that bad.

 

[Red Hawk]

From my experience using MLAA in Total War: Shogun 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, post processing AA is definitely better than no AA at all. It's not as good as MSAA and has some blurring drawbacks, but IMO the blur isn't nearly bad enough to outweigh getting rid of those jaggies at a fraction of the cost of MSAA. This is especially true of game engines that use deferred rendering, which includes BF3. Forcing MLAA through the driver controls is also better than forcing MSAA in the drivers for games that don't have native AA support (ie Mass Effect), especially since AMD has been putting performance improvements into the tech.

Regarding Battlefield 3 specifically, I can't give my opinion because I don't have the game. But I thought the post AA in BF3 was MLAA? AMD has been pushing MLAA on PCs while FXAA is Nvidia's post AA tech, and BF3 is an AMD sponsored game. Shogun 2 and Human Revolution were AMD sponsored games and they used MLAA (HR also had an FXAA option, though MLAA was supposed to be the best option).

(As an aside, I find it amusing that on consoles the 360 often uses FXAA while the PS3 uses MLAA [albeit CPU based], opposite of the designers of the GPUs in the consoles)

Edit: here's some image comparison done by HardOCP. First, a screenshot of no AA, 2x MSAA, and 4x MSAA:

Now no AA and the FXAA settings:

And 4x MSAA directly compared to FXAA High:

To me, the FXAA does cause some blur but at least it gets rid of the jaggies. MSAA doesn't seem to do much of anything at all...

 

[mrjoltcola]

I really don't understand why so many reviewers leave out the GTX 560 (non-Ti). Not that I'm a great fan, but I had one and was impressed even at 2560x1600. My observation is BestBuy, Microcenter and so many other retail stores are selling boatloads of plain 560s (and unfortunately 550Ti too) and people want to see what their 560 will do.

I notice lately the shelves are starting to fill up with 560 2GB cards, and even more boggling, a 550ti 2GB, and I see people making the worst decisions with their money. Including those cards in reviews like this might keep people from dropping 250 bucks on the wrong card.

 

[3DVagabond]

Thanks for contributing nothing. I want to know why MSAA in BF3 blurs everything, with it off everything is sharper. I've tried it many times, with and without post AA. Every time I have MSAA on it's a much softer image (blurry). It contradicts what has been said before so I I'm a bit confused at what's really going on.

Lighten up Francis. No offense intended. You don't see the irony?

 

[Red Hawk]

I really don't understand why so many reviewers leave out the GTX 560 (non-Ti). Not that I'm a great fan, but I had one and was impressed even at 2560x1600. My observation is BestBuy, Microcenter and so many other retail stores are selling boatloads of plain 560s (and unfortunately 550Ti too) and people want to see what their 560 will do.

I notice lately the shelves are starting to fill up with 560 2GB cards, and even more boggling, a 550ti 2GB, and I see people making the worst decisions with their money. Including those cards in reviews like this might keep people from dropping 250 bucks on the wrong card.

2 GB on a 550 Ti doesn't have much use, but what's wrong with buying a 550 Ti if you can find a good price on it? (not that Best Buy or Microcenter are such places). Not everyone has the extra cash to burn on upgrading to a 560.

 

[Will Robinson]

Happy Medium alleges:

The gtx570 is the star of that review, no wonder prices are going up. Its beating a 6970 by 11% @ 1080p ultra quality, NO MSAA.

Surprise!, you are misrepresenting information again.


From the article regarding AMD vs nVidia at Ultra Quality settings.

It's no surprise....:thumbsdown:
Least someone called him on it tho:thumbsup:

 

[Arkadrel]

The gtx570 is the star of that review, no wonder prices are going up. Its beating a 6970 by 11% @ 1080p ultra quality, NO MSAA.

Check the High settings though: Probably what most people will play.

570 = 62 fps
6970 = 70 fps

Thats like a 13% differnce there, in the 6970's favor.

Nvidia shine on the Ultra settings though, but few will play that.
Because they want 60+ fps in a first person shooter, unless they are running SLI setups, ultra settings wont help that.

ps. on High settings 6970 > 580 in fps, and at a much lower price for the card.

Unless your planning to get SLI/CF, AMD cards seem to be a better way to go with BF3.

 

[Silverforce11]

You can run on ULTRA, its faster on AMD hardware, just disable MSAA and enjoy everything else without a big perf hit for almost no gain on aliasing removal.

Deferred MSAA in this type of game engine is stupid. Play the game without both MSAA and post AA if you feel post AA blurs distant textures too much to your liking. Cos even with 4xMSAA, the screen is full of jaggies. Otherwise, if jaggies bother you, turn on post AA to low/medium and it removes most of it for a minimal IQ impact.

 

[flexy]

I almost dont see a difference with MSAA off, usually i run all games with 4xAA but in this case there is hardly a difference...so i run without MSAA for some more FPS. (I have a low end graphics card)

As for the TH results...the FPS decrease by turning ON MSAA is rather VERY small (looking at the numbers in comparison), anywhere from 10% - 20%....which IN MY OPINION does not matter if you have a decent card like a 570. He says in his report that a GTX 590 is the only card where is makes sense to have MSAA on which i think is a nonsense statement.

I however turn it off because i have a GTX275, so 10 more FPS is great...but if i had a beefier card (570 etc.) i would def. run with 4xMSAA