Curse

mathewthegreat · Mar 27, 2006, 09:15 AM // 09:15

In the ideal case, the varying degrees of sub-pixel anti-aliasing require a linear increase in fill-rate to offset the increased performance required to maintain a given frame-rate. For example, to achieve the same frame rate for a given scene without anti-aliasing that you would achieve with four sub-pixel anti-aliasing, you would need four times the fill-rate capacity to maintain the same update rate for the enhanced image.

I.E. PERFORMANCE HIT.

.....Perhaps guild wars removed AA options because they dont believe the cards concerned can handle it.......Why is that so hard for you to believe?

So what you are suggesting doom..is that anti aliasing has no adverse effects on framerate, that there is no performance hit for using anti aliasing?

My answer wasnt buy a new card my answer was put up with no AA.

You must have DirectX version 9.0 or superior installed in your machine to run this game, and preferentially a hardware of the same generation or superior, too. If you, for instance, have a DirectX 9 game in your PC and a video card whose graphic chip is DirectX 8, when the game requests a command that DirectX knows your video card won't understand, it will make an emulation to execute the command. Of course this emulation is not perfect and the final result will be that the game won't have the same image quality as if it were run in a genuinely DirectX 9 hardware.

So with anti aliasing the card is making up emulations so it can display things at directx9 level, then it has to smoothen the edges of the textures....resulting in a big performance hit, this is why i believe you cannot use AA on some of the older cards, im sorry if you feel this is offensive, but i am just explaining what i think.

I am sorry i didnt include a disclaimer on my previous posts.........

There is a chance that the game auto detects the settings it will allow you to use in guild wars.

As a possible resolution to no anti-aliasing, has anybody triedputting the game to the Lowest resolution and turn the graphics quality right down in game, then once it has re-sized your client, see if it will let you use anti-aliasing.

Lemme know what you find.

Leddy · Mar 27, 2006, 09:58 AM // 09:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by mathewthegreat

You must have DirectX version 9.0 or superior installed in your machine to run this game, and preferentially a hardware of the same generation or superior, too. If you, for instance, have a DirectX 9 game in your PC and a video card whose graphic chip is DirectX 8, when the game requests a command that DirectX knows your video card won't understand, it will make an emulation to execute the command. Of course this emulation is not perfect and the final result will be that the game won't have the same image quality as if it were run in a genuinely DirectX 9 hardware.

So with anti aliasing the card is making up emulations so it can display things at directx9 level, then it has to smoothen the edges of the textures....resulting in a big performance hit, this is why i believe you cannot use AA on some of the older cards, im sorry if you feel this is offensive, but i am just explaining what i think.

I am sorry i didnt include a disclaimer on my previous posts.........

Seriously, you still haven't checked out your facts. Guild Wars now has TWO rendering engines, one that operates at DX9 and one that operates at DX8. When Guild Wars starts it checks your level of support, and if you only support DX8 (ie. No Pixel Shader 2.0) then it'll run at DX8.

There is NO emulation of instructions.

Get your facts right before you start screaming at people.

mathewthegreat · Mar 27, 2006, 10:08 AM // 10:08

Nobody had indicated that it auto detected your hardware level of directx and then ran the game at that version, if they had indicated this to me i would not have tried to help people understand more about directx9, thats all i was trying to do...help people. And i get shit for it.

Sorry if somehow you felt insulted by something ive said to the extent that you had to add your own input, but my last ffew posts iw as just trying to defend what i had said because this doom guy had said i wasnt trying to help out.

He must expect i post here for the hell of it :/

Please could people check in guild wars options>advanced what renderer it says you are using, then we can narrow down the problem to a specific area.

MrNemesis · Mar 27, 2006, 10:54 AM // 10:54

i don't even kno wat anti blah means, or does, but i put it on 2* and i don't lagg anymore, i happy.

mathewthegreat · Mar 27, 2006, 12:08 PM // 12:08

Try disabling vertical sync, see if that works too.

wsmcasey · Mar 27, 2006, 05:10 PM // 17:10

The TI4200 was a great card in its day. I have one in my daughters computer than I used to run about 5 years ago. Still works great with all my older games, but sucks with new ones.

I think its time to let go of the past and get a newer card.

Str0b0 · Mar 27, 2006, 05:25 PM // 17:25

I still have no AA and I checked and rechecked my card because it apparently straddled the compatibility line. I ran dxdiag and DDI was 9. I have no idea what is going on with it. I can't even force it. Even if I set it to run constantly with AA as soon as it loads up Guild Wars that goes out the window.

Oh and in guild wars options it says it is using DX 9. I know for a fact I have dx 9.0 c installed

EternalTempest · Mar 27, 2006, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by mathewthegreat

Then get a directx9 card, not one that tries to run games at directx9 when it is actually a dx8/7 card. When you buy a card you should ask if it is directx9 or if it just has directx9 bundled with it.

I am not at all supprised you cant enable anti aliasing because it would most likely fry your gpu. Your card is already working hard enough to render games in directx9 when it isnt its native directx version.

It's this post of "buy" a new card. Not many can afford a new card and it use to work. Guildwars was a DX8 game and still has DX listed as the min required (for factions).

The general impression is that GW is able to use the old DX8 engine for older cards. I can also use override and get better AA on my card (again my card does show 2x,4x natively) and still play it.

You will NOT burn up your card with allowing options it may have trouble rendering, you just slow your FPS down. Only way your going to burn up your card is if you overclock the gpu/and memory speeds.

Geforce FX 5700 Ultra 128mb - I do have standard 2x,4x AA, and it shows as DX9 Render

I can get better AA (and more options such as 2xAAQS via Nvtray or via profile mangement in the drivers).

mathewthegreat · Mar 27, 2006, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Today i visisted my friend who is running guild wars on a gf4 ti card, it is running guild wars in directx9, not directx8 as people have said guild wars defaults to directx8 if this is your directx hardware level.

is this the case for everyone?

Str0b0 what graphics card are you using?

Cottage Pie · Mar 27, 2006, 06:32 PM // 18:32

I don't use AA, makes things look all smuged = not nice imo

Str0b0 · Mar 27, 2006, 08:07 PM // 20:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by mathewthegreat

Today i visisted my friend who is running guild wars on a gf4 ti card, it is running guild wars in directx9, not directx8 as people have said guild wars defaults to directx8 if this is your directx hardware level.

is this the case for everyone?

Str0b0 what graphics card are you using?

ATI Radeon 9250 256MB VPU. The problem is that particular card straddled the 8.1/9.0 DX update. I have checked and rechecked and even gotten hold of ATi to check and they told me that it is 100% DX 9 compliant and compatible. GW says it is using DX 9 as the renderer and dxdiag says it is using DX9. I've got it forced for AA now through the card options but it reverts to no AA when GW is running. See the DX 8.1 version of the card does support some DX 9 features but not all of them so that's why I checked with ATi to be sure I had the fully compliant model.

koneko · Mar 30, 2006, 06:59 AM // 06:59

Hm...

Mentioned in this post. Useful at all?

Old Dood · Mar 30, 2006, 01:17 PM // 13:17

hmmm...I don't know...I noticed the 3X AA....never Seen that before. Mine will be either 2XAA or 4XAA.

koneko · Mar 30, 2006, 01:24 PM // 13:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Old Dood

hmmm...I don't know...I noticed the 3X AA....never Seen that before. Mine will be either 2XAA or 4XAA.

Well, I don't know. That recent update that removed all types of AA for everyone else merely removed 3x AA for me. Forcing it to use DX8 made it so that 3x appeared again, so I thought...hm.

blackpawn · Mar 30, 2006, 08:39 PM // 20:39

i think it's a driver thing that causes AA options to not show up on older nvidia cards with Dx9 runtime. if you run gw with "gw.exe -dx8" it uses dx8 and the AA options show up again. applications ask DirectX what AA modes are supported so it's not that Guild Wars removed these options but that nVidia may not be reporting them for older devices when the queries are made through the DirectX9 runtime.

swaaye · Mar 30, 2006, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Just force AA in the driver control panel. I'm surprised to see it stop working though.

It is possible too that the DX9 renderer uses some form of AA that requires DX9 capability. Sometimes this happens when fancy pixel shaders are used.

swaaye · Mar 30, 2006, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Str0b0

ATI Radeon 9250 256MB VPU.

8500-9250 is DX8.1.

DX9 compatibility is different than compliancy. Compliancy means it has all features necessary for DX9 effects while compatibility means it will still work with games that use the API but not necessarily support the new features.

GFFX is fully compliant, but I would say it's not "compliant" in performance on DX9

kvndoom · Mar 30, 2006, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Aha! That link Koneko posted had the fix for you guys!

Modify your shortcut to the game, and add "-dx8" (sans quotes) to the command line, as follows:

Restart the game, and the DirectX8 renderer s restored, and you can again use AA! And my 3X is back! Yay!

Yeah, I have a DX9 card, so what? I missed my Quincunx. Until I actually see a DIFFERENCE between the two, I'll use the old renderer, thank you very much. Ha ha!!!

blackpawn · Mar 31, 2006, 09:02 PM // 21:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by swaaye

Just force AA in the driver control panel.

well you have to be careful with this. games like guild wars that render to a render target instead of the back buffer don't work with the AA settings from the control panel. if you set AA in control panel it may just enable AA on the backbuffer and since the game doesn't render the scene geometry there you see no quality improvement and only performance loss.

(if you disable post process effects then guild wars renders directly to the back buffer and control panel AA settings will take effect, but without the post proc stuff guild wars doesn't look as good)

moral of the story: set the AA in the game not the control panel.

blackpawn · Mar 31, 2006, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvndoom

Until I actually see a DIFFERENCE between the two, I'll use the old renderer, thank you very much. Ha ha!!!

hehe yeah that makes sense for the existing maps. once factions is out though you'll want to switch back to dx9. there was a big difference between running with dx8 and dx9 in a lot of factions preview event maps. hopefully by the time factions is out nvidia will have a new driver that lets the older geforce cards use AA with dx9.