Supersample, a frame-rate increase???

[Iannis]

Hey all,
So I've been tweaking video settings a little more and seem to have
found something odd. Unless I'm smoking some bad crack, Supersample seems
to increase my frame rate
I run at 1920x1080, almost everything on ultra. (Shadows set to high, not ultra)
Refresh rate set to default, no frame limit.
I'll find an area that sets me around 45fps. Turn on super sample and suddenly
50+
So I've been playing for a few hours with Super sample on and yea, it seems smoother than
set to default. Has anyone else noticed this?
One thing different hardware wise with this setting is my GPU
load went from about 40-50% to 70-85% with Super sample enable. All I can guess is the setting
is now using more of my gpu and thus, getting more efficient horsepower?
I'm using an ATi 7950 (1000/1300oc)

[General_Typhus]

Sounds like an AMD driver issue perhaps. I'm getting 99% usage with SS on and all settings maxed on my 670.

[Glytch]

increased setting and got more frames?

sounds like the ultimate free lunch, big bang can go screw itself

cheers friend

[Deleted]

Only thing I can think of is that on some AMD cards, GW2 doesn't seem to be recognized as a 3D application, causing the card to downclock to its 2D setting to conserve power and extend the life span of the card. Perchance, by turning on Supersample, the game is successfully recognized as a 3D application on your card, thus kicking in the 3D clocking which counteracts the performance loss from Supersample, and then some.

That's my theory.

[wartywarlock]

Running at a cards native settings usually does that.. That or as said there some bugs, running Radeon 5980HD on in game max, driver medium-high, no problems so a card like yours should smash it on much higher driver settings.

Also make sure you've got not just latest drivers but latest Catalyst Application Profiles (AKA ATI tuning your card for games) the latest GW2 profile increased FPS by about 10 for me.

[Deleted]

I'll find an area that sets me around 45fps. Turn on super sample and suddenly 50+
So I've been playing for a few hours with Super sample on and yea, it seems smoother than set to default. Has anyone else noticed this?
One thing different hardware wise with this setting is my GPU load went from about 40-50% to 70-85% with Super sample enable.

That last sentence tells me that you are CPU-bound. Even with SSAA turned on, you are still CPU-bound.

Your "GPU load" is 40-50% not because it's inefficient, or under-utilised, or in any way a bad thing because of your card/drivers. It's because it's finishing rendering each frame and then sitting idle for 50-60% of the time waiting for your CPU to finish doing it's stuff for that frame.

Super-sampling does not put any additional load on your CPU. It is purely a fill-rate burner. It's not like things like reflections, shadows, particle effects, etc. that require the CPU to do extra work. So given that, and given the evidence that you are CPU-bound, it is no surprise that turning on SSAA does not make the game run slower... I would actually expect it to have no noticeable effect.

However, that it makes it run faster is a bit of a mystery!

On some hardware (not necessarily PCs), this could be explained by the GPU's extra self-contained workload giving the CPU extra breathing room where things like bus-contention are concerned. The difference would be more like 1-2% though, not a 10% speedup!

Oh well, lucky you I guess