Massive FPS increase with Resolution decrese (?)

[Anvilfolk]

Well, if you go from a resolution of 1920x1080 to 1600x900, you get 70% of the pixels you had originally. If you go down to 1280x720, you get only 44% of the pixels you had originally. The graphics card has to render all the pixels... if it has less than half of them, at least creating the image and sending it to the screen should be around twice as fast.

Of course there's all the computation that you need to do either way, but I think post processing effects are applied to every single pixel. Anti-aliasing and pixel shaders are some examples. The less pixels you have, the faster it goes.

Correct me if I'm wrong though.

I don't get why so many people complain. I don't think I've ever played a game with AA on, or pixel shaders on max. Or over 1280x720 for that matter. It's not that bad. People are complaining about not being able to have AAx8 or whatever it is, heh.

[Cpt.Badger]

Originally Posted by Anvilfolk

I don't get why so many people complain. I don't think I've ever played a game with AA on, or pixel shaders on max. Or over 1280x720 for that matter. It's not that bad. People are complaining about not being able to have AAx8 or whatever it is, heh.

On the serious side: if you haven't really played a game with AA, I strongly suggest you do, as it makes A LOT of difference.

And people are not complaining about not being able to have AAx8. People are complaining about not getting a playable FPS on high end rigs. That is a big difference.

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by Cpt.Badger

And people are not complaining about not being able to have AAx8. People are complaining about not getting a playable FPS on high end rigs. That is a big difference.

With HIGH resolutions. Having high resolution is in effect almost the same as having AA on. If you use one you dont really need the other. High res and AA both dramatically drop FPS so why use both if it makes game unplayable??

From Tomshardware
Game aliens vs Pred. Resolution 1680x1050
GPU HD6850 fps with 4XAA = 40.7 fps without AA= 63.6
GTX460 fps with 4XAA = 35.2 fps without AA= 58.6
GTX550Ti fps with 4XAA = 31.9 fps without AA= 49
As you can clearly see from the numbers above that by turning OFF AA you can have a significant boost in fps. Most gpus have nearly a 50% increase in fps by going from 4XAA to no AA.
Thats the same as in CLoD going from 20fps to 30 or more fps just from turning off AA. Imagine if you also lowered your resolution it might almost be playable now.

[666th_Lange]

Originally Posted by Anvilfolk

I don't get why so many people complain. I don't think I've ever played a game with AA on, or pixel shaders on max. Or over 1280x720 for that matter. It's not that bad. People are complaining about not being able to have AAx8 or whatever it is, heh.

It all depends on what you like or not. If i haven't have AA enabled then the screen shimmers like hell (even in the TrackIR screen i have AA enabled because otherwise it shimmers), so for me this is a must. But it's all perception and taste. I had a discussion a while ago around yes/no ClearType fonts. That's also an endless discussion about +/- the same thing. In the end it's mostly taste what drives people to make a certain visual setup work for them. And then there is a big difference between ATI and NVIDIA cards in this matter.

Originally Posted by maclean525

Modern games run on my rig at 5760x1080 with graphics on high and 4x anti-aliasing, 8x anisotropic filtering around 60fps no problems. Cliffs of Dover should be no exception. FSX, A10, Wings of Prey, Rise of Flight all run at that res with ZERO problems.

Well, just have a go at 5760x1080 with everyhing on HIGH in Cliffs Of Dover. Not in your life atm it will run with ZERO problems. Current hardware isn't just up for that yet to let Cliffs Of Dover perform that way. BTW, you can't even set any graphical improvement like AA, AS etc... COD dos not respond to those settings (yet).

[Anvilfolk]

Heh, those are good points, Badger and Lange. I guess I'm just used to playing games on low settings. But I've gotten the idea that people have been reluctant to lower their resolution, and fiddle instead with the other settings. Aren't most people still trying to run this at 1080?

I'd probably use AA if I had a computer that could handle it. What is this shimmering though? I don't think I understand. I might know what that is, but that's usually related to using non-standard resolutions, or a different aspect ratio "stretched" to your screen, so you should be able to get around it if it is indeed the case.

What mcmatt said makes a whole lot of sense. If you don't have enough memory on your graphics card, everything starts going much, much slower. It might just be that other games don't use as much memory, and so switching to a lower resolution doesn't have the same impact as going from needing too much memory to having enough memory. Just another guess...

[mcmatt]

Originally Posted by Anvilfolk

It might just be that other games don't use as much memory, and so switching to a lower resolution doesn't have the same impact as going from needing too much memory to having enough memory. Just another guess...

I believe that COD doesn't use graphic memory wisely and it's not emptying it. So it become full. And then problems begins.

[Purg]

Originally Posted by Anvilfolk

Heh, those are good points, Badger and Lange. I guess I'm just used to playing games on low settings. But I've gotten the idea that people have been reluctant to lower their resolution, and fiddle instead with the other settings. Aren't most people still trying to run this at 1080?

Most people are probably playing on LCD and want to run the native resolution of the monitor. If you don't run at native resolution, text in particular can be harder to read and images can appear blurry.

The reason lower resolutions work is the fact that it's not having to draw as many pixels. It's a no brainer.

At the moment, I can fly solo in a 800x600 window over water, settings low with my GTX295 card. Add anything else and I get stutters and sub 20 frames. I hope the SLI fix will allow me to do more than fly in circles over water - until then, the game is pretty much useless to me.. though, given the several premium titles I picked up in March, I'll live with the wait.

[666th_Lange]

Originally Posted by Anvilfolk

I'd probably use AA if I had a computer that could handle it. What is this shimmering though? I don't think I understand. I might know what that is, but that's usually related to using non-standard resolutions, or a different aspect ratio "stretched" to your screen, so you should be able to get around it if it is indeed the case.

Shimmering is the flickering of fences, powerlines, single line edges on textures etc... If no AA is used, these flicker a lot when the "environment" is in motion. The more AA you set, the less shimmering you have (in my gaming experience through the years, nVidia cards suffer more from this then ATI cards but then ATI's have/had other issues). AA smoothes out jagged lines.

This article explains both AA and AF but the provided pictures are rather small.

[Thee_oddball]

1360x768 medium settings with low land,forest and visual effects and buildings set very low i am getting around 55fps while attacking 4 bombers over land on the channel map in DF server changing resolution to 1600x1200 drops me down to 32-38 fps but still playable .

[Oldschool61]

Originally Posted by Thee_oddball

1360x768 medium settings with low land,forest and visual effects and buildings set very low i am getting around 55fps while attacking 4 bombers over land on the channel map in DF server changing resolution to 1600x1200 drops me down to 32-38 fps but still playable .

So when going from 1360 x 768(55fps) to 1600x1200 (35fps) you lose over 50% of your fps. Thats a 36% reduction, very significant or an increase of 57% from high to lower res.

Imagine if you were running AA and you turned that off as well you would almost have another increase of 25-50% fps in some instances.