ATI Temporal Tool

Zardon

Ive been noticing a few people have been having issues with Temporal AA not showing up in their control panels. Ive been chatting with ATI today and they have kindly allowed me to host a tool ive had for a while now. Just download this small archive, extract and turn it on or off. simple as that. If you somehow manage to get lost, there is a readme in the archive. Also guys TAA is broken in the new 4.7 driver panel for those on NON english OSes, this will be fixed in 4.8.

<img src="http://www.driverheaven.net/zardon/atitemporal.jpg" width="311" height="80">

download here

please note this application is copyright to ATI technologies

Drakon

hey Z, does this tool only work with the cat. 4.7's or does it work with older drivers like the omega 4.6's?

Zardon

ive never tried it with the omegas, but it should work with any new driver (4.6 for sure), from my experience anyway........ try it.

FallOutBoyTonto

I wonder if this tool will continue to be developed? Like adding the temporal multiplier and threshold? Or just an enable/disable switch and thats it? Seems like a good idea, just not quite enough functionality.

Zardon

its not really meant to be "indepth". it was an internal tool and testers used it before the option was available in drivers - offical or beta. just an early toggle option.

The only reason its up for download is due to the fact a few people have experienced issues in getting the TAA to show in their control panel, im always trying to help you guys out as middle man here and I figured id ask them if they would allow me to host it for those with issues.

I have to say i prefer the option in a seperate little app rather than in the panel as I can turn it on or off without fiddling too much.

ATI really do care about you guys believe it or not - I know to alot of you guys they are pretty much a faceless corporation but I know alot of them really well and once they heard of the issues they wanted me to share it with you guys.

Falstaff

I have never seen this feature...what am I missing?

Zardon

? its only a new option jeff in the 4.7 panel. this app allows you to turn Temporal AA on or off without going into the panel.

Falstaff

ohhhh....I indulge in Omega...hmmmm

Zeode

Just a thought, I have had occasion where new cat drivers were installed and the menus in video advanced button were not updated properly. To fix the problem I used the catalyst uninstall tool from ati and then reinstalled the new driver and the problem was fixed.

Perhaps this would work for this situation as well?
Would be interesting to know.

Zardon

might work for those on english oses who are having the issue, but the language support for non english OSes isnt working, will be fixed in 4.8

Drakon

well i d/l it and enabled it, though i am not quite sure that it's working with the omega 4.6's...

Shadow Lady

so it enables the TAA with 60 for threshold or whatever?

Geminiwave

I dont really know if it is working. am I suppose to restart? I dont see any difference on games but then again all I really play is Halo, Ragnarok, and UT2004. I mean theres not alot there. I also have farcry but never play it.

question: is there any disadvantage to having this enabled? I mean like, are there pros and cons to this or something? I'd like to know, because I'm always alittle paranoid about running something new on my baby.

Zardon

for those asking if its working - it should work immediately even without a restart. Its hard to tell if its on although in games with static information panels at the bottom of the screen you can sometimes see flickering. I noticed it quite dramatically in warcraft III when it was on.

Remember guys if your card cant give a high enough frame rate in a game it will turn itself off.

It works by alternating between two different pre-defined sample patterns every frame. This causes a slight fluctuation in the colors of anti-aliased edges that is visible at low frame rates. However, as the frame rate approaches the display refresh rate, the persistence of the display causes the results of the two sample patterns to combine into a single result. This produces an image that appears to have twice as many samples per pixel as it actually does, providing a significant image quality benefit with no performance impact. The effect is particularly striking with 2x temporal MSAA, where the resulting image is virtually indistinguishable from standard 4x MSAA yet runs much faster.

In order to avoid the flickering artifacts that can occur at lower frame rates, it can be temporarily disabled by the driver if the frame rate drops below a defined threshold, and re-enabled when they climb back above it. In this case, the display would revert to standard MSAA.

Danhill

Great info Z, does that mean that there will be some kind of small lag when the Temp AA switches on/off??

m03

Yes Shadow Lady I believe the default threshold is 60fps. And it does work on Omega 4.6's. A good game to test for me was Colin McRae 4.0, the car selection screen really shows off the TAA well, mmm curvy

Zardon

you can download this http://www.users.on.net/triforce/d3d...aaviewer-5.zip

When you run this little program, you should see a rapid flickering between two different sample patterns - if you do, its enabled.

jkayca2

Temporal Anti-Aliasing. Sounds like something from a bad Star Trek episode. Does this feature work on all ATI Radeons?

Geminiwave

I think i read somewhere that it only really works on R350 and up. I might be wrong on that though.

Zardon

unfortunately it can be quite noticeable yes. some people seem to see it more than others.

Xploited Titan

Not for me thus... I'm already disturbed by neon lamps as I see their flickering...

Geminiwave

I havent noticed a difference. Then again I have a 15" monitor...you really cant notice a whole lot of ANYTHING on that

this

Hi, Zardon, the switch tool causes an invalid operation exception on my system.

WinXP SP1 / Omega 4.6 / Radeon9500 NP / C2.4G + i865PE

Zardon