Anti-Aliasing

[Freeforall]

My laptop can play COD2 at full resolution and extra textures at around 55-60 FPS during firefights.
Normal: 55-60FPS
2xAA: 40-50FPS
4xAA: 20-30FPS

Does Anti-Aliasing make a huge graphical difference? Would you rather have better graphics, or
a better FPS? I realize that my laptop isn't the best for gaming, but it can play pretty much any
game I put in it, as long as I tweak the graphics. Crysis at around 15-20 FPS on low.

Should I sacrifice my gameplay for graphics?

[Infection]

Every game I've played is always at low everything, haha.

For me, it has never made a huge difference when it comes to the feel of the game. It doesn't draw anything away from me. Not to mention I don't see THAT much of a improvement to where I'd want to sacrifice my FPS.

Granted, I have a pretty bad computer, but for the most part I run 20-30 fps on most games. That is fine for me. I love it.
Heck, I play Minecraft with 10 fps and I hardly ever complain. (That is at lowest settings, 2 fps with max settings for MC)

I say if you have anywhere over 45 FPS, you can sacrifice some FPS as 30 is pretty nice to begin with. If you have anywhere 60+ then you definitely should as most people know the human eye can only see to around 60 FPS.

The only complain I have about my low fps is I can't use any screen recorders and I want to make Let's Plays of my favorite games. But that doesn't really pertain to the topic that much.

TLDR: No, if you are like me, don't sacrifice gameplay for graphics. And also, Anti-Aliasing never made any huge impact on any game I played with it. Just sayin'.

[Freeforall]

Ah, alright.
Does Minecraft use Anti-Aliasing? On low view distance, I get up to around 200 FPS on it. On far I get around 15 :s
I usually stick to Normal, I get 40-60 FPS. It's weird, I get better FPS on COD then I do Minecraft. When Minecraft loads
chunks when I walk, it pauses the game for about a tenth of a second, which makes it appear like it's lagging. I really hate that.

[Infection]

Ah, alright.
Does Minecraft use Anti-Aliasing? On low view distance, I get up to around 200 FPS on it. On far I get around 15 :s
I usually stick to Normal, I get 40-60 FPS. It's weird, I get better FPS on COD then I do Minecraft. When Minecraft loads
chunks when I walk, it pauses the game for about a tenth of a second, which makes it appear like it's lagging. I really hate that.

Meh, 4 days later, whatever. :P

I don't think it does. There is certainly not an option to turn it on and off, heh. Although a mod I use allows you to do that.
I am sure a quick search could answer that.

Also, Java hogs a lot of CPU, RAM, ect, all that stuff. I don't know if COD uses Java (I don't think so) but since Minecraft does, that tends to be the result of using Java. Hard to make a big 3D online game with it, heh. If there was a C++ version of Minecraft, that would be pretty cool.

Oh, and I am not the most reliable person when it comes to all of this, I know some bits and pieces of it are true, but some parts are a little iffy. But it is what I believe to be true / have been told. I would love someone elses input on this to either confirm what I have said or to correct me. :P

[ARTgames]

My laptop can play COD2 at full resolution and extra textures at around 55-60 FPS during firefights.
Normal: 55-60FPS
2xAA: 40-50FPS
4xAA: 20-30FPS

Does Anti-Aliasing make a huge graphical difference? Would you rather have better graphics, or
a better FPS? I realize that my laptop isn't the best for gaming, but it can play pretty much any
game I put in it, as long as I tweak the graphics. Crysis at around 15-20 FPS on low.

Should I sacrifice my gameplay for graphics?

It matters what kind of AA but the most commend AA I think makes a big difference. Evey one is different and has different tastes.

In your case I would keep it off. Its not worth that much less fps IMO. If in a game you where getting a lot more fps than 60 than I would turn it on until it hovered around 60.

And no, by default Minecraft does not have AA. You can make it have AA but it leads to graphics glitches.

[krele]

Of course it has a huge impact on the framerate. Let me get a bit technical.

Alias is something that occurs when a signal has a low resolution. Alias in gaming and graphics in general is the pixel imperfection of the image. The usual method of anti-aliasing is to render the scene at a much higher resolution, then scale it down to fit the screen. For example, if you play on 1024x768 with 2xAA it would render the screen at 2048x1536. That takes more time to render than playing on a bigger resolution. 1680x1050 without AA is faster than 1024x768 with 2xAA. That's not always the case though, because some game engines tend to cheat around by keeping things like shaders and textures at lower resolution and just scaling them to fit the scene. Not to mention the higher AA resolutions. 1024x768 with 4xAA would render on 4096x3072 surface. This method is pretty much the best and most straight-forward. It's called super-sampling.

So think twice about playing graphics-heavy games with 8xAA and 16xAA hahaha =P

[Jake]

A higher fps, especially is it's getting below 30, is much more important than turning AA on.

[ARTgames]

Here I made this screen shot. It will give you an idea. Make sure to see it at 100% not zoomed out or in.
http://[forbiddensite]/up/3916d4d7162db855c5085ec1ca597007.png

It takes most effect on the edges of objects.

[DeamonClawz]

I'd rather have a higher FPS, Graphics are just a luxury to me. You can't enjoy the game with very low FPS. At least I cannot. :(

One example is when they enabled Anti-Aliasing on Total War Shogun 2. The graphics were incredible. But I couldn't enjoy it as well because of the toll it took on my FPS.

[krele]

I'd rather have a higher FPS, Graphics are just a luxury to me. You can't enjoy the game with very low FPS. At least I cannot. :(

One example is when they enabled Anti-Aliasing on Total War Shogun 2. The graphics were incredible. But I couldn't enjoy it as well because of the toll it took on my FPS.

I'm pretty sure every graphics card has a feature to turn AA on or off in every game =)

[Lingus]

I think a high AA is what was causing my computer to crash while playing Assassin's Creed 2. After I turned down several graphics options in the game I don't get this problem anymore. Any thoughts?

[DeamonClawz]

I'd rather have a higher FPS, Graphics are just a luxury to me. You can't enjoy the game with very low FPS. At least I cannot. :(

One example is when they enabled Anti-Aliasing on Total War Shogun 2. The graphics were incredible. But I couldn't enjoy it as well because of the toll it took on my FPS.

I'm pretty sure every graphics card has a feature to turn AA on or off in every game =)

Total War Shogun 2 didn't support anti-aliasing when it came out. It did not have Directx 11 support when it was released. When the support did come, it brought more than just anti-aliasing(hardware tessellation, and enhanced shadowing). That's why, when I tried Anti-Aliasing when it came out, my laptop could not support the FPS toll, and I ended up having to change it back.  http://www.totalwar.com/shogun2/news/5077

Lingus, you probably lowered enough graphics options to make your computer sustain the AA settings it had.
I found this site with more info on AA. http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/Graphics/anti_aliasing2.shtml#Why does Anti-Aliasing slow down frame rates

[Lucifer]

That's neat, I didn't know what AA did before reading this topic, good to know info.

[Kiegruen]

Here I made this screen shot. It will give you an idea. Make sure to see it at 100% not zoomed out or in.
http://[forbiddensite]/up/3916d4d7162db855c5085ec1ca597007.png

It takes most effect on the edges of objects.

Nice comparison shot ART

Unrelated to topic: GARRYS MOD :D

[krele]

I think a high AA is what was causing my computer to crash while playing Assassin's Creed 2. After I turned down several graphics options in the game I don't get this problem anymore. Any thoughts?

Funny that you mention it! I was having the same problem with Brotherhood! It happens because your graphics card isn't supported well enough with your current power supply. Do you by any chance possess an nVidia gpu?