NVIDIA introduces TXAA Anti-Aliasing technology into Neverwinter!

cmpinpointerror · January 2014

Explore the Forgotten Realms and play Neverwinter the way it's meant to be played with NVIDIA's new TXAA Anti-Aliasing technology!

See TXAA in action with this tech video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyE84ydeYRY

Learn more about TXAA Anti-Aliasing techonlogy on NVIDIA's GeForce page: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/dungeons-and-dragons-neverwinter-txaa

j0shi82 · January 2014

Grats!

If only I had known that this game was all about Nvidia, I would have really considered going GeForce a few weeks back when my GPU crashed. Not I'm sitting on a Radeon and the problems the chip brings in NW.

aethanas · January 2014

j0shi82 wrote: »

Grats!

If only I had known that this game was all about Nvidia, I would have really considered going GeForce a few weeks back when my GPU crashed. Not I'm sitting on a Radeon and the problems the chip brings in NW.

Do not worry, this is nothing you ought to have; the entire screen (except the interface) looks very blurred with TXAA: just search for it and you might see screens of it.

hmdq · January 2014

what does it matter now that this game is very dependent on the processor! I wish it were otherwise! :-)

bioshrike · January 2014

I looked at some side-by-side comparisons, and the non-TXAA images appear sharper... the ones with it on almost look like someone just blurred the edges to soften them...

kattefjaes · January 2014

Supporting advanced features is nice, but when the basics aren't there, the game perfomance will still be awfully patchy, however.

It doesn't seem to matter how porky your rig is, there are weird shader bugs and memory leaks that can make the game drop to ~5fps in certain places, requiring client restarts. Even using six core i7, a bunch of decent low latency RAM, a very fast SSD on a decent PCI-E controller and a Geforce 780ti, I had a Karrundax run where most of it was like a slideshow last night. The framerate also tanks in certain spots in Frozen Heart, too- despite PE and friends being solid somewhere near 60FPS.

That said, the newer instances like VT seem to have far fewer of these weird client-breaking bugs, so maybe newer content will be better, even if the older dungeons will never see a real fix. However, be cautious, sometimes Neverwinter will benefit less from that shiny GPU than you might hope- so if your current one is only a bit crappy, that might still be good enough.

Edit: Not to mention Ranger Poo(tm), that there is the death of framerates, and people do love to amuse themselves with it. You could have a machine made from the core of a dying sun, and until they fix that one, you're going to see rubbish performance

dethsdezyn · January 2014

I have a 2GB radeon, I was wondering why videos of NW I have seen look so much better than mine. Guess it is the TXAA? I am not sure what else it could be. Unless the videos I am watching are people using dual gfx cards perhaps? no idea.

kattefjaes · January 2014

dethsdezyn wrote: »

I have a 2GB radeon, I was wondering why videos of NW I have seen look so much better than mine. Guess it is the TXAA? I am not sure what else it could be. Unless the videos I am watching are people using dual gfx cards perhaps? no idea.

Actually, I just tried the TXAA, and it looks pretty awful. It just makes everything look really soft, like badly upscaled video.

Not only that, but to use it, you have to enable the DX11 renderer. NW's DX11 renderer still doesn't work properly. If you tab out and back, it doesn't stay in fullscreen, and also, it doesn't successfully enable vsync, which is anathema to those of us who hate tearing.

It's annoying, as the DX11 looks loads nicer, with lots of pretty volumetric glows and the like, and seems to be higher performance overall.. it's just not finished, and has a lot of very long-standing bugs. I'm surprised that NVidia haven't kicked off at being made to look like muppets by how buggy this renderer is right now

hiddenfate · January 2014

The first thing I do whenever I start up a new game is turn off AA and AF (antisoptric filtering). Both create marginally better graphics but since they also impact framerate I just don't bother (I'd rather have an fps of 30 than an fps of 10 and really pretty grass). If your AA is going to be anything remotely like this then please include an option to kick it as far out the window as possible and then microwave it for closure.

aethanas · January 2014

kattefjaes wrote: »

Actually, I just tried the TXAA, and it looks pretty awful. It just makes everything look really soft, like badly upscaled video.

Not only that, but to use it, you have to enable the DX11 renderer. NW's DX11 renderer still doesn't work properly. If you tab out and back, it doesn't stay in fullscreen, and also, it doesn't successfully enable vsync, which is anathema to those of us who hate tearing.

It's annoying, as the DX11 looks loads nicer, with lots of pretty volumetric glows and the like, and seems to be higher performance overall.. it's just not finished, and has a lot of very long-standing bugs. I'm surprised that NVidia haven't kicked off at being made to look like muppets by how buggy this renderer is right now

DX11 looks nicer in some respects but it also has some missing effects: like the red wizards using their aoe (which is a cold-based aoe) slowing the player and doing damage. In DX11 your toon is just somewhat white and dark but in DX9 you have a frozen border around your screen and your toon looks more frozen.

After all, I think NW is still more a DX9 game than a DX11.

xnordicx · January 2014

My self i use SweetFX to enhance the game grapic its like night and day
wish we could have some more options built in to the game
so we not have to use third party apps
to get it to look good and still have better fps then with pure game engine.
and about TXAA Anti-Aliasing and i belive AMD
has something like it its just another marketing thing like Nvidia PhysX
its just something they add to sell more hardware
cant say it improve anything over the standard AA.

kattefjaes · January 2014

aethanas wrote: »

DX11 looks nicer in some respects but it also has some missing effects: like the red wizards using their aoe (which is a cold-based aoe) slowing the player and doing damage. In DX11 your toon is just somewhat white and dark but in DX9 you have a frozen border around your screen and your toon looks more frozen.

After all, I think NW is still more a DX9 game than a DX11.

I don't think I agree at all. With everything maxed, I enjoy the look of DX11 more. It drops out of 60FPS for me a lot less, too. However, it's just really irritating that vysnc doesn't stick, and it reverts to windowed whenever you tab out.

However, I am sure there are various variables that affect perception for both of us, both in and outside the machine.

aethanas · January 2014

kattefjaes wrote: »

I don't think I agree at all. With everything maxed, I enjoy the look of DX11 more. It drops out of 60FPS for me a lot less, too. However, it's just really irritating that vysnc doesn't stick, and it reverts to windowed whenever you tab out.

However, I am sure there are various variables that affect perception for both of us, both in and outside the machine.

I was not referring to how it looks to me, I actually wanted to point out that there are some effects missing in DX11 with or without max settings; I switched back and forth. If there are still doubts I can readily provide some screenhots showing the difference I mentioned.

The conlusion part of my post is undoubtedly my conlusion.

vitorvmb · January 2014

DX11 looks nicer in some respects but it also has some missing effects: like the red wizards using their aoe (which is a cold-based aoe) slowing the player and doing damage. In DX11 your toon is just somewhat white and dark but in DX9 you have a frozen border around your screen and your toon looks more frozen.

After all, I think NW is still more a DX9 game than a DX11.

kattefjaes · January 2014

You don't seem to grasp the differences between subjective and objective, but I'm done nailing jelly to walls

aethanas · January 2014

kattefjaes wrote: »

You don't seem to grasp the differences between subjective and objective, but I'm done nailing jelly to walls

*sigh* Do not use rhetoric sleights (I hope you are aware that you did) to discredit the soundness of my mind.

When I speak of screenshots, do not start a discussion about subjectiveness or objectiveness, do not play with such heavy words so thoughtless.

phoenicianson · January 2014

I actually have a lot of issues on my rig running on DX9... the character and the environments look very blurred, and the movement causes a significant amount of chopping to the screen as the graphics process the environment, particularly on the sides. When I switch to DX11, not only are the toons a lot more crisp, but the environment is infinitely more crisp, and I have no issues with choppy graphics, especially while moving.

I do run into the occasional drop, sometimes significant, in framerate, particularly with a lot of fast particle effects during battles. However, DX9 definitely causes significant issues, and then when I am in Foundry, and the framerate drops due to the memory leak, even if I log out and close the client completely, I will still notice issues to the point that I will have to reboot the computer to completely clear the memory cache.

I am running this game on an older high powered gaming laptop from OriginPC (ex-execs of Alienware after Dell bought Alienware), using dual 200GTX (or whatever the top of the line designation was) Nvidia cards. I ordered a new laptop from OriginPC just a week ago, and should receive it this weekend. So, hopefully, with the power that beast outputs, there will not be any drops in frame rates despite the epic battles of multiple mobs could generally cause to overcome the processing power of the graphics and computer chip.

I guess only time shall tell. I do look forward in trying this new coding to remove the flickering with the higher powered machine to see if possibly the greater the processor the less fuzzy the environment with this new software from Nvidia that Cryptic adopted.

I will say that I have always been a big fan of Nvidia, even when Radeon took their crown for a time. I just never liked Radeon's software interface to control their hardware... always found it frustrating. Not hating on AMD though, I know that they make a solid product. I just prefer Nvidia! This new laptop has dual 780gtx (or whatever that highest designation is nowadays). I have high hopes.

Sorry if this in any way sounds gloating, mentioning that I ordered this new computer, as that is not my intention.

f00nski · January 2014

Ok tell me I am not the only one who noticed by with TXAA the flickering doesn't seem that bad but graphics are down graded and more bland then before. I personally think instead of working on flickering and graphics this games need better functioning server shards. Disconnection in the middle of building a foundry map without and auto saving feature three times in the last week. I would like that fixed instead.

jarebla1051 · January 2014

I've tried most settings, and TXAA and MSAA don't seem to have much visual difference using my GeForce 650, though both are crisper than no enhancement. NVIDIA wrote something to the effect that TXAA eliminates(?) an effect where looking at a large patch of grass stops the viewer from seeing smaller patches within the larger move.

This is what I don't understand, NVIDIA has a feature called "Experience" where it looks at the game(NW and others)and performs an optimization of effects depending the games' video features. For NW on my system w/GeForce 650, "Experience" has TXAA turned off and supports that one effect as "None".(FYI, STO has no video features supported by "Experience")

aethanas · January 2014

I am using a Geforce GTX 660 and have some differences between DX9 and DX11; one example would be this case: DX9 looks like this and DX11 looks like this and apparently there is one major effect missing in the DX11 mode. Only DX11 supports TXAA, so I enabled this mode for some time and tried said feature which is ambivalent - from my point of view - because it helps making the picture calmer (lesser edges and not so staggered) although TXAA does so by blurring the picture a lot.

I tried it for some weeks but finally I switched back and was astonished by the sheer details I was able to see again, so this feature is -- kind of sad.

howitzer001 · January 2014

for those of you having issues with blurry graphics after enabling this feature. You need to know that depth of field does not properly work using this new filtering technique. The depth of field feature is broken in this game and you can easily see that by noticing that close objects have a blurry appearance and they should not. If you want to take advantage of the amazing TX filtering you need to disable depth of field and you will see that it is better then MSAA.

elewyndyl · February 2014

hquadros wrote: »

what does it matter now that this game is very dependent on the processor! I wish it were otherwise! :-)

Stop whining. Neverwinter is very CPU friendly compared to Guild Wars 2 with 2000 players in World PvP! Guild Wars 2 is unplayable on many laptops.

There are great sites with hardware analysis for example Toms Hardware and if you are really SUPER GURU and want to go extremely deep then Anandtech.

Green means below it is really good hardware! Yellow means not really good, but still playable and ok to play Neverwinter MMO. Red color would mean unplayable and not enough good for Neverwinter MMO.

I have 2 laptops that I have installed Neverwinter MMO on.
First slightly older laptop from 2012:
My Asus laptop bought Mars 2012:
CPU(processor): AMD A4-3300M 1,9 GHz (4 cores)
RAM(memory): 8 Gb DDR3-1333
GPU(grahiccard): AMD Radeon HD 6650M, 1 GB DDR3 that supports Direct X 11.
Screen: 15,6(whatever usually I play with 42 inch HD TV)
Native resolution for games: 1366 x 768
Harddrive: 500 Gb SATA, 5400 rpm
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Price: 530 euros(good price/performance during that time and I needed a laptop computer for travels.)

On my laptop I agree with Tomshardware do not reduce visual quality IF you have enough
GPU power. The other slider can be reduced plenty or as much as needed.
My old laptop does not runs so great Gauntlgrym, but it is still playable and not like Guild Wars 2 World PvP that is unplayable.

Finally I was REALLY LUCKY and bought a used laptop for far less then 500 euro lol.
My newer laptop:
CPU(processor): Intel IVY generation: I5-3320 2,6H 1600FSB speed, but in TURBO mode that I ran always Gauntlgrym more then 3 GHz+ and it also overclocks Intel Graphiccard!
GPU(grahiccard): Intel 4000++ that comes with IVY generation. Crystal Clear better then Sandybridge Intel 3000 and Intel 4000 supports Direct X11 graphics.
RAM(memory): 8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz.
SSD drive very fast new technology faster then normal harddrives.
42 INCH TV with 1366*768 resolution.

Visual Clarity slider(above slider) FULL maxed and other slider like 35% of 100% with 1366*768 resolution since I like to do lots of Gauntlgrym PvP.

Compared to my casual real life friend that has 2 core old AMD CPU overclocked to 3,4 Ghz. Both my laptops run better this game then my friends old desktop! Why? Since my laptops supports
Direct X 11 graphics and my friend has old graphiccard that does not support Direct X11.

My friend has 4GB memory and I have 8GB memory. 8GB memory is pretty perfect for most modern games if you like also to play other modern games.

I am thankful to Cryptic and Perfect World for this excellent game that supports Direct X 11 graphics. I am fully ok with the thought that high end computers with high end graphiccards of Nvidia and AMD computers might run this game with full max graphics in Gauntlgrym PvP. Oh and yes GHZ and CPU matters my Intel laptop runs this game with very good FPS with the settings mentioned above.

This is an old review from Tomshardware. I am sure today Neverwinter runs slightly better at least since this review was done near Beta times:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/neverwinter-performance-benchmark,3495.html

unikon · February 2014

They would have been better off implementing FXAA and been done with it. But I guess Nvidia paid for this inclusion.

vultureuk · February 2014

is this all cards or just top end cards

howitzer001 · February 2014

I believe one of the biggest factors in Neverwinter's performance is definitely the 3 following:

1. Move away from mechanical hard drives (buy an SSD)
2. Have a CPU that is at least quad-core & Intel based.
3. Not using an AMD / Radeon GPU.

My work laptop is using a 2.5ghz Dual-core Intel, 6 GB RAM, 7200RPM W.Digital HDD, and an Nvidia GTX 260M. I can run Neverwinter but I have to turn stuff way, way down to achieve tolerable FPS in Protector's Enclave (STILL quite playable - just not as pretty).

My home desktop has a 3.2 ghz quad-core Intel, 12 GB DDR3, Two Corsair SSD drives (one runs games, the other runs Windows), and an EVGA GTX680 Signature. On this machine, I can run any game, I mean any game, on absolute maxed settings and achieve 60 FPS with the need to force VSync to keep temps optimal.

I can tell you that the SSD made one of the biggest leaps in performance for me in gaming FPS. I remember when I first purchased an SSD it was when I was playing RIFT. That game took up a lot of system resources and I found that my #1 bottleneck was the mechanical hard drive. Since the drive can only read as fast as it can spin, my other components like my RAM, video card, and CPU were going way faster and it caused my games to stutter at times. This was especially apparent when using high-res textures i.e. - huge files that were being accessed off the hard drive in order to be rendered on-screen.

Once I upgraded to a solid-state drive the difference was astonishing. Not only did my PC boot in less than 20 seconds (from 45-50 seconds before) but my games loaded super-fast. Download speeds went up as well because the SSD could write 450 to 550 MB per second compared to 50-80 on my mechanical drive. The games I played like RIFT noticed huge increases in FPS because files were accessed almost immediately and the bottleneck was gone.

I believe the same thing holds true for Neverwinter. It doesn't exactly have the most optimized of game engines compared to say... Bethesda's new Elder Scrolls online game engine (crappy game, amazing game engine btw).

wimpazoid · February 2014

BUG: Since the Shadowmantle patch went live, Anti-aliasing options are broken for AMD cards until now, still not fixed.

I made a post reporting it after the patch went live.

(handle withheld) wrote:

Hey Wimp, I'm having the exact issue. Your post is absolutely the only thing I have found on this. Have you found a way to address this? I have removed gameprefs and restarted multiple times. No luck. Super frustrating.

I also got the graphics settings reset on first login, since then the graphics settings stick on subsequent logins but I've noticed Anti-aliasing no longer works.

The settings for Anti-aliasing doesn't stick and the options have become glitchy. When I try to select any choice, none/MSAA, 2x/4x/8x, the selected option will display something random or the word [UNTRANSLATED]. Example, I choose MSAA on the None/MSAA option, and after clicking, it displays 2x being chosen but can also display any of the None/MSAA/2x/4x/8x/[UNTRANSLATED]. 2x isn't even a selectable option for that choice of None/MSAA, despite it being displayed as chosen. Likewise, choosing between 2x/4x/8x can also display None or MSAA or [UNTRANSLATED] being chosen.

But despite any of the options chosen or displayed as chosen, the effect of Anti-aliasing does not apply visually.

For reference, my card is an AMD HD7870 Radeon.

elewyndyl · February 2014

howitzer001 wrote: »

I believe one of the biggest factors in Neverwinter's performance is definitely the 3 following:
1. Move away from mechanical hard drives (buy an SSD)
2. Have a CPU that is at least quad-core & Intel based.
3. Not using an AMD / Radeon GPU.

Ok let me address these things and I am an IT professional.
1. SSD greatest benefit comes from how fast Windows start and yes it can load faster games that is installed on the SSD drive. SSD does not improve FPS or gaming speed really during gameplay.
2. Quadcore is great but not necessary for Neverwinter even the Gauntlgrym part. Look at my CPU above it is IVY generation I5 CPU and it has great performance. General advice for rule is that it rarely is not wise to get i3(unless you are poor and struggle to get your living then ok I understand want to get i3), since the cost you save money is very little. Therefore my conclusion is that I5 at least if you go INTEL is good to do.
3. AMD/Radeon GPU can have great performance and there are many good Nvidia and AMD graphiccards.

Finally my casual friend that has 4GB ram has said that his computer swap memory annoyingly. I am not sure if 6GB or 8GB is optimal, but I have 8GB RAM and that is pretty perfect for most modern games.

For desktops here comes I5 Intel CPU on this page:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-3.html

However on laptops I5 does not mean usually 4 cores. My laptop above mentioned above is I5 IVY CPU(with 2 cores) and runs Neverwinter Gauntlgrym with excellent performance in TURBO mode that overclocks it to more then 3Ghz!

bajornorbert · February 2014

elewyndyl wrote: »

Ok let me address these things and I am an IT professional.
1. SSD greatest benefit comes from how fast Windows start and yes it can load faster games that is installed on the SSD drive. SSD does not improve FPS or gaming speed really during gameplay.
2. Quadcore is great but not necessary for Neverwinter even the Gauntlgrym part. Look at my CPU above it is IVY generation I5 CPU and it has great performance. General advice for rule is that it rarely is not wise to get i3(unless you are poor and struggle to get your living then ok I understand want to get i3), since the cost you save money is very little. Therefore my conclusion is that I5 at least if you go INTEL is good to do.
3. AMD/Radeon GPU can have great performance and there are many good Nvidia and AMD graphiccards.

Finally my casual friend that has 4GB ram has said that his computer swap memory annoyingly. I am not sure if 6GB or 8GB is optimal, but I have 8GB RAM and that is pretty perfect for most modern games.

For desktops here comes I5 Intel CPU on this page:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-3.html

However on laptops I5 does not mean usually 4 cores. My laptop above mentioned above is I5 IVY CPU(with 2 cores) and runs Neverwinter Gauntlgrym with excellent performance in TURBO mode that overclocks it to more then 3Ghz!

1. SSD can improve FPS in some games when you don't have enough VRAM and/or RAM for it to keep the textures necessary for rendering in memory. Also Neverwinter has On-demand patching enabled by default and it can stream files while you are playing, which usually causes lag.

2. CPU really makes a difference for this game, since it's very heavy on the CPU. I'd recommend getting an Intel CPU for this game even if it's just an i3, you'll have much higher FPS than with an AMD CPU. I have a guildmate who has almost the same config as i do, the only difference is that he has an 3rd gen i5 (can't remember the exact model) while i have an FX-4100 and he has an HD6870 while i have an HD6850. Very small difference between the two GPUs, if any, since i run my GPU overclocked and yet he has much better FPS.

3. This game is optimized for nVidia, anyone with a mid-range nVidia GPU can run this game without a problem, while even an R9 290x will have problems in certain areas. One such area is MC, if you're playing in DX11 and have SSAO and DoF enabled. Unfortunately the programmers of this game completely ignored/s people with AMD GPUs.

4. This game requires 8GB of RAM, otherwise you'll have massive lag in certain areas, like the zone with the 2 driders after the first campfire in TOS. They might have fixed some of this places when module 2 was release but i know for sure that the only ones lagging there was the ones with less than 8GB of RAM. Also, this game suffers from memory leaks, so no matter what PC you have you'll start getting lower and lower FPS if you play for more than a few hours.

My recommended system requirements for this game would look like this:
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1 64bit
CPU: 2nd gen Intel Core i5 or better | AMD FX-6300 or better
RAM: 8GB or more
GPU: nVidia 650 Ti or better | AMD Radeon HD7850 or better
Storage: 10GB+ free space (On-Demand patching disabled); SSD prefered

That's what you need to have acceptable FPS in 1080p. With the above config you'll still get sub 30fps in some, if not most of the areas.

neoyoshi · March 2014

kattefjaes wrote: »

Actually, I just tried the TXAA, and it looks pretty awful. It just makes everything look really soft, like badly upscaled video.

Not only that, but to use it, you have to enable the DX11 renderer. NW's DX11 renderer still doesn't work properly. If you tab out and back, it doesn't stay in fullscreen, and also, it doesn't successfully enable vsync, which is anathema to those of us who hate tearing.

It's annoying, as the DX11 looks loads nicer, with lots of pretty volumetric glows and the like, and seems to be higher performance overall.. it's just not finished, and has a lot of very long-standing bugs. I'm surprised that NVidia haven't kicked off at being made to look like muppets by how buggy this renderer is right now

Yeah, i still run into really whacky bugs within the video options UI when switching between MSAA and TXAA - sometimes it'll say: UNTRANSLATED or Option Damaged, which always cracks me up.

But experiencing DX11 is like one of those things that a person cannot undo, i just could never go back to DX9 after experiencing things like PhysX-controlled debris and Volumetric lights and shadows.

It'll be great to see how much Cryptic could polish some of these things within the (hopefully) near-future, because honestly, TXAA just doesn't look all that shiny to me.

To me, it would be really nice to see the softness around the edges of objects that TXAA creates, while keeping the Crisp visuals of MSAA.

Or i guess we could just throw in FXAA and be done with it....wait, someone already typed this earlier didn't they? XD

mareatlanticum · March 2014

I also have rig with i7-4770k and G 780Ti. Only way I have noticed to get the game run smoothly enough is by running Geforce Experience for optimal or one le ss setting and then sliding manually all the distance/quality sliders back to 100. If the settings are above that, there will be memory issues, uncorrect weird lightning, graphical glitces (like mount coming from "cloud" of gray squares) and fps slowdowns.

Haven't really been too large issue though, as the game is quite playable with those settings too, as Mage can't target that far anyways... :P

arin0fdale · May 2014

''deleted''

NVIDIA introduces TXAA Anti-Aliasing technology into Neverwinter!

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