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Nvidia flags on the wiki (AA, HBAO+, etc.)


Garrett
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BONKERS mentioned wanting to cover Nvidia flags for specific types of AA/HBAO+/etc.; flags are apparently very popular so it might be time to have some sort of standardised way for the wiki to present these flags and the related information for those looking for this. I'm not familiar with Nvidia flags (I currently have an AMD card) so I'm not sure about how to present such information.

 

Many new releases have some type of native ambient occlusion support so one possibility would be to make that an optional row in video settings that is hidden when empty/unknown (as with color blind mode) and then link to sections below video settings with some sort of mini-template containing the flags and associated notes.

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I definitely think we should add the Nvidia flags to the wiki. I often go looking for them and curse every time when I can't find them on the wiki. :-D (Though, I have finally bookmarked the Guru3d threads.)

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First of all: what are those nvidia flags?

I know you set them with nvidia inspector.. but why AMD (which I have) has nothing similar?

 

I'd usually try to look around on google, but let's take the opportunity: try to explain this to a first time noob user.

EDIT: it has

Edited by Mirh
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My(basic) understanding is that...

When an exe is launched and it requests whatever API it uses(DX, OpenGL), it 'contacts' the driver of your GPU, said GPU then provides whatever is needed by the game, the flags control the behaviour of what information is provided.

All of this could be completely wrong and I'm struggling to explain the concept in words anyway.

Running the exe, which then requests things from the GPU via the API triggers the GPU drivers and the driver looks if there's a relevant profile for the game, the profile tells what to do and what not to do for specific applications otherwise the driver will just give back generic intructions used by that API. This is why game profiles exist in GPU drivers.

(total speculation)

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First of all: what are those nvidia flags?

I know you set them with nvidia inspector.. but why AMD (which I have) has nothing similar?

 

I'd usually try to look around on google, but let's take the opportunity: try to explain this to a first time noob user.

NVIDIA flags are just compatibility bits. They are used for anti-aliasing, SLI, ambient occlusion etc. Basically they just tell the video driver how to render. Unfortunately only NVIDIA knows the real meaning/purpose of each bit. Optimal bits are usually provided by NVIDIA or found by the community via trial and error. In general, the games which share the same engine have similar or the same bits.

I don't know if AMD drivers have similar compatibility bits. But theoretically speaking, they must have.

 

I sometimes post specific fixes for anti-aliasing or similar things under video settings. And sometimes they include NVIDIA flags as well. I use the following sources when testing:

NVIDIA compatibility bits master thread and IQ guide

3DCenter Forum - SLI - Kompatibilitätsbits - Sammelthread

3DCenter Forum - Antialiasing - Kompatibilitätsbits - Sammelthread

HBAO+ Compatibility Flags Thread - Guru3D.com Forums

 

Might come in handy.

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I actually personally know the exact function of most bits.

This is one reason why i've been able to find fixes for a lot of games that are more troublesome to get the best quality available. (IE: Two Worlds II, Patrician IV, Final Fantasy XIII to name a few off the top of my head)

These hexadecimal values are just masks for functions within the driver that tell it to look for , how to apply AA and do certain things when these functions are assigned to any given driver profile.
(0-9, A-F. Each value may have one more functions combined. For example 0x000000C0 , the C is the combination of looking for RGBA8 Render Targets and Not downsampling AA'd Super buffers before being used for resolved. Take away RGBA8 and this ends up being a value of 8 instead. Do the opposite and IIRC it's a 4

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