ansiotropic filtering question

[robfm81]

I may be sounding dumb here, but what is the effect of

1. Turning it on
2. Changing fron 2 to 4 to 6 etc.....

What is the performance difference? (in 3dmark06 didn't see much of a change)

Many thanks...

[tasty danish]

depending on the application and your hardware, the effect can be slim to none, or gigantic.

first off, you don't just "turn it on" if it's on, it's set to a certain level (2x, 4x, etc).

on average (and this is a broad generalization), a bump in AA is equal in frame rate drop to a step up in resolution. on older cards it's more so, on newer cards, the frame drop can be totally negligible. it just depends, test and see what works for you and your games. in general it's better to have a little AA on than just a higher res.

[robfm81]

Many thanks, i'll give it a try on stalker.

[tasty danish]

and oh my God, i just realized i explained anti-aliasing to you.

anisotropic filtering is similar but not quite. now adays with todays hardware, the performance hit is slim to none for AF. it provides FAR less of a visual difference than AA but consequently requires FAR less horsepower.

simply put, AA is the process of smoothing jagged lines, while AF actually blurs the textures so that you can not tell where they piece together. that's basic but to understand it think of this:

ever play counter strike on a basic (old) computer and on the dust map it was supposed to look like sand but it actually looked like a bunch of big brown tiles? play it on a newer comp with AF cranked and it will be blurred together and look contiguous. CS is the only game i ever REALLY noticed AF making a difference.

it really makes for a minute performance hit, i ususally run 8x or 16x unless i'm REALLY struggling to balance frames in an intensive game.