ATI 6000 Series & Morphological Filtering

[pendragonuk 0]

One of the little known features of the 6000 series graphics cards from ATI is Morphological Filtering.

Our new morphological anti-aliasing technique works as a post process effect. In other words, we finish rendering each frame normally, but before presenting it to the display; we run it through another shader pass to perform the filtering. This differs from traditional multi-sample and super-sample AA techniques where the filtering occurs during the rendering of each frame. In fact, this technique can eliminate aliasing for still images, though it’s intended to work better when in motion.

The filter works by first detecting high contrast edges with various pixel-sized patterns that are normally associated with aliasing, and assumes they should actually be straight lines that are not aligned to pixel edges. It then estimates the length and angle of the ideal line for each edge, and determines the proportional coverage by the lighter and darker color for each pixel along the edge. Finally it uses this coverage information to blend the colors for each pixel.

I have found that by having this switched on has made the game look better and in most cases I have seen a small but noticeable increase in fps. The most impressive thing is the look of the game.

So if you have one of these ATI 68xx and above you should find the setting in the AMD Vision Engine control centre. Give it a go and run some tests of your own and see if you like the results...

[hellfire257 3]

So do you have this running alongside AA or without?

[pendragonuk 0]

I have tried it with both, and a lot of this is down to personal taste. I like the game to look clean and crisp. As such I normally run with AA off, but I tested both. In fact I have been spending the last hour or so running through almost all of the combinations. What I'm saying is there is little impact to have this turned on, if anything you get a very small bump in performance. Whatever settings you run I think it looks better.

I discovered the setting when running the BF:3 Alpha and found it made the game look great. In other games you can see an improvement but I did see a small drop in performance in CoD:Blops. So I have been messing about with playing my games with this setting turned on and of course I fire up ArmA without thinking and think wow this looks good... good enough for me to want to share this small revelation with the community.

I'm currently getting 57-64 fps in the first benchmark, about 20 in the second one and the OA bench I'm getting 68-72fps. with these settings

language="English";

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=-4194304;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

Resolution_W=1920;

Resolution_H=1080;

refresh=60;

winX=16;

winY=32;

winW=800;

winH=600;

winDefW=800;

winDefH=600;

Render_W=1920;

Render_H=1080;

FSAA=0;

postFX=0;

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;

HDRPrecision=8;

lastDeviceId="";

localVRAM=922081280;

nonlocalVRAM=922081280;

Windowed=0;

vsync=0;

AToC=0;

[Dwarden 1125]

you are forcing AF via drivers too (as you have it disabled in the panel) ? btw. did you disabled the subsurface optimizations (they degrade visual quality)

also note one thing about MLAA, it's not using subpixel precision thus causing visual degradation too

also i suggest You use High or Very High on HDR to remove color precision on some gradients ...

[pendragonuk 0]

you are forcing AF via drivers too (as you have it disabled in the panel) ? btw. did you disabled the subsurface optimizations (they degrade visual quality)

also note one thing about MLAA, it's not using subpixel precision thus causing visual degradation too

also i suggest You use High or Very High on HDR to remove color precision on some gradients ...

I'm still messing with this at the mo so any suggestions I'll give a try.

I was messing with the 3D (fill rate) settings. Anything up to 150% dose little more than knocking 10 fps off the benchmarks. High forty's rather than high fifty's. 200% kills everything fps down to the 30's and I can see LoD issues and quite a lot of stutter. So although the fps was still almost acceptable the quality was rubbish showing that my system wasn't happy doing as she was told.

At the setting I have right now she runs real smooth, no stutter (long frames) no texture switching (I hate flashing houses) I did notice some odd textures, the corrugated tin roofs looked, well a little odd at times. Like, grainy somehow, sorry for not describing it properly. I'm guess that is the "visual degradation" you are referring to. Generally the "look" of the game is good much how I would like to see it. If I increase the settings like Texture or object/terrain detail to Very High she runs at reasonable frame rate but the other issues start to show like the stutters and LoD issues. Right now I have none.

My current driver setting:

[Dwarden 1125]

well you have use anisotropic filtering by application, but ingame disabled

try

1. force it in drivers, 16x , keep disabled ingame (lower perf than 3.)

2. force it in drivers, 16x , enable as very high ingame (some say best visuals but lowest perf)

3. keep app controlled in drivers, set very high ingame

and untick the checkbox for the surface optimizations ... it in some games and gradients may cause very visible degrade

[pendragonuk 0]

I have been messing about before reading you reply... This looks OK nice performance nice look...

I will have another look using your suggestions...

---------- Post added at 12:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 AM ----------

well you have use anisotropic filtering by application, but ingame disabled

try

1. force it in drivers, 16x , keep disabled ingame (lower perf than 3.)

2. force it in drivers, 16x , enable as very high ingame (some say best visuals but lowest perf)

3. keep app controlled in drivers, set very high ingame

and untick the checkbox for the surface optimizations ... it in some games and gradients may cause very visible degrade

OK I have followed your suggestions. With a quick a dirty single pass of the first benchmark.

1. 60fps Small stutters and a couple of LoD switches

2. 60fps less stutters and no texture flashing

3. 60fps and no stutters and no texture flashing

I ran the last test again with Morphological filtering off.

4. 60Fps with sharp edges and didn't look as natural

This is an odd feature I have come across before with my system. It's CPU choked so as long as you don't go stupid with the graphics settings to can play about with them as much as you like. The FPS doesn't change. Even running the game on one card doesn't change the FPS on the benchmarks. I have run RadeonPro and watched the GPU usage while playing. Most of the time my GPU's are running at 30%. All that happens when you up the settings is that they will be running at 60% and the fans spin up faster. Now if you push the view distance out too far you see a hit on the FPS. If you push the texture detail or object/terrain or shadow up too high then you get stutters and LoD issues. Even messing with the 3D settings doesn't hit FPS too greatly.

I really need a more capable CPU if I want to see any massive jump in performance. I can't afford a quick i7. So I'm hoping that the AMD Bulldozers will be reasonably priced... I'll go for a single GPU setup next time too!

So back to the topic of the original post; Morphological Filtering looks real nice. And with the help of Dwarden I now have the AF set to Very High, set from the in game settings.

[Shadow NX 1]

Goona try this out later, been a while since i changed any setting in the Vision Control Center.

While were at it, is there any way to get rid or at least lower the extreme grain on thing slike gras or trees when using anything lower han max AA settings in ArmA2:CO.

As soon as i set it a tad lower than max it just looks pretty uggly on my HD6950, noticed the ATI filter be a bit less crisp than the Nvidia one before in some games but never that extreme like in ArmA2:CO

Heres a screen Flattermann once sent me when we discussed this

http://imageshack.us/f/201/arma2oa2011021110290836.png/

Btw, he mentioned that after he switched Morph filtering of he had a great fps increase.

Edited August 3, 2011 by Shadow NX

[Dwarden 1125]

that's AToC, i'm not sure if and how MLAA goes hand in hand with AToC

MLAA has lot of troubles in some titles and can cause flickers, menus shadows, blurred UI and so on ...

not to mention the missing subpixel precision ...

ofcourse i would really like to see AMD supporting FXAA version3 (FXAA is NVIDIA origin) or higher and NVIDIA's SRAA and Humus's GPAA/GBAA and several others

most could be same as MLAA fully enforced by driver as PP filter

[Shadow NX 1]

Possibly that shot is from before BIS even started to use AToC, if i remember right this was when it was introduced in first beta patches but the screen itself should be from before that.

Other than that, someone has perfect ATI setting sfor A2:CO?

Oother games are less important but A2 must look nice and run good.