ATI GPU Clarification

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Hi All,

 

Sorry if this was answered but I am still very confused regarding ATI cards and forcing AA and AF. For some reason I am seeing conflicting instructions.  Am I supposed to be mirroring AA/AF in CCC as well as Skyrim launcher or do I just want to set in Skyrim Launcher and leave CCC AA/AF as "let application decide"?

[Besidilo]

You should either use SMAA/FXAA or the in-game's MSAA.

 

The only thing worth forcing from the drivers is SuperSampling, but I don't think that works properly on AMD cards.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

You should either use SMAA/FXAA or the in-game's MSAA.

 

The only thing worth forcing from the drivers is SuperSampling, but I don't think that works properly on AMD cards.

I use SMAA so yea, the AA shouldn't be an issue. In terms of AF though, not sure what to do. 

[Besidilo]

You should either use SMAA/FXAA or the in-game's MSAA.

 

The only thing worth forcing from the drivers is SuperSampling, but I don't think that works properly on AMD cards.

I use SMAA so yea, the AA shouldn't be an issue. In terms of AF though, not sure what to do. 

It shouldn't matter. If you use ENB, you can use that one's AF instead. If you want slightly higher quality at the expense of some performance, use the one in drivers. The difference is pretty minimal anyway, but the in-game's one is generally worse from my experience.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

You should either use SMAA/FXAA or the in-game's MSAA.

 

The only thing worth forcing from the drivers is SuperSampling, but I don't think that works properly on AMD cards.

I use SMAA so yea, the AA shouldn't be an issue. In terms of AF though, not sure what to do. 

It shouldn't matter. If you use ENB, you can use that one's AF instead. If you want slightly higher quality at the expense of some performance, use the one in drivers. The difference is pretty minimal anyway, but the in-game's one is generally worse from my experience.

Yea but in order to use the driver-based AF you have to mirror it in the launcher, right?

[Besidilo]

I don't see why that would be the case, but it's easy enough to test it.

[Aiyen]

You can have multiple instances of AF activated at once... but it is kinda pointless since it does not help quality and only lowers performance.

In the case of the ingame one and ENB, then it would first apply that and then apply ENB´s afterward.

If you force the driver one then it will overwrite the ingame one but also have the ENB one applied on top.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

You can have multiple instances of AF activated at once... but it is kinda pointless since it does not help quality and only lowers performance.

In the case of the ingame one and ENB, then it would first apply that and then apply ENB´s afterward.

If you force the driver one then it will overwrite the ingame one but also have the ENB one applied on top.

So should AMD users just leave it at "let application decide", put it to 16x in the launcher, then also have it enabled in ENB? Or only use ENB? I apologize but I've seen at least 3 different instructions on here for AMD AF and I honestly have no idea which one is recommended. I know more people use Nvidia around here. 

[Besidilo]

You can have multiple instances of AF activated at once... but it is kinda pointless since it does not help quality and only lowers performance.

In the case of the ingame one and ENB, then it would first apply that and then apply ENB´s afterward.

If you force the driver one then it will overwrite the ingame one but also have the ENB one applied on top.

So should AMD users just leave it at "let application decide", put it to 16x in the launcher, then also have it enabled in ENB? Or only use ENB? I apologize but I've seen at least 3 different instructions on here for AMD AF and I honestly have no idea which one is recommended. I know more people use Nvidia around here. 

No. There are three ways to force Anisotropic Filtering:

 

1) In-game, leave the catalyst alone,

2) ENB, turn it off in-game and leave the catalyst alone,

3) Driver's AF, set it to 16x (or 8x, since the difference is minimal, but so is performance hit) and disable it in the game and in ENB (if it's enabled).

 

The in-game AF is a bit inferior in quality. Especially visible in the distance. ENB should be the best performance/quality trade off in theory. It's up to you in the end, the differences are mostly negligible.

 

Last time I checked, ATI cards had better textures filtering than GeForce, so there's that.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

 

You can have multiple instances of AF activated at once... but it is kinda pointless since it does not help quality and only lowers performance.

In the case of the ingame one and ENB, then it would first apply that and then apply ENB´s afterward.

If you force the driver one then it will overwrite the ingame one but also have the ENB one applied on top.

So should AMD users just leave it at "let application decide", put it to 16x in the launcher, then also have it enabled in ENB? Or only use ENB? I apologize but I've seen at least 3 different instructions on here for AMD AF and I honestly have no idea which one is recommended. I know more people use Nvidia around here. 

No. There are three ways to force Anisotropic Filtering:

 

1) In-game, leave the catalyst alone,

2) ENB, turn it off in-game and leave the catalyst alone,

3) Driver's AF, set it to 16x (or 8x, since the difference is minimal, but so is performance hit) and disable it in the game and in ENB (if it's enabled).

 

The in-game AF is a bit inferior in quality. Especially visible in the distance. ENB should be the best performance/quality trade off in theory. It's up to you in the end, the differences are mostly negligible.

 

Last time I checked, ATI cards had better textures filtering than GeForce, so there's that.

Gotchya. Where did the directions to mirror the AF in CCC and the launcher come from. It came from the RCRN forums, right? People were saying that driver forced AA/AF don't work unless you force it in the launcher I think (at least for ATI)

[Besidilo]

RCRN Community page is full of poop.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

RCRN Community page is full of poop.

It's definitely starting to seem like it. 

[Aiyen]

You never noticed that just by looking at the RCRN site... anything that looks like a commercial from the 70´s need to be taken with a grain of salt! ;)

 

You can try to force the driver settings. Then once ingame you can enable and disable ENB to see the difference... then you can decide which you like more.

I know some ATI users think the driver one looks better... I personally think it is a matter of taste.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

You never noticed that just by looking at the RCRN site... anything that looks like a commercial from the 70´s need to be taken with a grain of salt! ;)

 

You can try to force the driver settings. Then once ingame you can enable and disable ENB to see the difference... then you can decide which you like more.

I know some ATI users think the driver one looks better... I personally think it is a matter of taste.

Well as long as driver-forced AF doesn't use any more system ram (which i dont think it does) i'll just keep using that. My fps seems fine. 

[Quitch]

Always use application AA and AF over the GPU control panel. The application will apply AA and AF only to things which need it, leading to the best performance. The control panel will apply it to things which either shouldn't have it or don't need it and is really intended as a means just to force it for games which don't have in-game options for AA and AF.

[Besidilo]

 

 

Always use application AA and AF over the GPU control panel. The application will apply AA and AF only to things which need it' date=' leading to the best performance. The control panel will apply it to things which either shouldn't have it or don't need it and is really intended as a means just to force it for games which don't have in-game options for AA and AF.

I agree with that notion as it's the rule of thumb for most of the games. However, Skyrim is one example where the in-game AA and AF options aren't the best standards of quality. Whilst it's not so evident when it comes to Anisotropic Filtering, AntiAliasing is one area where Skyrim really lacks grunt, hence why most people resort to other means, such as post-processing AA or various forms of SuperSampling. Anisotropic Filtering, on the other hand, has little performance impact, so it's best to just compare it yourself and see if the performance hit is significant (it's not from my experience).