Comments on: (Tested) GTX 480 vs HD 5870: MSAA Quality Levels Differences Between DX11 Hardware

By: [GPU Tool] MSI Kombustor 1.1.0 With Direct3D 9, 10 and 11 Support - 3D Tech News, Pixel Hacking, Data Visualization and 3D Programming - Geeks3D.com

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:18:26 +0000

[…] Direct3D render paths, new AA (Anti-Aliasing) modes have been added: CSAA and Quality CSAA (see HERE for more […]

By: Leith

Leith — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:12:04 +0000

Also Geforce 8 has 8 levels of D3DMULTISAMPLE_NONMASKABLE

So maybe you need to expose two AA method settings (like some PC games do e.g. GRID)
The full set of D3DMULTISAMPLE_NONMASKABLE levels,
as well as MSAA and CSAA.

That way even older cards will have their 2xQ, 8xS etc exposed

By: Leith

Leith — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:45:54 +0000

Why has 2x got 3 quality levels?

Other stuff I have noticed…

ATI used to have a 6x mode, but now only 2x, 4x and 8x

CSAA in OpenGL uses
GL_NV_multisample_coverage
GL_NV_framebuffer_multisample_coverage

On GeForce 5 to 7:
D3DMULTISAMPLE_NONMASKABLE = 4 quality levels
level 0 = 2x
level 1 = 2xS? <– can't find info on this one
level 2 = 4x
level 4 = 8xS
D3DMULTISAMPLE_2_SAMPLES = 1 quality level
D3DMULTISAMPLE_4_SAMPLES = 1 quality level

On GeForce 3 and 4 MX:
D3DMULTISAMPLE_2_SAMPLES – 2x
D3DMULTISAMPLE_3_SAMPLES – 2xQ (Quincunix)
D3DMULTISAMPLE_4_SAMPLES – 4x
In OpenGL use glHint to speicfy nicest AA at 2x to get 2xQ

Also found this handy tool which shows the sampling patterns:
http://www.users.on.net/~triforce/d3d_fsaaviewer/

And a break down of the older nvidia MSAA modes:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30641
This one has some of the ATI modes:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/11686/11

By: Microsoft on DirectX 11 Hardware Vendor Differences | VizWorld.com

Microsoft on DirectX 11 Hardware Vendor Differences | VizWorld.com — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:06:06 +0000

[…] and quality levels in your DX10.x and DX11 programs on both vendor's hardware.The guys at Geeks3d took both cards for a spin to get the actual results from the […]

By: Tayga

Tayga — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:53:39 +0000

I was able to use x32 on second life on older nvidia drivers using http://www.nhancer.com/
after a few updates it went back to x16

By: JeGX

JeGX — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:55:43 +0000

Article updated with CSAA…

By: JeGX

JeGX — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:37:23 +0000

Actually I think 16X and 32X are CSAA modes (Coverage Sampling Antialiasing)). I’ll try to test CSAA in Kombustor and I’m sure I’ll see 16X and 32X for my GTX 480.

By: Leith

Leith — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:56:07 +0000

Hmm looks like D3D9 uses IDirect3D9::CheckDeviceMultiSampleType

By: Leith

Leith — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:51:04 +0000

How do games let you select 16x and 32x in D3D with NVIDIA then?

Also what happens under D3D9? Did that even have quality levels?

Seems like Microsoft need to get this working better…

I thought ATI did have different quality levels for AA as well, since you can access them via the Catalyst Control Center…