what does MSAA and FXAA do in Max Payne 3

[Mitchell-Y]

I have recently downloaded Max Payne 3 and I have tried running the game with everything maxed and I am not having any issue with the game by now. I have tried changing MSAA to 4x but I have not found it to be making any difference. So I just wanted to know what they do and for what they are?? What difference they make when they are changed.

[Sherlyn@91]

As far as I am aware MSAA is said to be "real" AA when you change its value from low to high then you get better and crisper display. It can also work on shaders effects and polys without any issues. Whereas FXAA is said to be a post-processing filter for removing jagged edges but it adds some blur to the image. I think that 4x Quality is better, it will give you performance hit than FXAA. As far as performance is concerned MSAA is slightly better but then you can make use of both for getting desired quality.

[AjunD^Rock]

I am running the game using FXAA at Very High and with no MSAA and I am not having any issue with the same as well. Previously I had tried running the game with 4xMSAA and without FXAA but I was facing some jaggs. I have found that 2x MSAA was lowering 20fps from my system performance and that’s the reason I have switched to just FXAA. You will find a no of people mentioning that both MSAA and FXAA can be used for getting better Quality but as per my experience I think we should use one alone at a time. I am not saying to use FXAA at Very High for all the games, It is just for Max Payne 3. For other games the settings will definitely vary. So if you want then you can try running the game with FXAA at Very High and find out the difference yourself.

[HellBoy123]

I don’t think it actually depends on the game but it depends on your hardware. As mentioned above FXAA is a post-processing filter for removing jagged edges and reducing the effect of aliasing. I know it make images blurring and it is noticeable as well but then you can just turn it off. The jaggies appear mostly on lower end hardware. The MSAA is "real" AA and it is applied during rendering. It helps in skipping transparent objects and textures and gives a Performance hit. Even I have been playing a number of games and as per my experience 4x MSAA is best for quality as well as performance for most of the games.