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Author Topic: EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards  (Read 1705 times)

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Stefan

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EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards
« on: September 15, 2011, 07:40:00 PM »
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EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards

Overview
Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA) is a new anti-aliasing technology available from the AMD
HD 6900 series of graphics cards onwards. This new Anti-Aliasing (AA) technology offers
advanced smoothing of aliased edges without requiring additional video memory, and with a
minimal performance cost.

Coverage Sample Details
EQAA offers enhanced AA quality over standard Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) modes by
adding more coverage samples per pixel but keeping the same number of color/depth/stencil
samples to achieve better AA quality than standard MSAA modes.       Since it doesn’t require 
additional color/depth/stencil samples, it consumes the same video memory as the equivalent
MSAA mode.

The coverage samples are used to test if a polygon is present at the location of the sample, and
these samples can be used as the weight value for calculating the final color of the pixel.
Because coverage samples can be gathered more easily than increasing color sample count,
EQAA can increase AA quality with quite a small performance overhead. EQAA is also
compatible with other existing AA techniques supported by AMD.
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ljbade

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Re: EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2011, 02:19:16 AM »
This sounds similar to NVIDIA CSAA that can go to 16x or 32x.
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ljbade

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Re: EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2011, 02:22:01 AM »
Also no OpenGL extension support yet  :-[
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ljbade

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Re: EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards
« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2011, 04:22:05 AM »
Just as I though this is a AMD "clone" of CSAA, just compare how EQAA and CSAA work:
http://developer.amd.com/sdks/radeon/assets/EQAA%20Modes%20for%20AMD%20HD%206900%20Series%20Cards.pdf

vs

http://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/gamedev/docs/CSAA_Tutorial.pdf

Even the DX9/10/11 API commands to set the various modes use identical values to the equivalent CSAA modes.

But AMD don't (yet) support CSAA/EQAA 32x which NVIDIA supports since Fermi. Perhaps the AMD 7000 series will support it.

Here is a handy table comparing NVIDIA and AMD's names for the different modes:
MSAA ModeNVIDIA CSAA ModeAMD EQAA ModeColour Sample CountCoverage Sample Count
1x/Off11
2x22
2f4x24
4x44
8x4f8x48
8x8xQ88
16x4f16x416
16xQ8f16x816
32x824

JeGX:
Does Kombuster correctly detect/use EQAA? I don't have a 69XX card to test it on. You will likely need to add 2f4x since NVIDIA doesn't support that. Also AMD uses different names...
http://www.geeks3d.com/20100611/direct3d-gtx-480-vs-hd-5870-msaa-quality-levels-differences-between-dx11-hardware/
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