What causes jagged lines (stair effect) in games??

CAMAROBOY69

CAMAROBOY69

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CAMAROBOY69
I am new to the entire PC gaming experience and I was wondering what causes the jagged lines (stair) effect when playing games.
1. Monitor?
2. Processor?
3. Game settings?
4. Video Card?
Here is a screen shot I took from Half Life 2 Lost Coast as an example. I have all the settings that I understand in the game set to high. I also got a new 19" monitor yesterday thinking that might also cure the problem but it didnt.
Any help would be appreciated. I will be getting a new PC with my income taxes so I would like to know as much as possible.
Sorry for the large image but I wanted you to see exactly what I was talking about. It is set to 1280x1024(LCD).
halflife2jagged9lu.jpg
 
yes turning up anti aliasing and/or raising resolution will reduce pixelation and jaggies.

Also your monitor quality plays a part. if you have a LCD monitor, supposedly DVI is much better quality than VGA. and crt vga looks much better than lcd vga.
 
right click your moues button..go to properties..then go to settings..then to advanced..then you will c all of your graphics settings.. if its a nvidia card press the logo and in the panel you will c the performance
+ quality setings look for (antialiasing)..options from 2..to 8
 
Turning up AA will cause a drop in frames, too much on a low spec PC. Or a PC with not medium specs or high specs for a game, will cause too much frame drop.

Which will make a game unplayable.
 
The best way to explain whats going on is like this.

What you are seeing is the edge of a polygon, this is what makes up all the 3D stuff in game (if you didnt already know), now your screen is made up of pixles (Fig a)

figa9lc.jpg
Fig a


Fig a is a 3*3 pixle image, and to display a polygon edge at any type of angle the screen has to display it like this (Fig b)

figb6bh.jpg
Fig b

Thats what creates the Jaggies, antialiasing is a technique used on a grey-scale or colour
bitmap display to make diagonal edges appear smoother by
setting pixels near the edge to intermediate colours
according to where the edge crosses them.

so this means that if you have an edge the computer takes that edge and makes the pixles on the outside of it fade out to the outside colour makeing them look less visible and at high antialiasing totaly invisible, but this takes processing power and thus makes your games move at slower framerates.

also another way to get rid of jaggies is by increasing the resolution that the game is displayed at, but obviously means that moving more pixles around on screen means slower framerates. so a good combination and tweaking can make a difference. also searching for more framerates elsware alows you to turn up the rez and AA.

Unless like said above you have a mega quad GPU PC with an FX60 X2 CPU.

And have 64bit CPU like me and other people.
Click to expand...

Dont make a difference unless using 64bit games on a 64bit OS. AKA win64 with HL2 64
 
TVR&Ferrari_Fan
Turning up AA will cause a drop in frames, too much on a low spec PC. Or a PC with not medium specs or high specs for a game, will cause too much frame drop.

Which will make a game unplayable.
Click to expand...


Dude, you seriously need to learn how to type proper English.
 
TVR&Ferrari_Fan
And have 64bit CPU like me and other people.
Click to expand...
Having a 64bit CPU over a 32bit one means NOTHING when you're running windows XP and 32bit programs. Lost Coast and Half-Life 2 can be 64bit... if you're running Windows XP Pro x64. Even then, the CPU has little to do with AA, it's all in the graphics card. And I notice very little differences between 64-bit Lost Coast and 32bit Loast Coast... I guess there's a tiny bit less stuttering OCCASIONALLY, but there's really no difference.
 
CAMAROBOY69
I am new to the entire PC gaming experience and I was wondering what causes the jagged lines (stair) effect when playing games.
1. Monitor?
2. Processor?
3. Game settings?
4. Video Card?
Here is a screen shot I took from Half Life 2 Lost Coast as an example. I have all the settings that I understand in the game set to high. I also got a new 19" monitor yesterday thinking that might also cure the problem but it didnt.
Any help would be appreciated. I will be getting a new PC with my income taxes so I would like to know as much as possible.
Sorry for the large image but I wanted you to see exactly what I was talking about. It is set to 1280x1024(LCD).
halflife2jagged9lu.jpg
Click to expand...

Open up your Catalyst Control Center. Press on VIEW and make it ADVANCED. Go to 3D, and ANTI ALIASING. Set it to whatever your motherboard allows, its probably 4x/8x, since your card is a AGP. Then in the ingame settings set it to the same amount. Your game might start to run a bit slow, since your computer isnt up to par, so i would drop the resolution down to 1024x768. It should look alot better.

Higher resolutions also get rid of Jaggy lines, but not that much, so its better to turn AA on your fullest.
 
TVR&Ferrari_Fan
And have 64bit CPU like me and other people.
Click to expand...

You say all these things about having a "Leet" computer yet you have never posted a screenshot above 800x600 settings and low settings?

Don't give us this crap anymore about the differing ram speed. If they differ, the faster one would merely run at the same speed as the slower one. It's common sense.

It's time to stop lying.
 
Integra Type R
Dude, you seriously need to learn how to type proper English.
Click to expand...
The internet is not real, ifs cyber space. I can speak english in real life, i just speak different on forums.

I have a life you know.

MdnIte I proved you wrong about the 6800GT, its time to prove you wrong about the 64bit CPU. And I do not lie about my specs, if you use 2 different types of ram.

It will make games unstable, thats what IT Experts say.
 
If the internet is not real, how are you accessing it?
Is it some sort of illusion that you have made up in your mind?

Back it up then. You have never proved nothing about the 6600GT to me. All you have shown is poor screenshots of your games, mentioning how you need to "balance" out eye candy and fps. Yet you have a more than capable video card.
 
TVR&Ferrari_Fan
if you use 2 different types of ram.

It will make games unstable, thats what IT Experts say.
Click to expand...
IT experts deal with networking, not hardware.

If you're going to lie, atleast make an attempt to be correct.
 
MdnIte
If the internet is not real, how are you accessing it?
Is it some sort of illusion that you have made up in your mind?

Back it up then.
Click to expand...
The internet is not real, because you cannot walk onto it or into it. The internet is also not land, real life is stuff you can walk on.

And you were saying:

http://img480.imageshack.us/img480/4659/screenhunter288ps.jpg

Also when in multiplayer what would you rather have speed, for like great gameplay while getting the correct scores. Or having less frames, while getting killed more. One more thing I am running high latency DDR2700 ram.
 
Oh, you want to going into what's real and what's not?
The internet is not real, because you cannot walk onto it or into it. The internet is also not land, real life is stuff you can walk on.
Click to expand...

Once again, if it's not real, why do you use it? You can't use anything that's not real because it does not exist, am I right?
The internet may not be land, but people pay monthly/yearly to use it, so unless these people are paying for something that does not exist, I'd like to see your reasoning for it. From your perspective I could say your not real ( I hope) and that your a figment of my imagination.

And about your specs, at least you posted them. I have no arguments against your specs, since you actually backed it up.

Finally, as MistaX said, IT experts a network/software guys that fiddle with software. Unless linked otherwise, your statement is unbacked and unfounded.
 
WOw I should have checked this thread again over the weekend while I was at home. Thank you for the replies. I learned a lot from this thread. I will mess with all of the settings that were mentioned in here some time this week when I get a chance. I am sure once I get my new PC and I can run thru the DVI cord that I wont have any problems. Just wanted to see what was up for options and now I have several to try. Thanks again. I will post if I get rid of the jagged lines. 👍
 
Integra Type R
What do you think the internet is? Some magical place where people with horrible English typing skills gather to commune?
Click to expand...
That's AOL :lol:.
 

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