Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: daddog on May 24, 2009, 07:00:07 PM
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Not sure what I should set these at. Anyone have any suggestions?
Antialiasing
2x
4x
8xQ
8x
16x
16xQ
Antiliasing gamma correction
On
Off
Antialiasing Mode
Application controlled
Off
Enhance the application setting
Override application setting
Antialising Transparency
Multisampling
Supersampling
Conformant texture clamp
Use Hardware
Off
Open GL
Force mipmaps
None
Bilinear
Trilinear
Anisotropic filtering – Heard to leave that off.
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I recently asked the same question...
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,263440.0.html
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Depends on your CPU but basically...
16xQ
On
Override Application Setting
Super sampling
Use Hardware
Trilinear
Yes
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This is where I have my 512 8800 GTS set.
Not sure what I should set these at. Anyone have any suggestions?
Antialiasing
2x
4x
8xQ
8x
16x
16xQ
Antiliasing gamma correction
On
Off
Antialiasing Mode
Application controlled
Off
Enhance the application setting
Override application setting
Antialising Transparency
Multisampling
Supersampling
Conformant texture clamp
Use Hardware
Off
Open GL
Force mipmaps
None
Bilinear
Trilinear
Anisotropic filtering – Heard to leave that off.
Mine is at 16x
I grabbed this off the Internet one day:
· Anisotropic Filtering: This is an image improvement technique which reduces the amount of blurriness of textures when they are viewed at an oblique angle, such as a runway in a flight simulator or a billboard on a racing game. Instead of using square or rectangular buffers which do not properly simulate perspective, a dynamic trapezoidal buffer is used instead to allow for minimal distortion even at extreme viewing angles. Rather than forcing a single trapezoidal shape to all textures, the degree of texture distortion directly relates to the angle of the trapezoidal buffer used, meaning this technique can improve image quality of textures being viewed at all angles, not just one. Levels range from zero to 16x: zero of course applying no special filtering while 16x will filter virtually any texture drawn on the screen regardless of distance. In a general sense, the "best" setting for 6-series users would be about 4x, 7-series about 8x, and 8-series users can use 16x AF without a problem. Results can vary according to your video hardware specifications, level of detail, resolution and scene complexity.
· Anti-Aliasing: This is a visual feature which reduces the amount of jagged lines on a 3D object by enlarging the scene, frame by frame, then scaling it back down to the specified resolution. When the scene is being shrunk back down to the original size, the pixels smoothen out and look less abrupt which obviously gives the scene an added sense of realism. The settings of Anti-Aliasing range from zero up to SLIAA 32x with many steps in between. 2x Anti-Aliasing samples each pixel twice, giving a reasonable reduction in jagged edges without a high performance cost. 2xQ is the same as 2x AA, but it was designed to provide the same image quality as a 4x process without the performance hit, which it does by merging neighboring pixels, but the downside is that the blurriness causes a reduction in image quality. 4x AA samples each pixel four times and gives the best balance of image quality to system performance. 8xS is a "combination" Anti-Aliasing setting that uses a 1x2 Supersampling buffer with a 2x Multisampling buffer, often resulting in a spectacular image without much of a performance reduction. With higher-end video cards there are also 16x and 16xQ processes, however this time the "Q" stands for "quality" since it uses entirely different sampling sizes than standard 16x and leads to better image quality, of course at the cost of some performance. Beyond those modes are the SLI AA modes that were explained previously. High-end users will be able to apply a 8xS or 16x/16xQ process without suffering much of a performance cost, while mid-range and lower-end users may be able to still use 4x and 8xS processes without seeing a drastic reduction in frame rates. As noted above, users can enable certain levels of SLI Anti-Aliasing depending on their hardware. As with Anisotropic filtering, how well your system performs at certain settings depends on the resolution, level of detail, how detailed the scene is and video hardware specs.
· Conformant Texture Clamp: This OpenGL-specific setting merely instructs the system how to handle texture coordinates. This setting only needs to be disabled if texture problems are noticed in an OpenGL application.
· Error Reporting: All this option determines is whether or not programs are allowed to check for informational errors. This can cause performance reductions in OpenGL applications that constantly check for errors.
· Extension Limit: Modern applications use longer strings of code to instruct the system to perform a certain task, and what this option does is limit the driver extension string, or how long a string of code can be. If enabled while running a modern OpenGL application, code can be cut off which can result in the program crashing or freezing. It's best to leave this disabled for newer programs, but enabled for older ones to prevent string looping.
· Force Mipmaps: Mipmaps are used in virtually every game on the market today because they allow for trilinear and Anisotropic filtering to be applied. This is used to reduce "shimmering," or the unnatural bright coloration of a pixel, that can appear on textures a certain distance away from the camera. Forcing mipmaps allows for more advanced texture filtering to be applied in the event that your game doesn't use its own mipmaps, and you can force either Bilinear or Trilinear mipmaps. Bilinear mipmaps may display contradistinctions between the mipmaps whereas Trilinear mipmaps create smooth transitions between them.
· Hardware Acceleration: This is a setting to ensure compatibility with single or multi-monitor configurations. When using a single monitor, this should be set as "Single display performance mode" unless significant visual artifacting (unrelated to GPU overclocking or overheating) is seen, in which case you should select "Compatibility performance mode." If using more than one monitor, this needs to be set at "Multiple monitor performance mode." If you notice artifacting on a multi-display setup, you may select the compatibility mode to remedy the situation.
· Negative LOD Bias: A LOD bias, or a Level Of Detail bias, is something set by a game or other 3D application to determine how sharp a texture appears after a certain distance. Some applications use a negative LOD bias to sharpen stationary textures, but when the texture is moved shimmering can be observed. Setting this to "Clamp" restricts the LOD bias from dropping below zero, and setting it to "Allow" allows for a negative LOD bias.
· SLI Performance Mode: Pretty self-explanatory - this permits the use of one of several SLI rendering modes, all of which were explained previously. The choices here are Split-Frame rendering, two Alternate Frame rendering modes, Single-GPU rendering and NVIDIA's recommended rendering mode that differs from program to program.
· Texture Filtering: Here you can choose one of four levels of texture details: High Quality, Quality, Performance and High Performance, in descending order in terms of best image quality. The Quality modes use few or no optimization measures and provide the best image quality at the cost of performance. The Performance modes apply optimizations that degrade the overall quality of the image for the sake of performance, but with these modes additional shimmering can be observed.
· Threaded Optimization: This option allows for applications to utilize more than one physical CPU and thus should be left at "On" or "Auto" with newer applications, though it should be disabled when using more dated programs to prevent crashing.
· Transparency Anti-Aliasing: This is a specialized sort of Anti-Aliasing, however it is only applied to textures with alpha layers, or transparencies, to help reduce the appearance of jagged edges. Only two transparency Anti-Aliasing modes are available: Multisampling and Supersampling. Multisampling will offer only a small visual improvement though at an equally small performance hit, but for serious image improvement, Supersampling is the way to go even though the performance cost is significantly higher. Of course, this option can also be disabled entirely if it's raw FPS you seek.
· Triple Buffering: Triple buffering is a technique that uses a portion of the video memory to prepare the images that are about to be displayed. The first buffer is the image being displayed, the second buffer is the next frame to be displayed, and the third buffer is the image that's being created by the GPU. This technique uses one more buffer (and as a result, 33% more memory) than double buffering but helps to reduce shearing or tearing. This should be enabled with V-Sync to minimize the occurrence of tearing.
· V-Sync: V-Sync, or Vertical Synchronization, is the process of limiting and synchronizing the frame output of the GPU(s) to the refresh rate of the monitor. For example, a display with a vertical refresh rate of 75Hz updates the screen 75 times per second; when V-Sync is enabled the GPU(s) synchronize their output frames to that of the monitor. When V-Sync is disabled, the GPU(s) are not limited by the refresh rate of the monitor and produce as many frames as possible by their hardware limitations. While it may appear that your system performance has increased, you may actually be seeing less than if you had V-Sync enabled. Since the frames are not in sync with the monitor's update rate, some frames are not displayed or partially rendered, and the latter consequence is known as tearing. Tearing is when a frame is not completely displayed on the screen and can have either a black line running across the bottom or a half of the screen missing, which is a common result of V-Sync being disabled.
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i would use the general setting for max quality.
if everything runs fine, looks fine then you're all set.
with my hardware i checked the box for "Let the 3D application decide" because i prefer framerates over eyecandy.
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Good stuff BaldEagl. :)
Thanks Delirium.
I appreciate the replies and my question has been answered. :)
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I'm kinda surprised Eagl, I run an 8800GT and if I recall it's slightly weaker then a 8800GTS and I use higher settings without an issue, should try it some time.