Anti-aliasing is not removing some jaggies

[Misrach]

At 1200x1920 rez, I'm still getting jaggies with 4x and 6x anti-aliasing. The biggest culprits are F.E.A.R. and Doom 3, in areas that have clean, straight edges that are very thin. If I turn the texture resolution down, the jaggies become less apparent; at higher texture rez's, they're very noticeable. It's almost like there's an interpolation effect, as things such as gratings sometimes have a moire effect.

I know that AA is working, because most of the other jaggies disappear when I bump up the effect and return when I turn it down or off.

Any suggestions? I'm running an X1900XT, AMD64 3500+ (Venice), 2x1gb Corsair RAM, 510w PCP&C PSU (650w peak), Asus A8N-E mobo, Dell 2405 monitor. I've tried adjusting all the CCC settings to no avail, even the Avivo ones (it was a longshot). My previous card was from nVidia, but I ran Driver Cleaner Pro before installing the ATi drivers.

 

[Heyyou27]

For a perfectly clear image you'll need an SLI or Crossfire system with 8xAA or higher.

 

[Misrach]

So very large jaggies with 4x or 6x AA is still common? This generally occurs when 2 very thin lines are side-by-side, as they get smaller (close-up, there are no jaggies). I don't remember having this effect on my 7800GTX, but I hardly played either of those games with that card so I can't say for sure. Also, since the card was significantly weaker (256mb), I usually couldn't run 2xAA at 1200x1920 rez with newer titles.

 

[radeonninjaxt]

At 1200x1920 rez, I'm still getting jaggies with 4x and 6x anti-aliasing. The biggest culprits are F.E.A.R. and Doom 3, in areas that have clean, straight edges that are very thin. If I turn the texture resolution down, the jaggies become less apparent; at higher texture rez's, they're very noticeable. It's almost like there's an interpolation effect, as things such as gratings sometimes have a moire effect.

I know that AA is working, because most of the other jaggies disappear when I bump up the effect and return when I turn it down or off.

Any suggestions? I'm running an X1900XT, AMD64 3500+ (Venice), 2x1gb Corsair RAM, 510w PCP&C PSU (650w peak), Asus A8N-E mobo, Dell 2405 monitor. I've tried adjusting all the CCC settings to no avail, even the Avivo ones (it was a longshot). My previous card was from nVidia, but I ran Driver Cleaner Pro before installing the ATi drivers.

Well thank goodness its not in my head after all! I am getting the same thing with my X1900XT and I use an ASUS A8N5X board! I use 6.3 drivers with ATI Tray tool.

Its most noticable for me when playing BF2 at 6XAA and 1280X1024! What the Heck?!

 

[navysealbrian]

There could be a driver solution. Try the Omega Drivers for ATI, those are enhanced for gaming as in quality while plain ATI drivers are more for performance. A possibility also might be that the current drivers are flawed with the X1900 since it's the newest card, and therefore there are bugs in the drivers... Only solution for that is to wait for newer versions of drivers. Patches also might solve this, like for Oblvion, the X1900 gets some very weird effects on it which will be patched up soon.

 

[Misrach]

I've sent in a request to ATi. If I hear back, I'll let you know. But I'm glad someone else has had this issue -- I thought I was just being too picky (which might still be the case...).

To me, it's almost as if the textures can't get small enough and tend to interpolate with nearby textures of similar size. If you look closely, it's not really a "jaggy" but 2 different textures that are vying for the same spot. The image flucutates between the two but does not always maintain a solid line.

 

[radeonninjaxt]

I've sent in a request to ATi. If I hear back, I'll let you know. But I'm glad someone else has had this issue -- I thought I was just being too picky (which might still be the case...).

To me, it's almost as if the textures can't get small enough and tend to interpolate with nearby textures of similar size. If you look closely, it's not really a "jaggy" but 2 different textures that are vying for the same spot. The image flucutates between the two but does not always maintain a solid line.

You are describing it perfectly, could not have said it better myself. Its really bad in BF2.

 

[Misrach]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've tried the Omega drivers 6.3 as well as the ATi 6.4 drivers. I'm currently running the 6.3 drivers with the Chuck patch. The Omega drivers won't run with the Chuck patch, at least to my knowledge.

I was hoping for a registry edit somewhere, but if there isn't, I'd have to agree with your theory about the card's incompatibility with the drivers.

For future reference, this also occurs in 1200x1600 at 4:3, so I know that my monitor is not stretching the picture to 16:10 proportions.

 

[gersson]

I think that sans 1900x1200 with 14x AA there's no way to not notice some form of jaggies... You people are expecting too much.

 

[drobb26]

my opinion is that anti-aliasing is just what it is. It is designed to minimise the stair step effect helping to reduce the jaggies in games. It is not God. It will not re-write the software code or jump us to the future of super high poly rendering and advanced graphic techniques. I am sure you expected the x1900 card to create a visual masterpiece of high res , perfectly anti-aliased images but the fact is we just arent quite there yet. This is me thinking that your expectations are a little off but then again if you noticed better anti-aliasing on a previous card you had then you might have a driver issue or something since the x1900 series should be capable of some of the best anti-aliasing techniques available on any consumer graphics card to date.

 

[chuckshissle]

You need to properly adjust your monitor as well, for if the sharpness setting is set to the highest then you'll something like jagged edges even with the use of AA on the graphics card. So also, if it's aviable, save a costum setting on your monitor and when you switch to gaming then just used that selection with the sharpness set to smooth. But if it's your hardware doing it (1900XTX) then better return it for replacement.

 

[Misrach]

I think I need to clarify the situation.

First, these jaggies are larger than those that are corrected by anti-aliasing. MUCH LARGER. On those areas that AA corrects, I can barely notice the difference, but there is an improvement. But bewteen no AA and 6x in the areas I'm talking about, there is no difference at all. The only thing that will begin to correct it is a reduction in texture resolution.

Second, I did not have these jaggies on my nVidia 7800GTX 256mb card. But since I no longer have access to that card, I'm not able to see what settings I had the control panel set at.

Third, I've tried to alter my monitor's settings. Unfortunately, I have it working via a DVI cable -- which is *supposed* to produce a superior image -- and therefore I can't alter the settings (the monitor won't allow it). I will see what it looks like using a VGA cable, but as far as high-sharpness is concerned, this is not the effect that I'm talking about.

There is a slight chance that the card is defective. ATi has not responded to my request in the last 2 days. If they continue to avoid the issue, then I'll contact Sapphire to see if I can RMA the card.

Yes, I am being little picky, but I realize too that this is not something that AA can resolve. I've come to realize that the graphical defect is not a true jaggy; it could even be an incompatibility between the videocard and the monitor. I'm not sure what the cause is, but I do know that AA cannot correct it.

 

[Misrach]

I'd like to clarify my description a little more.

What I'm observing aren't really "jaggies". To me, a jaggy is an expected straight line that results in a series of steps or "Z's". Instead of a clean, sharp image, the line is presented as a giant lightning bolt.

What I'm seeing is a braiding effect: that is, the line is alternating between two different textures. It might look like a jagged line at first, but on closer observation, I can see how 2 different textures alternate with each other along the same line, much like a hair or rope braid. In fact, when the textures become very small, it looks like a thin rope instead of a straight line.

 

[chuckshissle]

Can you show us a picture of it? Just play the game and hit print screen botton and then exit and then go to paint and hit paste. If the game has a screen capture then do that also.

 

[Misrach]

Here are a couple of screenshots. Look at the cabinet in the corner of the room, along the vertical edges. I'm not sure if you can see the images large enough to see what I'm trying to describe.

I played the game in 1200x1600 to eliminate resolution-upscaling as a possible culprit.

The first image is with 4xAA:

http://www2.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=41911351/PictureID=1223061259/a=51192765_51192765/t_=51192765

The second is with no AA:

http://www2.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=41911351/PictureID=1223061639/a=51192765_51192765/t_=51192765

 

[Heyyou27]

With two X1900 XTs you can do up to 14xAA which will remove most of that.

 

[Misrach]

As I've stated before, AA has no effect on this defect. I understand that there will still be some jagged effects, even at 4x or 6x AA, but no amount of AA is altering the defects that I'm trying to point out. If you could see the screenshots at a better resolution, you can actually see a jagged edge in the shadows without AA. It's completely gone with 4xAA, but the edge of the metal cabinet remains exactly the same.

I don't think the resolution of the screenshots can illustrate what I'm talking about. I'll try to find a better site to upload my screenshots at a higher rez.

 

[bluntside]

sounds like its the Catalyst Dirver, Download Omega Drivers, that should solve your dilema :twisted:

 

[xgas]

I must first point out theres a Differents between FSAA and ordinary AA/MSAA/...... FSAA at 6x can beat even 16X AA, increasing FSAA can actually smoothen out some texture, but it eats more mem, like Ano Filtering.

FSAA can only be enabled tru ingame settings cause the game need to be design to run on it in the first place.

 

[Opterondo]

Unless you have image quality set to the highest setting (which is not default btw) in the drivers AA, AF, and textures are optimized for speed. Hardly any card can run above 1280x1024 unoptimized and be playable.

FIX: Turn down your rez. and turn up your quality in the drivers.

 

[Misrach]

Right now, I'm not looking for playability; I'm just looking to see what will get rid of the braiding effect. So far, no amount of AA has even begun to solve the problem.

I'm using the in-game settings in F.E.A.R., not the CCC settings. The only settings I'm using with the CCC are basically maxing out the mip-mapping setting and using the Advanced setting under Catalyst A.I. (Standard and Off make no difference). AA and AF are done completely through the game, which is labeled as FSAA.

Again, the Omega drivers made no difference.

I will try to reinstall the drivers as well as DX9 to see if that changes anything.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

I also noticed that AA goes away - but exiting a game (Oblivion in my case) and restarting the comp rectifies this. The jaggies are gigantic...

I think if ATiTool is used, then it could be the biggest culprit. In GT Legends, in video mode (menu) my temps go as high as 78C, but in game it drops to 68. And this I fixed by removing ATiTool.

Using two different control sets for adjusting AA and AF is a sure hit for disaster (I'm assuming CCC is used in this case). Best bet is to only get ATi driver (minus CCC), and using ATiTool on top of the driver. Although I would recommend ATTools for fast switching of AA and AF plus user profile generation. The driver is fine, 6.3/6.4, according to my experience on my pc. It's just the quanity of control variables that can confuse the bottom layer driver control.

 

[Misrach]

Ah, I'm glad someone else noticed that AA goes away sometimes in Oblivion. But I think that has something to do with the Chuck patch. Since it's not officially supported, it seems like CCC will "forget" to force AA if I change certain settings in the game. Generally, if AA disappears, then I exit, restart CCC and unset then reset the AA override. So far, that works to a tee.

I've only tried to use ATiTool once but have since uninstalled it. I've reinstalled my drivers a couple of time since, and used DCP to remove unwanted residue. The conflict between ATiTool and CCC has crossed my mind, and since I just bought the card a month ago, I'd like to run it through CCC until I get more comfortable with the card.

I tried to run F.E.A.R. on my laptop just to see if another PC would reproduce the jaggies in question. Unfortunately, the game would not run at the same high resolution (Mobile Radeon 9700 w/ 128mb), but I did see a lot of the same effects. I set everything at max, so the game ran like a slideshow, but it ran well enough to see at least a hint of what I'm seeing. Granted, I was running the game at a lower rez, so it might not be an accurate comparison.

Basically, I think it comes down to the textures in the game: they just can't get fine enough in some circumstances. This could be a driver issue, as I didn't notice the same effect on my older 7800GTX, or it could be an issue in the game that I didn't notice before in F.E.A.R. since I didn't play that deep into it. Oblivion, on the other hand, looks fantastic at 1200x1920 and actually a little better at 1050x1680, though sometimes the HDR causes certain highlights to "shimmer" as I move the camera.

At least I'm not the only one who notices the same problem. Really, I'm not looking for a solution so much as just an explanation, though of course I'd prefer a solution. If it's a limitation of the card or the drivers -- or even the limitations of today's graphics cards -- then so be it.

 

[Misrach]

I just picked up Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter today, and I'm getting jaggies/braids all over the place. They're a lot like the ones in Oblivion without the Chuck patch, only worse because of the increased number of smooth surfaces.

I've tried forcing AA up to 6x, with the post effects turned to low and high (I thought it might be using HDR), to no avail.

I'm just in the first area, and the metal rails nearby look like dashes, the background shimmers, and some metal tanks are rife with moire effects. Everything is turned to high at 1200x1920. CCC is set to "application preference" where applicable, except for VSync (turning it off makes no difference).

Is anyone else experiencing the same effect?

 

[radeonninjaxt]

I just picked up Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter today, and I'm getting jaggies/braids all over the place. They're a lot like the ones in Oblivion without the Chuck patch, only worse because of the increased number of smooth surfaces.

I've tried forcing AA up to 6x, with the post effects turned to low and high (I thought it might be using HDR), to no avail.

I'm just in the first area, and the metal rails nearby look like dashes, the background shimmers, and some metal tanks are rife with moire effects. Everything is turned to high at 1200x1920. CCC is set to "application preference" where applicable, except for VSync (turning it off makes no difference).

Is anyone else experiencing the same effect?

The New Ghost Recon does not support AA for either ATI or Nvidia, you cant even force it through CCC because it is totally unsupported. This reason alone was enough for me to not pic it up, I played the demo and it looks like total trash without AA. It is unbelievable that the developers would leave this feature out :roll: