Simviation Forums

I have a P-4 Radeon 1.7 Gig 7500 Video card should I turn Anisotropic filtering on or off. at the moment I'm getting about 25 to 30 FPS.
Thanks
Jonathan Odom

hm,i think anti-aliasing is more important than anisotropic filtering.
so,if you turned anti-aliasing on and FS is still running smoothly, try it with anisotropic filtering. but just put the slider to "2x" or "4x" ,because more could slow you FS down.

but the best way is playing with the settings,until you've got the best performance at a good quality.

johathan,

If you are getting 25-30 FPS..... you are doing GREAT.

Most stuff in FS2004 is a "try it and see" approach.  If it doesn't work... change it back.

best,

................john

Most stuff in FS2004 is a "try it and see" approach.  If it doesn't work... change it back.

that's what i say. but your version sounds better.

Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a feature of some video cards that sharpens the details of the fading-away part of a 3D object that recedes into the distance. Think of the text in the titles at the beginning of the Star Wars movies that is presented in large letters and then scrolls back into the distance. As it scrolls off, it becomes fuzzy and hard to read. In a 3D image, you may want a comparable effect to retain the sharpness of an object as it recedes; anisotropic filtering does this. (Isotropic describes objects or image elements with vectors of equal value along different axes, such as squares and cubes. Anisotropic describes objects whose vectors are unequal, such as trapezoids and parallelograms.)
Since anisotropic filtering requires intense processing as image frames are presented to the display, it may affect performance. A user may want to weigh the perceived improvement in visual quality against the effect on performance.

I see quite an improvement with AF enabled on my Geforce FX5600, especially in FS2002, Games such as Battlefield 1942 look great also, Quake 3 stunning!

Here is a pretty good article on AAF:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3 ... 248,00.asp

ATI AAF is not full scene; it is selective and tied to mip map settings.

The 9700P driver shows a button of Performance and Quality with the AAF selection.  Not identified; they are mip map settings.  Former is Bi, latter is Tri.

The ATI 7500 will likely not be able to handle both AAF and FSAA.

4-Series

Since you are going to take a hammer to your MB, check out THG article on the VIA KT 600 MB.
Of more interest is the performance of Soltek SL 400-L64. AMD and single (not dual) channel FSB.  Will handle 200 - 400 MHZ CPU/RAM.  Price is right at $75.