MSAA Anti-Aliasing Finally Comes To Radeon R300g

[Sidicas]

I filed the flashing bug.

And here are some performance numbers, openarena, Very High Quality, 1024x768:

• no MSAA: 74.6 fps
• MSAA 2x: 61.1 fps
• MSAA 4x: 41.6 fps
• MSAA 6x: 29.7 fps

Wow, that's pretty good.. It's already pretty close to what you would expect from MSAA on DirectX & Windows. As a Windows gamer, nobody typically runs MSAA higher than 4X because it tends to be rather inefficient.. It's better to go for 8xCSAA or AdaptiveAA to get better than MSAA 4x because you don't get that nosedive in performance with CSAA as you do with MSAA. Yet the end result of 8xCSAA is still better than 4x MSAA... Of course, it's even *better* to just buy a higher resolution screen to begin with, but for laptop users, that's not an option.

At least those people with low end r300 cards and a low resolution laptop screen now have their 2xMSAA... That is definitely a nice Christmas gift!

[Sidicas]

Gallium (including r300g) also supports MLAA.

Not really, most of the hardware covered by r300g can't do MLAA with the only exception being R500 hardware chips.

For most people running r300g, MSAA would be their only option.

[agd5f]

I also noticed a problem: when using MSAA 6x and high resolutions (1920x1080) the screen flashes and get very slow. At the same resolution with MSAA 4x it works fine, probably a limit of some time is reached. Using a RV530.

It's most likely a memory bandwidth limitation as MSAA compression isn't implemented yet.

[oibaf]

I filed the flashing bug.

And here are some performance numbers, openarena, Very High Quality, 1024x768:

• no MSAA: 74.6 fps
• MSAA 2x: 61.1 fps
• MSAA 4x: 41.6 fps
• MSAA 6x: 29.7 fps

[oibaf]

Done. You have to set "RADEON_DEBUG=msaa" though.

Thanks, this also let me notice that the application has a higher priority than the evn var over MSAA setting.

Fixed in git. Only the renderer string was wrong. The card was detected correctly.

The issue with the flashing screen must be caused by something else.

Thanks again, I'll report a proper bug, probably tomorrow, I want to test some other known apps before.

[marek]

Marek, it would be nice to print on stderr a message when MSAA is enabled and which mode (similar to the radeon: Acquired Hyper-Z. messages). I am not sure if the in-game settings always work and who get the precedence (game setting or env var). Thanks.

Done. You have to set "RADEON_DEBUG=msaa" though.

I also noticed a problem: when using MSAA 6x and high resolutions (1920x1080) the screen flashes and get very slow. At the same resolution with MSAA 4x it works fine, probably a limit of some time is reached. Using a RV530.

Possibly related to the fact my cards now get detected as a R580?

Fixed in git. Only the renderer string was wrong. The card was detected correctly.

The issue with the flashing screen must be caused by something else.

[oibaf]

I also noticed a problem: when using MSAA 6x and high resolutions (1920x1080) the screen flashes and get very slow. At the same resolution with MSAA 4x it works fine, probably a limit of some time is reached. Using a RV530.

Possibly related to the fact my cards now get detected as a R580?

GL_RENDERER = Gallium 0.4 on ATI R580
GL_VERSION = 2.1 Mesa 9.1-devel (git-959e83d quantal-oibaf-ppa)
GL_VENDOR = X.Org R300 Project

Possible regression of http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes...7e0e31c9a6f823

[oibaf]

Marek, it would be nice to print on stderr a message when MSAA is enabled and which mode (similar to the radeon: Acquired Hyper-Z. messages). I am not sure if the in-game settings always work and who get the precedence (game setting or env var). Thanks.

[Tgui]

Here is a quick MSAA quality comparison on r300g with glxgears: http://imgur.com/a/jNOWo#0

Thanks for that!

[oibaf]

Here is a quick MSAA quality comparison on r300g with glxgears: http://imgur.com/a/jNOWo#0