Higher AA vs. Higher Resolution

[dreamtfk]

Which would result in better performance?

[Michael Warren]

It depends on the game that your playing, how much VRAM you have, what card you have, and the increments of the resolution.

[Gnufsh]

Which would result in better performance?
Both will result in worse performance, but will look better. Why not try each of them and see which one works best for you?

[Cobalt]

I personally prefer higher resolution. I still apply a low AA but usually only 2x rather than 4x or 6x. For some games like Oblivion resolution doesn't matter so much and you can afford to run them at say 1024 with high AA and get a better image than 1600 with low AA. For the most part I run at 1280 with 2x HQ AA and thats enough for me in most modern games. Obvioulsy I will up it if I can run like that but for me fps is king and I'm not so picky about my edges :p. I never notice alising unless I'm at a low res anyway and 2x is sufficient for my needs. It varys though depending on how much it bothers you personally.

As to performance I would that that with enough vram AA would take less of a hit but thats just a guess as I have only used 256MB cards for a while now where 6x AA will normally give me a huge hit compared to upping the res a bit on modern games. I run 6x @1600 on my older games like UT which is very nice :D

[dguy6789]

Higher resolution provides an a higher image quality than what is shown with anti aliasing. AA only blurs out the jaggies. A higher resolution adds more pixels to the screen and makes them smaller. With more pixels and a decreased size, there is a reduction of the visibility of jaggies, and there is also an increase in image clarity.

As to which would affect performance the most, it really depends on your video card.

[Spoudazo]

Higher resolution removes "jaggies" (at 1920x1440+, etc.) but if you have a huge screen, then you'll have more jaggies!

Basically a 13" monitor would look jaggy free (or just about) at 1280x960/1024 but a 30" screen would look rather bad at that same resolution.

I like to play games at 1600x1200 at the very least. I usually play all Source games (HL2, DOD:S, etc) at 2048x1536, though my monitor only does it at 60hz (doesn't hurt my eyes in game, just while browsing the web, etc.)

Usually anti-aliasing doesn't make things look "fuzzy" unless you enable transparent AA or whatever the proper name is. :)
If it's a fast moving game, aliasing will be less apparent as well. ;)

[DareDevil_747]

From what I have heard basically (this is for the higher end cards) if you have an ATI, use AA, if you have a Nvidia, use higher res., as they do not perform AA and AF as good as x1800 - x1900 ATI cards do, but the 20 - 24 pipes (7800 - 7900) help them with higher resolutions.
I try to run most of my games at 1400x1050 with 2xQ AA and 16X AF. When I have to lower res, or that one isnt available, I use 1280x960 w/ 4x AA and 16x AF. On newer games that require more horsepower (GR:AW for example) I use 1024x768 (I hate it :( ) with 2x AA and 4x AF. Cant wait to get my x1900xt :D

[drshivas]

Depends on the game. I read that the F.E.A.R. developers recommend running the game at a lower resolution with eye candy and AA turned up rather than higher resolution at medium/low settings.