How to improve the graphic quality of games through supersampling

When asked what is the ideal resolution for a PC game, most gamers will immediately answer "the maximum that your monitor can support", the obvious answer because, after all, there would be no point in rendering graphics that are higher than your own. team can produce or does it? How to improve the graphic quality of games through supersampling.

What is supersampling and what benefits does it have?

Now that PC game developers have become adept at making their games run at 60 frames per second even on inexpensive hardware, a new technique has emerged to make games look better, what we call supersampling, or oversampling, whose Basic essence is that the game renders your graphics at a resolution higher than what the monitor can display and then reduces it to the original resolution. The benefit is that the graphics are seen at a much higher level of detail, avoiding some basic drawbacks such as so-called sawtooth and light fixtures.

AMD Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 WHQL bring the alternative to Nvidia's Fast Sync

This can be achieved in other ways with more complex smoothing techniques, but today's GPUs have enough power to dispense with subtlety and go for the best solution for visual quality. The downside, of course, is that the graphics card has to work harder to render super-high-resolution graphics and then shrink the image to fit on the screen, giving you a loss in performance.

The following image shows the result in Overwatch with a rendering resolution that matches that of the screen on the left and a 200% oversampling technique on the right, which means rendering the scene at 4K resolution (3840 × 2160). In both cases, the same monitor with 1080p resolution has been used.

How to activate supersampling

There are two basic ways to achieve supersampling: through the graphics card driver, or through the game itself. Only a few games support the last option at this time, so in most cases we will have to resort to the graphics card driver.

Best processors on the market (2017)

In the case of Nvidia users, they only need to open the Nvidia Control Panel, then click " Adjust the size and position of the desktop " to check the option " Override the scaling mode established by games and programs " in section 2. The next step is to click “ Change resolution ” under the “Display” column on the left side. Click on " Customize " and then " Create custom resolution ".

We will have to set a higher resolution than our monitor, but respecting the aspect ratio: 16: 9 for most widescreen displays, 16:10 for some rarer displays and 4: 3 for older CRT and CRT monitors. So, for example, if your regular monitor has a resolution of 1920 × 1080 (which is a 16: 9 ratio), you can add a new resolution to 2560 × 1440, or upload it to a 4K resolution of 3840 × 2160, both of which keep 16: 9 ratio.

It remains only to click " test " to see if the monitor will accept the new resolution showing a blank screen or an error message. If the test is successful you will have a new resolution option in Windows Display Settings (right click on the desktop, then click on "Display Settings").

AMD's implementation of this technique is called “Virtual Super Resolution” and is compatible with Radeon HD 7790 and newer GPUs. This option includes several enhanced resolutions that change based on the available power of the card.

The AMD implementation is also a bit easier to use than Nvidia's. Just go to Radeon Settings, click " Display " and then change the option " Virtual Super Resolution " to " On ". Games should be able to adjust to resolutions higher than the maximum Windows resolution without affecting the actual system configuration.

Some recent games allow you to render game elements with a resolution higher than the native maximum. The exact location of the settings will vary from game to game, but is usually found in the " Display " or " Graphics " section.

Howtogeek font