Stress Test, August 12th

[Alvarez]

But I'm really intrigued about supersamplling XD.

What do you want to know?

Supersampling is when the game is internally rendered to a larger frame-buffer (image), for example 1.4x the width and 1.4x the height, and then downsampled just before it is presented to the display.

It is a pretty nice form of anti-aliasing, giving good results and if done right shouldn't look too blurry. The downside is that the GPU has to render a lot more pixels - in my example above you are rendering twice as many pixels. So it's gonna put a bit of extra strain on your GPU.

[Vice80]

I've been playing this whole hour yesterday and I had this feeling that they upped graphics alot, but I can't say what exactly. Maybe nothing and it's my imagination. Did anyone notice same or it's just me?

[Zilong]

What do you want to know?

Supersampling is when the game is internally rendered to a larger frame-buffer (image), for example 1.4x the width and 1.4x the height, and then downsampled just before it is presented to the display.

It is a pretty nice form of anti-aliasing, giving good results and if done right shouldn't look too blurry. The downside is that the GPU has to render a lot more pixels - in my example above you are rendering twice as many pixels. So it's gonna put a bit of extra strain on your GPU.

I'm not very good with those stuffs, specially when people talk about FFAXX (something like that, and its not final fantasy lol), anti aliasing and such. I dont really know much about it.

I just wanted a better understanding in which why applying suppersampling to my computer the FPS dropped by half, but I didn't notice any visual difference. XD

[Jigain]

FFAXX (something like that, and its not final fantasy lol)

FXAA, Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing.

[Ecstatic]

I run rendering on default. Tried supersampling, no improvement noticed, so I keep it on default. Got everything to "best appearance" and everything runs fine so no point straining the GPU further.

Too bad I didn't make it for this stress test... was too tired last evening to stay up for 1hr only ... now I regret it.

[cmdrcod]

This aint a stress test. Its a media event.

[Jigain]

This aint a stress test. Its a media event.

Wrong game.

[terrahero]

I have a i7-3820 @3.6Ghz and a 560 TI.

Interesting. I got the i5-3570k @ 4.3Ghz and the HD 7970 and i had worst fps (60-70 with dips as low as 50) on a lower setting then you. So i guess the overclock does hurt performance, hope they iron that out for release.

[Zilong]

Interesting. I got the i5-3570k @ 4.3Ghz and the HD 7970 and i had worst fps (60-70 with dips as low as 50) on a lower setting then you. So i guess the overclock does hurt performance, hope they iron that out for release.

Yeah, with best performance and the sampling on default places like pvp lobby were going 70-80.
Going to Norn Capital took me to about 100+

When going for best performance and sampling on supersampling in the pvp lobby it went to 45-50ish.

But I didn't really test it out as much, was too busy going for tournaments PVP PVP PVP. In the possible event of a new stress test, Ill be checking it again.

[terrahero]

Yeah, with best performance and the sampling on default places like pvp lobby were going 70-80.
Going to Norn Capital took me to about 100+

When going for best performance and sampling on supersampling in the pvp lobby it went to 45-50ish.

But I didn't really test it out as much, was too busy going for tournaments PVP PVP PVP. In the possible event of a new stress test, Ill be checking it again.

Well it seems there is still room for optimization, even in the higher end machines.

[Angel25]

If you ar getting {Erroer 48} just uncheck to remember your user and password, and that will fix it.

[iCandy]

This aint a stress test. Its a media event.

Yeah man! Because playing on laggy servers that have tendencies to crash because the developers are stress testing the hell out of the them is great for publicity.

/sarcasm.

[Alvarez]

I'm not very good with those stuffs, specially when people talk about FFAXX (something like that, and its not final fantasy lol), anti aliasing and such. I dont really know much about it.

I just wanted a better understanding in which why applying suppersampling to my computer the FPS dropped by half, but I didn't notice any visual difference. XD

Heh heh. Well, as mentioned in my previous post, with super-sampling you could be drawing twice as many pixels - which would explain why your performance drops by half. (This also suggests that at this point you are GPU-bound, which considering your i7 is probably no surprise that your CPU is finishing it's work first and then waiting for the GPU to catch up.)

As to why you didn't notice any visual difference...

Well the thing with anti-aliasing is you really only notice it when it's not there. (Same with a lot of things - you only notice them when they're wrong, you don't notice things that are right/natural). Now maybe you don't suffer too badly from aliasing artefacts to begin with... Perhaps you're running at quite a high resolution on a relatively (physically) small monitor? Perhaps you were in an area where there wasn't obvious aliasing going on (aliasing is worst when there is lots of contrasting dark/light geometry next to each other, or lots of thin geometry at a shallow angle to the viewer). Or perhaps you're just not that sensitive to jaggedy edges and flickering geometry.

Or maybe your hardware is already doing some MSAA (multi-sample anti-aliasing) for you. MSAA also gives very good results, but is usually much faster than super-sampling.

Anyway, I could waffle on for ages about this. If you're really interested in anti-aliasing techniques, there is a lot of information out on the web if you google for it - but as with everything you have to filter through reams of crap and irrelevant nonsense. So, here might be a good place to start...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...deon,2868.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...on,2868-2.html

[Demithio]

So, from the sound of it, GW2 is doing FXAA or SSAA only? No MSAA?

[Mif]

is it true? then jesus. I hit 60+ fps most of the time (40fps in WvW in front of a gate), some times 80-100 in small areas while questing on only 1 GPU 840/1325 (cant clock because it crash) ( I still have CF enabled) while having max graphics except supersample, i have that on, like default, and playing on 1080p

hope you're right! looking forward to see fps when it's fully supported

Apparently there is CF support for GW2 in this CAP update:
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...-profiles.aspx

Also, Catalyst 12.8 is due this week, so hopefully you'll get a gain there too.

[GW2 is LEGEND]

So, from the sound of it, GW2 is doing FXAA or SSAA only? No MSAA?

I doubt most would even notice the difference, and since ANet has said multiple times they want the game to play on a range of computers FXAA sounds like the safest bet, it's essentially the console version of MSAA, but I don't see why they can't support both.. can't you run both at the same time anyways?

[Fencers]

Closing time.

--Fencers