Nvidia MSAA and MFAA

Few days ago nvidia released drivers that support MFAA.

Games with MFAA Support:

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, Civilization V, Civilization: Beyond Earth, DiRT Showdown, DiRT 3 GRID Autosport, F1 2013, F1 2014, Far Cry 3, Far Cry: Blood Dragon, GRID2, Wargame: European Escalation, Hitman: Absolution, Just Cause 2, Saints Row IV, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Titanfall.

I only have a few of the games on here installed to test out, tested it in Civilization 5 but visually it did nothing to improve anything, just gave me around a 10-30 fps hit enabling MFAA depending on the amount of AA used.

Civ V 2xMSAA 1080p MFAA off - 333fps

Civ V 2xMSAA 1080p MFAA ON - 302fps

Noticed no quality difference in screenshots by having MFAA turned on, just a fps hit. Same when I tried 4xAA and 8xAA with or without MFAA.

I also used just plan 4xMSAA with no mfaa and got 306fps, so even if 2xMSAA with MFAA is supposed to give you visually near 4xMSAA quality, i couldn't see it even using zooming in closely and looking for edges from screenshots I took. Regular 4xMSAA (no mfaa) was much smoother then 2xMSAA with MFAA ON, makes MFAA useless in this test.

Anyone tried MFAA and noticed any quality improvement? I wish i had more games on that list to test out, I tried Saints Row 4 but it didn't look any different either, and I couldn't even tell if it was enabled cause the fps cap out at 140-142 fps for me on any or no AA setting.

Someone test out MFAA on another game on that list and tell me it actually is good for something, so far it looks like it doesn't do anything.

I thought MFAA was just supposed to look like MSAA but doesn't give as much FPS hit. I don't think it's supposed to look any better, if anything, it probably looks worse - it just should run better I believe.

EDIT: Little research proves me right

NVIDIA's goal with MFAA is to provide quality that approaches the level of 4xMSAA with 4xMFAA (or 8xMSAA using 8xMFAA), with a performance cost closer to 2xMSAA/4xMSAA respectively.

Source and charts

If those benchmarks are accurate then somethings wrong with MFAA Civ 5. Cause I got the opposite, and i couldn't believe it at first either so i closed the game and loaded it again 4 times each time with MFAA on and off.

I wish i had more of those games to try out to see if the opposite would happen to me on those other ones.

Dragon Age: Inquisition should be on that MFAA list too. The latest Nvidia Driver added DA:I.

MFAA support and basic driver support may be mutually exclusive things (otherwise I'd imagine them just saying all games work with MFAA because all games have basic NVIDIA driver support).

Well, yes and no. Haha. Nvidia driver 344.75 is the game ready Nvidia drivers for Far Cry 4, Dragon Age Inquisition, The Crew, and they denounced MFAA to ensure better performance for those games. Before 344.75, MFAA wasn't even an option in the 3D settings. The OP is talking about 344.75, so if anything they would support these latest games more so than something like Crysis 3 which no one cares about now. :P

http://www.incgamers.com/2014/11/nvidia-344-75-drivers-released-for-far-cry-4-dragon-age-inquisition

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/194629-analyzing-nvidias-new-aa-can-mfaa-improve-image-quality-without-a-frame-rate-hit

I don't think they're meant to be exclusive for any game, as much as to say, which developer would bother to support MFAA. So granted Nvidia and "said" developers work together to ensure it is available for their game. You could almost take a guess which developers would bother to work with Nvidia to have their game support MFAA. Surely, Far Cry 4, DA:I, would be developers that would want MFAA in their games. Not so much a matter of exclusivity, but more like which developers care about their customer's satisfaction and support.

Nvidia has made this very clear that it is what developers are willing to do in their end. They are always open to provide the support given the developer initiates it and goes through with having a specific feature like SLi be available for their game.

If I find that Bioshock Infinite doesn't support MFAA, I'm not going to flinch. That game runs well already, maxed.

Edit: I think I just repeated what you said. Lol. But yeah, if anything MFAA was mainly for the latest releases, I'm sure. If I can get a chance to test it out tonight, I'll report back.