Newer chipset gives revised iPad 2 longer battery life

Apple announce it would continue selling the iPad 2 for $399 along with its new tablet. The company, however, did not mention any changes to the iPad 2. The...

The nuclear Boy Scout and his homemade nuclear reactor

In 1994 a Boy Scout by the name of David Hahn created one of his most loved fascination: a homemade nuclear reactor. Hahn, 17 at the time, was more than...

Tera Online: A quick look and screen shots

Last weekend marked the last closed beta for Tera Online and we had an opportunity to grab some screen shots of our Elin character we tried out. Graphic...

Unlocking the GTX-590 GPU BIOS voltage

Several Nvidia graphics cards are sold with locked voltages, and for good reason. The problem, however, is this prevents stable overclocks when attempting...

Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard

The G13 Advanced Gameboard is Logitech’s answer to gamers needs. It’s a fantastic light-weight, portable alternative for gamers who don’t want...

Rosewill Thor V2 Computer Case

Rosewill , the company behind quality hardware and affordable cases, debuted the redesigned Thor-V2 case earlier this year and has since become one of the...

Electronic Arts: Battlefield 3

As one of the most anticipated games released by EA (Electronic Arts), Battlefield 3 sets itself apart from its rivals with a great story-line and game play....

iMapWeather Radio App for iPhone

Weather can have horrifying results, and that might be putting it mildly. Its devastation is beyond words and 2011 showed us some terrifying results across...

Bring “2x Sparse Grid Supersampling” Anti-Aliasing to SWTOR

Published: December 28, 2011
By: Scott Mikules

With huge success and millions of subscribers signing up for BioWare’s latest game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, fans can’t wait to sink their Light-sabers into the games’ lore. There is just one problem: the game options currently do not support any Anti-Aliasing settings. (yet)

Currently AMD (ATI) graphics cards can “force” the Anti-Aliasing settings through the cards drivers without problem. Nvidia fans are not so fortunate and currently left in a dark by its driver developer’s hands as the company continues to update drivers for Skyrim–with no word as to when they can expect some love for SWTOR. (yes, that was a hint of anger)

That said; there is hope for those looking to bring out even more enhancements to the hot new game, and one that doesn’t come at a huge performance cost if your system is top-notch. In our last article we showed a simple, low performance cost method to enabling Anti-Aliasing, along with Anisotropy. In this article we’re going to show you how to gain even more Anti-Aliasing using the Transparency setting: Sparse Grid Supersampling!

Sparse Grid Supersampling, to keep things simple, enhances blades of grass, chain linked fencing and further distant objects than standard Anti-Aliasing settings. But, as said, it comes at a performance cost as more processing power is required on the GPU end. For the sake of performance and gaining a little more clarity quality to the game, we’re going to be using “2x Sparse Grid Supersampling”. (those running x3- SLI, or x4-SLI can push this to 4x without much effort – though 2x SGSS adds plenty of enhancement)

As hinted, this tweak is not meant for those with low-end system and is aimed at those running SLI systems accompanied by CPU powerhouse systems.

(be sure to add SWTOR to your Nvidia Control panel Profile before doing the following, and leave all settings through the Control panel set to defaults)

The first step is to download “Nvidia Inspector” here (our download is the latest version: 1.9.5.7). Nvidia Inspector allows users to heavily tweak the video cards driver profiles giving full control to behind the scene settings. It is very powerful, and we understand not everyone will understand the gist of the software—so we’re going to keep this short and simple, and to the point. It is also worthy to note the importance of updating your Nvidia drivers to the latest qualified drivers, or if you’re a Beta-lover the latest Beta drivers, as Nvidia Inspector reads the Driver Profiles incorporated within the drivers.

Once Nvidia Inspector is download, extract the contents into a preferred location to run the file (there is no installation required for using the software, simply run the .exe itself). In our case we have a folder located on another hard drive, and simply created a shortcut on our desktop to the file location.