[Nexus 5 Original Android Development] Hanny:
MSAA, Multi sample anti-aliasing is just something similar to the anti-aliasing filter settings on your PC games. Smoothing edges and improving graphics quality, which makes your eyes feel better when looking at it. However, it theoretically requires extra computing power for that kind of process, and theoretically gives lower FPS.

There should be a few possible reasons for the observations of you guys to happen:

1. Originally (with MSAA off), there are actually better frames per second, but the graphics of the game is coded so bad that every single frame's video quality is seriously distorted or dispositioned that makes your eyes feel bad, and the next frame the dispositioned graphics go to somewhere else again, which therefore makes u feel "lag".

2. The frames per second is indeed lower with MSAA off and is higher with MSAA on. Then it is because of the game itself coded badly that the process of MSAA can "fix" the underlying problem in that game, and produce better frames per second. This cause can also be device-specific, that it might not happen on your other devices but on the Nexus 5.

3. is something related to the kernel. but if other games on the phone is behaving well with franco kernel, then its even more unlikely for this to be the cause.​

I don't have N5 and don't play fifa so... these are my theoretical assumptions as I see no one was answering the question.

However, in order to test the possibility of no.3, I would do this:

Note: We cannot modify the behaviour of stock kernel so take a note how mpdecision works on N5 with System Monitor. (usually it should be 4 cores running from X mhz (which is 1026 on N4) to the max freq, and with a touch boost of max freq)

1) Go to stock kernel, MSAA off, play the game, record the FPS. (FPS meter)

2) Stay on stock kernel, MSAA on, play the game, any difference on FPS?

BETTER (like what you guys are seeing now) - game problem, not kernel related

SAME which is high - might be related to the kernel

3) Flash franco.kernel, MSAA off, change the CPU behaviour to mpdecision style. (hotplug threshold 0, min and max freq according to mpdecision, touch boost max freq). How is the FPS in comparison to results obtained in (1)?

SAME / HIGHER = -> Go to step 4

LOWER = the problem lies on the kernel, franco might need to revert some changes -> Test finished

4) Now change back to franco's default values, MSAA still off, How's the FPS in comparison to (3)?

LOWER than (3) = its just the kernel settings making it performing slower than stock, read below

SAME as (3) = kernel settings have no problem, it is the game's problem and is unrelated to the kernel.

And that's it, FIFA14 solved.​

And if its not kernel problem, and turning on force 4x MSAA is the tweak for you in FIFA, trust the reason why it belongs in dev options and not enabled by default, and expect the following to happen, when playing some other games:

1. lower FPS

2. phone gets hot faster -> thermal throttling -> even lower FPS

3. you will not notice significantly better graphics, and hence the only reason for enabling it would be playing FIFA

(Answering general questions like the one from davidbar93)

Furthermore, as same as franco.kernels on other Nexuses, for gamers who don't exactly know what the tweakings mean, just do these to make any game smoother:

1) up the touch boost freq

2) down the timer_rate in governor settings from 25000 (which is the default since r11) back to 20000, this 5k difference is the tricky spot between battery and gaming.

3) has the GPU-load 4 cores functionality be implemented yet? if not, down the hotplug threshold, 10 at a time.

Enjoy gaming on the N5 powered by franco :D