Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]

[Lurkmass]

No, integrated graphics are not going away at any point in the hypothetical future.

No one said they were but from now on (outside of the very 'best') they'll become auxillery to any high-end technical games and there's a "world of difference" between the latest Xbox/PS hardware and something else like the Switch/Steam Deck since support for the latter by AAA game developers wasn't really taken in any serious capacity for extended periods ...

The "hardware convergence movement" that nearly everyone else so desired here between console and PC platforms ultimately means that any unlike systems will be eventually driven off to the cliff of extinction since it's industry consensus to move to ever more powerful/capable hardware and much of the future of ultraportable devices won't be looking so good ...

 

[homerdog]

No one said they were but from now on (outside of the very 'best') they'll become auxillery to any high-end technical games and there's a "world of difference" between the latest Xbox/PS hardware and something else like the Switch/Steam Deck since support for the latter by AAA game developers wasn't really taken in any serious capacity for extended periods ...

The "hardware convergence movement" that nearly everyone else so desired here between console and PC platforms ultimately means that any unlike systems will be eventually driven off to the cliff of extinction since it's industry consensus to move to ever more powerful/capable hardware and much of the future of ultraportable devices won't be looking so good ...

An NVIDIA handheld could offer a decent experience IMO. With DLSS4 (SR and FG) it could render way fewer pixels than current consoles and still get acceptable results for a tiny screen. Not a premium solution but consider that the most popular console on the market is way slower than a PS4..

I'm not necessarily referring to the Switch 2 since it's Nintendo Cheap™. But a handheld with a Lovelace or Blackwell GPU might be surpisingly capable.

 

[Lurkmass]

An NVIDIA handheld could offer a decent experience IMO. With DLSS4 (SR and FG) it could render way fewer pixels than current consoles and still get acceptable results for a tiny screen. Not a premium solution but consider that the most popular console on the market is way slower than a PS4..

I'm not necessarily referring to the Switch 2 since it's Nintendo Cheap™. But a handheld with a Lovelace or Blackwell GPU might be surpisingly capable.

Sure but then developers will use similar tricks/hacks for current consoles as well even if they're more suboptimal and then soon things will spiral out of control to the point where even Microsoft will have to seriously consider dropping Series S compatibility altogether. Can a theoretical system such as the one even you propose built with current technology be able to cross that very high threshold ?

Nintendo can shore up whatever left overs that remain in the portable space because they WANT to be in a different world (NOT generic high-powered stationary box) from the rest of the industry!

 

[arandomguy]

I'm bit a confused what the context of this discussion this? For the latest "high end technical games" and users looking to play them at those settings were for the most part opting for discrete graphics cards since basically the late 90s. So status quo will remain status quo?

 

[homerdog]

Sure but then developers will use similar tricks/hacks for current consoles as well even if they're more suboptimal and then soon things will spiral out of control to the point where even Microsoft will have to seriously consider dropping Series S compatibility altogether. Can a theoretical system such as the one even you propose built with current technology be able to cross that very high threshold ?

Nintendo can shore up whatever left overs that remain in the portable space because they WANT to be in a different world (NOT generic high-powered stationary box) from the rest of the industry!

Currently there is no comparable substitute for DLSS. If/when that changes it will be a different story. But it's been years now and NVIDIA's lead has only gotten bigger. Looking forward to FSR4 but we don't know how good it will be and it won't be running on current consoles.

 

[Lurkmass]

Currently there is no comparable substitute for DLSS. If/when that changes it will be a different story. But it's been years now and NVIDIA's lead has only gotten bigger. Looking forward to FSR4 but we don't know how good it will be and it won't be running on current consoles.

Who implied anything about current consoles being forced to always run higher resolutions from the get go ? Why not just have them run the game's graphics at already low resolutions ? Afterall there's no contract where developers must promise to ship above a specific minimum xyz resolution ...

Then what will Nvidia do with their own handheld since dropping to even lower resolutions will have diminishing returns thereafter ? Where would the other room to scrape by come from ?

 

[DavidGraham]

I'm bit a confused what the context of this discussion this? For the latest "high end technical games" and users looking to play them at those settings were for the most part opting for discrete graphics cards since basically the late 90s. So status quo will remain status quo?

The context is that Lurkmass repeatedly proposed that the current NVIDIA graphics trajectory is unsustainable, and that Sony will go the custom hardware route, and AMD will go the "WorkGraph" route and try to stifle the progress of machine learning and path tracing.

However Sony doubled down on ray tracing and machine learning with the PS5 Pro, and AMD fully embraced path tracing and machine learning upscaling and denoising, they even embraced the Cooperative Vectors API for Neural Rendering, meaning Sony will follow suit eventually. So any hardware that doesn't fully embrace this convergence is going to be biting the dust.

The "hardware convergence movement" that nearly everyone else so desired here between console and PC platforms ultimately means that any unlike systems will be eventually driven off to the cliff of extinction since it's industry consensus to move to ever more powerful/capable hardware and much of the future of ultraportable devices won't be looking so good ...

 

[GhostofWar]

Alex has his first look at fsr4 up.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Alex has his first look at fsr4 up.

That's an amazing result for FSR4 is it holds up across other games. Better than DLSS CNN! I really didn't expect that. Still a way behind DLSS TNN overall but even exceeding that in some limited areas. Superb show from AMD there. If there AI denoiser can hold up then we might finally have some real competition outside of the ultra high end.

 

[GhostofWar]

That's an amazing result for FSR4 is it holds up across other games. Better than DLSS CNN! I really didn't expect that. Still a way behind DLSS TNN overall but even exceeding that in some limited areas. Superb show from AMD there. If there AI denoiser can hold up then we might finally have some real competition outside of the ultra high end.

Yeh my only concern is it's the things we saw pssr shown with, if it doesn't hit the snags that did it's a pretty good win. AMD are getting there, slower than we may like but they are getting there.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

That's an amazing result for FSR4 is it holds up across other games. Better than DLSS CNN! I really didn't expect that. Still a way behind DLSS TNN overall but even exceeding that in some limited areas. Superb show from AMD there. If there AI denoiser can hold up then we might finally have some real competition outside of the ultra high end.

Really something "in between CNN and Transformer DLSS" is the absolute best I could hoped for, and they delivered. This is great news.

 

[iroboto]

That's an amazing result for FSR4 is it holds up across other games. Better than DLSS CNN! I really didn't expect that. Still a way behind DLSS TNN overall but even exceeding that in some limited areas. Superb show from AMD there. If there AI denoiser can hold up then we might finally have some real competition outside of the ultra high end.

Its absolutely fantastic. It reminds me of when Zen 1 was released. It was the turning point for AMD in the CPU space.

This was the right move for them here. Very hopeful for their next release which I imagine they are preparing UDNA for.

 

[trinibwoy]

Really something "in between CNN and Transformer DLSS" is the absolute best I could hoped for, and they delivered. This is great news.

That’s way better than I expected from AMD’s first try at ML upscaling. It’s a fantastic result and hopefully means great things for the next console generation.

No mention of ML denoising in the video. Maybe that’s a follow up?

 

[DavidGraham]

No mention of ML denoising in the video. Maybe that’s a follow up?

There is none at the moment for FSR.

 

[Cyan]

Alex has his first look at fsr4 up.

glad to know AMD is back. I've been disliking them for the last several years, since the RX 470 era -I had one of those and it was a quite good GPU for the price-

 

[Charlietus]

Hopefully, the "upscaling bad, native good" comments can finally stop for good

 

[Cyan]

No mention of ML denoising in the video. Maybe that’s a follow up?

would love to see also comparisons in pure rasterizing scenarios. afaik, the tensor cores equivalents of the new AMD RDNA 4 can also be used for rasterizing, not just RT.

 

[trinibwoy]

Hopefully, the "upscaling bad, native good" comments can finally stop for good

We can only hope..

There is none at the moment for FSR.

Ok, surprised Alex didn’t mention it.

 

[Below2D]

Alex has his first look at fsr4 up.

@Dictator Any reason why DLSS4 is so heavy in Rift Apart? You did a previous video and summarized the cost of the Transformer model and it's not that high. DLSS4 taking the game from 130 fps to 105 fps doesn't seem normal.

 

[QPlayer]

Hopefully, the "upscaling bad, native good" comments can finally stop for good

So, FSR4 and DLSS4 = Quality

Now, you can open a topic about "Upscaling tech becoming the holy grail"

What a change!