Thursday, March 15th 2012

NVIDIA Introducing a New Anti-Aliasing Algorithm with Kepler?

Reliable sources indicate that NVIDIA could introduce a new anti-aliasing (AA) algorithm with its Kepler family of GPUs. There are already plenty of AA algorithms which have been introduced with recent generations of GPUs, including FXAA, which have enabled higher levels of image quality, while not being as taxing as MSAA. This leaves only one area in which a new AA algorithm can take shape: to raise the image quality bar higher, while lowering performance penalty.

In a screenshot, probably sourced from NVIDIA's GeForce Kepler press-deck, this new algorithm is compared to 8x MSAA, in which it appears to give superior image quality. We know that 8x MSAA can be taxing, the kind of image quality we're seeing with this mysterious AA algo 'looks' taxing with available technology, unless of course, NVIDIA developed a silver-bullet in its new algorithm, which provides stunning image quality while not being too taxing on the GPU's resources.
Source: Expreview BBS
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39 Comments on NVIDIA Introducing a New Anti-Aliasing Algorithm with Kepler?

#26
Casecutter
Yea it's not wrong for one card manufacture to work a gaming developer to make their version of an AA work splendidly with their equipment, as long as they down kill optimizations of the standard AA function on the competition. This may have something with the Dymanic Profiling and when used in conjunction with their propriety AA they get great results. So we wait to see if on even playing field regular AA things are as rosy!
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#27
Covert_Death
i just want a better AA that developers adopt as largely as MSAA... i mean MSAA is dated and way too taxing on any system. but it takes everyone adopting the same method for anything good to come of this
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#28
cadaveca
My name is Dave
Woah. It just occurred to me that perhaps this new, faster AA method, might explain part of the performance boost offered over the 7970.
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#29
Covert_Death
cadavecaWoah. It just occurred to me that perhaps this new, faster AA method, might explain part of the performance boost offered over the 7970.
that would be cheating big time haha i hope not, you can't claim HARDWARE X is faster then HARDWARE Y because of the type of SOFTWARE it uses..... i really really hope your wrong, no offense though
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#30
semantics
Covert_Deaththat would be cheating big time haha i hope not, you can't claim HARDWARE X is faster then HARDWARE Y because of the type of SOFTWARE it uses..... i really really hope your wrong, no offense though
herp then by that measure amd optimized surface textures and optimized tessellation would be just under the same measure of offense, which not all reviewers disable, not sure if they still are still on by default.
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#31
Fluffmeister
Reviews will benchmark the cards at apples to apples settings, no need to get your knickers in a twist just yet ladies.

Although it must be said... FXAA > MLAA

:D
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#32
Steevo
WrigleyvillainReally? Do you have some kind of source for this? I admit to not "knowing the benches" as well as many here off the top of my head but I have always had the impression that NV generally has had better-implemented AA (better performing and more types/options). It certainly does in BF3 I can tell you that. Just swapped two 6850s for this 480 which is technically 2-5% slower but now can run all Ultra except shadows and 4x MSAA without a hiccup whereas before High + 2x.

Granted I also have a half gig more vram and the game is using most of it (average 1400MB). That was the biggest deciding factor in "upgrading" right now and it has turned out to be definitely a great move.
ATI/AMD was/is the overall image quality crown as shown by multiple independent site tests. Their video handling and 3D quality have been some of the reason I stayed with them too. MSAA works on games with almost no penalty, even when AA isn't supported natively. Unfortunately it also works on windows hardware accelerated applications text.


If Nvidia pulls something out of their green bag of goodies that is all they are saying I might be running green also.
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#33
semantics
SteevoATI/AMD was/is the overall image quality crown as shown by multiple independent site tests. Their video handling and 3D quality have been some of the reason I stayed with them too. MSAA works on games with almost no penalty, even when AA isn't supported natively. Unfortunately it also works on windows hardware accelerated applications text.


If Nvidia pulls something out of their green bag of goodies that is all they are saying I might be running green also.
no penalty lol maybe on their high end gpus but it's more taxing then fxaa, when you take the mid range and low-mid range cards, in games that support FXAA, which ati cards can run, FXAA tends to offer better IQ(because msaa blurs the image too much i don't care for it but it's mostly text problems for me that makes me say IQ is less) at less performance drop.

video and IQ in games? shits pretty even, in the far past ati had clear advantages, but now it's sorta per game, per generation of gpu and per driver.
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#34
Prima.Vera
deadmansclickfxaa is naff looking. it makes games that are meant to be realistic look like cartoons. standard aa is much better.
I completely disagree. The FXAA implementation in BF3 and ME3 is outstanding. Even better than the traditional 8xMSAA. :rockout:
semanticsno penalty lol maybe on their high end gpus but it's more taxing then fxaa, when you take the mid range and low-mid range cards, in games that support FXAA, which ati cards can run, FXAA tends to offer better IQ(because MLAA blurs the image too much i don't care for it but it's mostly text problems for me that makes me say IQ is less) at less performance drop.

video and IQ in games? shits pretty even, in the far past ati had clear advantages, but now it's sorta per game, per generation of gpu and per driver.
Fixed! ;)
Posted on Reply
#35
RejZoR
MLAA doesn't blur the image. It's the visual perception caused by rounding the edges that should be rectangular. And it affects the fonts in some cases. What they use here is FXAA 4.x or possibly 5.x developed by one of their engineers Timothy Lottes who also runs a blog about it here:
timothylottes.blogspot.com

There is also a 3rd method with lots of potential, called SMAA. You can find it here:
www.iryoku.com/smaa/

What i hope here is that NVIDIA will give possibility of using their nFXAA (see what i did there :D ) the same way as AMD does with their MLAA. So you can enable it for any game you want through drivers. Because injecting FXAA or SMAA into apps does work but is incompatible with any kind of multiplayer game that uses anti-cheat system. MLAA on the other hand is immune to this problem and can be freely used in ANY game.

Because if they do that, i'll seriously reconsider buying a Kepler based gfx card even though i have HD6950 at teh moment. And MLAA is great but i know it has limitations nicely shown by the SMAA guys in their tech video. On the other hand i won't consider Kepler in case if AMD can give us FXAA or SMAA along with existing MLAA just by Catalyst update. Because if they do, i'll have another reason to stick with Radeons. Yeah, this feature is that important for me, because there are loads of games ported from consoles and no one cares about adding some FSAA to them. NFS Hot Pursuit 2010 was one of such games and while many complained about the lack of any kind of FSAA, i just enjoyed it with MLAA and i still do. No jaggies at all thanks to MLAA in Catalyst.

So yeah, NVIDIA, bring it on. The more they offer such techniques, the better. So we, the customers have more options to chose from.
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#37
RejZoR
It's minimal. It's nowhere near as bad as what Wide and Narrow Tent filters did on Radeons or Quincunx on GeForce cards.
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#38
Prima.Vera
I never used Wide, Narrow or Edge detect anyways on my cards
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#39
RejZoR
Edge Detect is pretty good. 4x EQAA and Edge Detect filter and you get some pretty good edge filtering without massive performance hit. Edge Detect also doesn't blur anything opposed to Narrow and wide tent...
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