King of emulation? a new flavor. Anti Aliasing.

Well I've been doing some studying on the Anti Aliasing modes. So this post will be somewhat long. And I'll give a summary at the end.


Here we have a Geforce 3/4's order Grid Multi Sampling. While This is effectively fast, Its not the best method for ridding horizontal Edges


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Now 4xS is done somewhat differently. Same with 6xS and 8xS,

OGMS + OGSS, This creates a better horizontal line. However, The OGSS is merely Super Sampling thrown ontop of Multi sampling. Very bandwith intensive.
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while this method is very effective at removing edges on the horizontal line. I feel its an extremely brute force method to anti aliasing. And I'm quite uncertain How Nvidia can really pull off high frame rates with it, Unless they have improved the multi sampling anti aliasing to almost zero performance loss.


Now we have the Radeon 9700's Rotated Grid Multi sampling. Right now I believe this is the most effective method to anti aliasing. As it hits both horizontal and Vertical edges effectively. And we have seen, Performance is very good.

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This is in fact the closest thing to the Voodoo5's Rotated Grid Super Sampling right now. 4x On a Radeon 9700 Pro should be extremely close to 4x On a Voodoo5.

Here's the way Voodoo5 handles its Rotated Grid Multi sampling.


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Almost exactly the same yet? Instead of Multi Sampling. 3dfx used Super Sampling. which obviously was a huge performance hit.


I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the Radeon 9700 Pro is probably the most effective at Full Screen Anti Aliasing right now. And is probably the best card you can have for emulation purposes. Even Surpassing the geforce FX in quality.

Unless something really changes about Nvidias technique. Thats my humble opinion on the matter.

[Kane]

IIRC, the Voodoo actualy used a Jittered grid, not a rotated grid. The GeForce 2's used a rotated grid.

Originally posted by Kane
IIRC, the Voodoo actualy used a Jittered grid, not a rotated grid. The GeForce 2's used a rotated grid.

Actually thats partially correct, This was a basic Summary, Rotated Jittered Grid is actually the true responce.

Geforce 2's use OGSS, Use Riva Tuner and set it back to NV1x compatibility and it'll force OGSS in in OpenGL.

[campi]

so why can't nvidia use the same technique as ati or 3dfx?

[Dark Watcher]

The grids demonstrate the sub pixel layout, but not the actual sampling. We must correct some instances of what sounds like an advertisement for ATI cards..hahaha. We are no ATI hater or NVidia fanboy..but facts must be cleared up.
3DFX cards and RADEON 8500/9000 and some earlier versions used SuperSampling. There is no doubt that SuperSampling provides beautiful results, but the technique of sampling each subpixel twice is Slooooooooooooooooow. Big performance hit..no question.

From Geforce 3 series NVidia incorporated a Multisampling technique called Quincunx..since then multisampling has been the preferred method of antialiasing for NVidia. It does a great job of anti aliasing both verticle and horizontal lines, and the technique does not hurt gaming performance. The only thing that takes the technique down a notch from Supersampling is that since samples are taken once from neighboring subpixels it can cause some slight blurring.

Now...obviously ATI felt that Multisampling was the better way to go..so the technique show above for Radeon 9700 is dubbed SMOOTHVISION 2.0. Here's what it does.. SMOOTHVISION 2.0 only processes sub-pixels at the edges of polygons thus saving on processing unnecessary pixels inside polygons. So, at last, ATI introduced in its chip the concept of multisampling, brought about by NVIDIA GeForce3...they copied NVidia's technique...so how can you call it better? The only advantage they may have is the Radeons ability to do up to 6X FSAA...thats about it...
However no one knows the full on details of the technique to be used with Geforce FX..so to call the Radeon 9700 'better' is a bit premature......
actually now that you got us wondering we dabbled a little more...It seems that Geforce FX will use an all new Antialiasing technique called Intellisampling..heres some scoop we dug up:
The old multisampling is out and the new intellisampling is going to be providing an improved image quality as well as the new colour compression that prevents any loss of data, essentially keeping all the richness and vibrance of all your images.

The new NVIDIA architecture includes hardware-implemented color compression technology. NVIDIA GeForce FX processors employ an advanced proprietary form of loss-less data compression with a 4:1 compression ratio for color information. This industry-unique color compression solution is implemented in hardware and is completely transparent to applications, with both compression and decompression taking place in real time. Because this compression is completely loss-less, there is no reduction in image quality or loss of precision. The result of this NVIDIA technology is a dramatic increase in memory efficiency, overall improved system performance, and unmatched image quality. For the user, this means that antialiasing speed is improved to the point where essentially all modes of antialiasing are free-without any associated loss of performance.

With intellisampling, NVIDIA's made improvements to Antialiasing and the GeForce FX supports a new 6XS mode, which works under Direct3D and new 8X modes for both OGL and Direct3D.



Like we said...to start preaching that the Radeon 9700 will kill Geforce FX is a bit premature...don't buy into hype...do some research..try it out for yourself....and choose the card your happiest with...nuff said

I totally agree with you Dark Watcher. Until the GeForce FX comes out and we see what it actually can or can't do, it is best just to wait rather than speculate which card will beat which card. The main thing is to pick the card that you like best and are most happy with. Then stick with and use that one.
sincerely,
sx/amiga

Like we said...to start preaching that the Radeon 9700 will kill Geforce FX is a bit premature...don't buy into hype...do some research..try it out for yourself....and choose the card your happiest with...nuff said

I think you mis interpreted what I said. I did not say that the ATI card would kill the Nvidia card, As a matter of fact, i believe its performance to be superior.


But it's anti aliasing quality is not. 6xS And 8xS modes of anti aliasing is not going to change from now to release. (if it does you can quote me on that later)

As it stands now. ATI's Anti Aliasing method is superior At ridding jagged edges, Since the Geforce FX is not "changing" its method at removing the jagged edges it in fact remains inferior to that of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro in anti aliasing quality.

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that the Geforce FX will use OGMS + OGSS to achieve its anti aliasing quality. Which unfortunately as it stands is just inferior to Radeon 9700 RGMS in quality.

[Dark Watcher]

You still misunderstand...the GeforceFX will use a new method of anti aliasing called Intelisampling whereas Radeon 9700 is using a slightly tweaked version of NVidias multisampling implementation...ah well

[Shadow Lady]

mmm... any graphic help on IntelliSample? :P

Originally posted by Dark Watcher
You still misunderstand...the GeforceFX will use a new method of anti aliasing called Intelisampling whereas Radeon 9700 is using a slightly tweaked version of NVidias multisampling implementation...ah well

errm Actually not, Intellisample is just a new name for there FSAA, It will still use Ordered Grid Multi Sampling + Ordered Grid super Sampling.

Just like the Geforce 3 and 4 use exactly the same method at Full Screen Anti Aliasing. However Nvidia named it it accuview.

The one thing Nvidia can do is prepare the GPU properly for this method. Which will greatly impact performance. But the actual quality will not be changed. The only real difference between the accuview anti aliasing engine and the Geforce 3 anti aliasing engine is the fact that the GPU is actually properly prepared for the for the pixel sharing process of 9tap modes,

This is one case where buying into the hype rings home true. The method at which they will draw anti aliasing will not change, It will just be improved due to color compression.

ATi's method is actually not similar to Nvidia's method. The description I gave above was an example. ATi took its own route to multi sampling and has created a much more effective means of doing it.


P.S. When I say effective means, I am speaking quality, Not performance.

[Player-X]

I really don't care what it's called or how it works,I just ask:
1.How fast is it
2.How good does it look

Originally posted by Player-X
I really don't care what it's called or how it works,I just ask:
1.How fast is it
2.How good does it look

Well the second one is easily answered, It's already been explained. But the first one is questionable since the card itself is not released yet.

[dogulation000]

Originally posted by Player-X
I really don't care what it's called or how it works,I just ask:
1.How fast is it
2.How good does it look

You should care how it works. The way it works is a major factor on how fast and how good it looks.

[Dark Watcher]

Well..bottom line is...if you want power now..then Radeon 9700 is the way to go...it is kicking ass and taking names for now....if you plan on using it for PSX emulation..there are some areas that make things a little difficult..but not that bad....the real question here is do you have the kind of money to shell out on these triangle spitting monsters or not....It will be interesting to see the G-card battle play out...ATI needs to sty in the running...it's like Intel / AMD...we as consumers reap the values from their competition...by the time FX becomes reality..the 9700 should see a nice price drop...either way consumers win....