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The Difference between FXAA on NVIDIA Control Panel and 4xMSAA on Battlefield 3

post #1 of 28
10/21/12 at 5:47pm
Thread Starter 
hello everyone

I have a question about FXAA and MSAA

when I play Battlefield 3 with 4xMSAA, I can get 65-90 FPS @stock settings, but when I turn on FXAA on NCP, and turn off 4xMSAA I can get 90 - 130 FPS!!!!

My question is, why this could happen? I still don't understand the difference between FXAA on NCP and 4xMSAA on BF3??? Can anybody else in here give me an explanation about this?

my GPU is MSI GTX 670 Power Edition OC.

Thanks

Shar
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post #2 of 28
10/21/12 at 6:00pm
Interesting post, subbed to find an answer to this aswell.
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post #3 of 28
10/21/12 at 6:19pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BIMcZNtYk

I don't remember how they actually work differently, but FXAA is much less demanding; however, it's way blurrier than 4xMSAA. MSAA is much better looking and more system intensive basically.
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post #4 of 28
10/21/12 at 6:28pm
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MSAA is multi-sampling anti-aliasing and generally regarded as the most intensive type of Anti-aliasing. FXAA and with the release of Kepler, TXAA are two additional options that have a MUCH lower performance cost, but don't make the image look quite as good. MSAA is massively inefficient on the hardware level, but it does produce the best looking image. TXAA and FXAA both use dramatically less GPU horsepower but don't look quite as good.
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post #5 of 28
10/21/12 at 6:31pm
FXAA is basically a blur filter. MSAA is hardware anti-aliasing that literally adds detail to edges.

The reason they are used together is MSAA on it's own doesn't hit transparencies/shader aliasing which FXAA does. In conjunction they look decent. Neither look that great on their own in BF3.

The absolute best AA solution though is going to be something like SGSSAA or TRAA which hits transperiences and shader aliasing but looks much better then simple blur. These higher end AA solutions are based of MSAA as well.

Also MSAA is really only demanding in games that use a defered renderer and there are even ways around that if devs put the time in.
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post #6 of 28
10/21/12 at 6:39pm
Thread Starter 
@all

Thanks for the response,
Personally, I can't clearly see the difference between FXAA and MSAA, (maybe my eyes is not enough to see the difference)
now what should I do now? keep FXAA on, or 4xMSAA for BF3?
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post #7 of 28
10/21/12 at 8:38pm
Why don't you turn on FXAA in the BF3 control panel (called Antialiasing Post there) instead ? That's better than forcing it in the Nvidia control panel because the in-game implementation won't blur the HUD.

As to why you are getting better frame rates with FXAA, it is because it is significantly less demanding on the hardware (which is why it was developed). It results in blurrier textures, but if you run it at Medium in the BF3 control panel (instead of High) it has a nice compromise between the slight blurring and smoothing the edges.

Some people are more sensitive to either the blurriness or the edge jaggedness, which is why you'll see such strong opinions on the relative worth of the two. Given the huge performance benefit of FXAA, I think it's worth the trade-off (since I'm not sensitive to the blurred edges), but others feel differently.
Edited by Forceman - 10/21/12 at 8:40pm
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post #8 of 28
10/21/12 at 9:02pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Forceman View Post

Why don't you turn on FXAA in the BF3 control panel (called Antialiasing Post there) instead ? That's better than forcing it in the Nvidia control panel because the in-game implementation won't blur the HUD.
As to why you are getting better frame rates with FXAA, it is because it is significantly less demanding on the hardware (which is why it was developed). It results in blurrier textures, but if you run it at Medium in the BF3 control panel (instead of High) it has a nice compromise between the slight blurring and smoothing the edges.
Some people are more sensitive to either the blurriness or the edge jaggedness, which is why you'll see such strong opinions on the relative worth of the two. Given the huge performance benefit of FXAA, I think it's worth the trade-off (since I'm not sensitive to the blurred edges), but others feel differently.

Thanks for the response
if what you mean is Antialiasing post. I was running it at High level...
yeah, Like I said before, I can't clearly see the difference between those two settings....which is why I asked you all here.
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post #9 of 28
10/21/12 at 9:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sharchaster View Post

Thanks for the response
if what you mean is Antialiasing post. I was running it at High level...
yeah, Like I said before, I can't clearly see the difference between those two settings....which is why I asked you all here.

Yep, that's DICE's implementation of FXAA, so if you have that enabled in game then also turning it on in the control panel isn't going to add much. That also might be why you didn't see much difference between FXAA and MSAA when you were testing - if Antialiasing post was on High the whole time, then you were really testing MSAA+FXAA vs FXAA+FXAA.
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post #10 of 28
10/21/12 at 9:50pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Forceman View Post

Yep, that's DICE's implementation of FXAA, so if you have that enabled in game then also turning it on in the control panel isn't going to add much. That also might be why you didn't see much difference between FXAA and MSAA when you were testing - if Antialiasing post was on High the whole time, then you were really testing MSAA+FXAA vs FXAA+FXAA.

Thanks for the response
wow. I don't realized that....FXAA+FXAA, and MSAA+FXAA? Impressive...
are you use 4xMSAA instead of FXAA when Playing BF3 in your system?
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