Internal Resolution vs. AntiAliasing

[Xelinis]

This thread here got me thinking about this.
http://forums.pcsx2.net/thread-3476.html

Basic "AA" simply involved rending the entire scene at a higher resolution and then downscaling it, or rather, supersampling. However, this is a very brute force technique. Modern GPUs, however, sport the ability to utilize multisampling, quincunx, and other such advanced algorithms for superior quality/performance. So, would it be more efficient to run PCSX2 with a lower native resolution but with a higher AA setting?

(I'd try this out on my own but my box for PCSX2 is at the other side of the country. )

[Mystiq]

This fact was argued a lot when anti-aliasing first really became mainstream. If a game runs natively at 640x480 and you apply 4x multisampling, it's arguably better than 1280x960 (640x2, 480x2) but more base detail allows the anti-aliasing algorithm to do a better job. However, as you raise towards an infinite resolution (40,000x30,000), the perceived effect of anti-aliasing becomes lower because by definition aliasing is artifacts created by taking discrete samples of a continuous model.

That said, don't expect to run games at 320x240, apply 8x anti-aliasing and expect it to look as good as it would at 1280x960 because it won't. One of the main draws is that anti-aliasing often runs faster than simply jacking up the resolution. In conclusion, find a good balance by examining the final image yourself.

As an aside, I still can't figure out how the hell to get AA to work on my Radeon card. Usually disabling Catalyst AI does the trick, but it's not in PCSX2.

[stpdrgstr]

@Mystiq

Give it up, AA doesn't work with Ati cards, and with NVidia cards is only possible through nhancer.

[Isidore]

simply put, this thread and its contents is more or less meaningless as
GPUs are not the bottleneck for PCSX2 perfomance but rather the CPU.

As long as you have something decent like Nvidia 8800GT or ATI 4750
increasing the AA or Internal resolution will have no impact on the performance.