Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]
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Silent_Buddha
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Hmmm, for some reason I was thinking of the PS4/XBO generation, but you're right, that was one gen older. So, not hugely impressive, but impressive none-the-less.
Regards,
SB
Yeah it's still nice. Huge improvements across the board.
It's impressive from a power/TDP standpoint for sure, but there are examples of 360/ps3 titles being ported to switch and performing worse. The Saint's Row remaster comes to mind.
I guess it always depends on what is limiting. E.g. xb360 and PS3 had no really good CPUs but if the code was optimized it ran well. Therefore the CPUs had really high clock rates. This doesn't tell us really much off how efficient the design was, but the arm core in the switch is als not that great as it is even limited to a much lower frequency than the chip could do.
And that to PS3 most CPU tasks are more or less single thread limited on games from this gen (PS3 had only 1 core and than the other cores multiplat games didn't use that well). In the end we might have a situation where downscaled ps4/xb1 games could run better than upscaled ps360 games.
Also the switch does not have that much more raw power than the ps360 gen. So increasing picture quality can quite fast lead to other limiting factors. Even memory bandwidth can be limiting quite fast.
But yes, it is quite impressive that all this is possible with such a low energy requirement.
XeSS will bring ML upscaling to wider range of cards. Hopefully it is good, do we know if it works with DRS?
A lot of rich's observations are based on the fact that XSX doesn't have DLSS2.
What will be interesting is how XS compares to PS5 once XS has a title that is using it on there, as well as these types of XSX to PC comparisons.
D
Deleted member 86764
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Would be interesting to see the same machine tested intermittently over the course of the generation.
Silent_Buddha
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Only if you play games that support it, I don't currently play any games that support DLSS in any form. And only if you have a GPU that supports it, which in my case is a big fat no. But since I don't play any games that support DLSS, then it doesn't really matter if I do or don't have hardware that supports it.
I'm waiting to see if either MS, AMD, Intel, or someone else can come up with a more generic solution that is also easier to implement than DLSS. Because currently DLSS suffers from 2 problems, IMO. I don't mention NV here, because unlike when NV used to champion solutions that didn't lock you into one vendor's hardware, they are now the kings of vendor lock in. Thus they aren't at all interested in coming up with a solution that everyone could potentially use.
- Difficulty to implement appears to be high enough that the majority of developers just don't bother with it.
- This is especially true for AA and indie developers.
- This also happens to be where in many cases, it's the most needed as AA and indie developers don't have the time or manpower available to them to optimize their titles really well. Thus some kind of "plug and play" solution would be really helpful.
- This is especially true for AA and indie developers.
- It's currently only supported on hardware that basically costs around 1k USD or more if you can even find them available for sale.
Regards,
SB
Nvidia seems to have made progress in ease of implementation especially in of the shelf engines like unreal and unity.
Not sure how much easier you'll be able to make it though.
Maybe XeSS api will be easier but essentially all the inputs are the same, if a game has implemented TAAU then your more than half the way there.
Is that really the case regarding cost of DLSS supported cards? How much is something like 3060 RTX? Is that the lowest end RTX? If it really is that expensive then I assume even amd cards will be just as expensive.
If it's not supported by the games you play obviously be less beneficial e.g. puzzle games, but the take up is high especially for games that could really benefit from it.
Actually probably due to how easy they've made it implement in unreal and unity.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
When I just recently checked Amazon this morning, 3060's were going for just under 1k USD. So, still astronomically high, IMO.
I play mostly action games. For example, I don't think Psychonauts 2 had support for DLSS. Warframe doesn't have support for DLSS. Days Gone doesn't have support for DLSS. Sniper Elite 4 doesn't have DLSS. The Ascent didn't have DLSS. RDR2 just recently got DLSS, but it didn't have it when I played it for a couple weeks. Path of Exile doesn't have DLSS. The only game I played in the past year with DLSS was Cyberpunk 2077 and that was months ago.
I don't mind so much as I just reduce settings enough to where the games will run at 60 FPS. But the point is that even if I had a card that supported DLSS, it would be almost completely worthless to me.
Of course, YMMV, I'm sure there are plenty of people that play more games with DLSS support, but even then I'd be surprised if all of the games they played supported it.
It's nice tech, certainly, but it's hard to get excited for it when it doesn't currently benefit me, even if I had a card that supports it.
The next big AAA game I'm probably going to play is Halo: Infinite, and I don't even know if that will support DLSS.
Regards,
SB
Only if you play games that support it, I don't currently play any games that support DLSS in any form. And only if you have a GPU that supports it, which in my case is a big fat no. But since I don't play any games that support DLSS, then it doesn't really matter if I do or don't have hardware that supports it.
What games do you play ? DLSS games are coming out almost weekly for the last year or so. I would have to actively search and intentionally avoid DLSS games in order to not play games with it.
I understand your position. So far I haven't played a game where DLSS was visually stunning in any way. But maybe my monitor resolution with 1440p is to low for DLSS to use without using downscaling. E.g. Control was a blurry mess and you could always see low res artifacts as 1440p DLSS uses <1080p resolution to upscale.
The real benefit I see with something like DLSS is using DLSS as upscaler. E.g. I would use 1440p as base resolution and from there upscale the image-quality to the 4k (or whatever) target just to downscale it to my monitors pixels. So basic Downsampling.
But I really don't know why games so far don't have that option. You must always use the driver settings to let the game believe that the monitor offers 4k to get such and option.
I do this for some games. Well, not exactly this. Some games I think look better at the same internal resolution but upscaled to a higher resolution than my native monitor, and then scaled back down. Cyberpunk was one of those games. Jumping up a resolution tier and down a DLSS quality setting was basically a wash for performance, but looked cleaner than native monitor output with DLSS.
That's crazy prices, but I'm not sure I'd attribute the fact that it's RTX that's the cause. All cards haves overly inflated prices at the moment.
Not that, that helps you are anyone who wanted one of cause.
I'm pretty sure the accent has DLSS support,
Cyberpunk, RDR2 now has it. So from your list of games actually a pretty high percentage does support it.
Sure you can reduce settings that's always the case, but the point is for the same performance and IQ you can run at higher settings or fps.
I'm not here to sell you Nvidia card even though may sound like it (think last one I owned was riva), just that DLSS has had a big impact and use is growing significantly.
If xess is competitive then ML upscaling usage is bound to increase even more quickly.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
My most anticipated games for the next few months don't have any mention of DLSS support, Lost Ark and Halo: Infinite. One game I'm thinking of picking up and playing soon if I have the time is Aliens: Fireteam Elite (looks super fun) which also doesn't appear to have support for DLSS that I've seen.
List of games with support for high-fidelity image upscaling - Wikipedia
That may not be an exhaustive list of games with support for DLSS, but even if the actual released games count with DLSS support was twice that, it's still not that many. And you'll notice the list of games I've recently played don't have DLSS support or didn't when I played them, with the exception of Cyberpunk 2077.
As I've said before, I play mostly AA and indie games. And while they aren't generally as graphically intensive as AAA games, they are also generally not well optimized due to lack of manpower and funding. These are generally games that could use some kind of performance uplift. Hell, in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous performance can dip down quite heavily with multiple spell effects on (like say entangle with grease and a few enemies) to the point where it's impossible to use realtime combat without heavily reducing some settings and even in turn based mode it makes clicking on enemies difficult as the cursor becomes inaccurate due to low framerates. And god forbid if you then cast more spells into that area.
Oh, I forgot to add Yakuza: Like a Dragon to that list of games I've recently played without DLSS support. Speaking of which are there even any Sega published games with DLSS support? I don't see any at a quick glance. Same goes for Bandai Namco, and they could really use any help they could get as their PC ports often don't run all that well.
Regards,
SB
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
It doesn't matter "why" prices are the way they are, all that matters is that's kind of the entry price at the moment for a desktop GPU capable of using DLSS and that's what it's been for quite a while now. I'm dying to get a new video card, but not because of DLSS and not at those prices. HDMI 2.1 is the main attraction for a new video card because 120 Hz rendering will benefit me far more than me getting to use DLSS once or twice a year (with current game release cadence for games with DLSS support).
If The Ascent has DLSS now, it's only recently been added. It didn't have it at launch. It had RT support but no DLSS support. Looking at Reddit, it looks like there is now support for it but some people with 3060's couldn't activate it (option was greyed out).
So, just like RDR 2, it didn't have DLSS when I played it. And while I might go back to RDR 2 in the future, I already 100%-ed The Ascent and don't see myself playing it again. So, DLSS "might" be useful for me in RDR2 in the future, but it was completely worthless for me in The Ascent.
And again, I know that there are people that have played a lot more games than I have with DLSS support (like some of my friends) but even there DLSS support isn't remotely close to being universal in the games they've played in the past year. So, while there's been benefits, it's been spotty at best ... or not if you only buy games with DLSS support (which would lock you out of a LOT of really good games).
I'm not against DLSS, I think upscaling techniques will be increasingly valuable going forward. But it's not a selling point for me at the moment because not enough developers are implementing it ... which is one of the points I made about there needing to be an easier to implement upscaling technology than DLSS that is also able to be used on any hardware.
Regards,
SB
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As I said I don't disagree with the reason of high price making a difference to people who want a card. Just saying I don't think any card DLSS or otherwise being worth it at the moment
What card would you look at for your requirements and at what price?
DLSS can help to hit those high fps.
Where we disagree is the speed of uptake on DLSS, especially since they've made it so much easier in engines like unreal recently.
And I expect that use of upscaling to really jump even more depending on xess quality.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Anything that's faster than my 1070. So basically anything from a Radeon 6700 XT to a 6800 XT on the AMD side with even the 6600 XT potentially being under consideration. And on NV side, anything from a 3060 to a 3070 ... non-TI because the price premium on those is too ridiculous, IMO. A 3080 might also be under consideration if the price ever gets to a reasonable point. Basically anything 500 USD and under has a better chance that I'll pull the trigger on it versus something 500-600 USD. Almost an infinitesimal chance I'd go for something in the 600-700 USD range. And anything over 700 USD is just too expensive, IMO.
The 6600 XT is a possibility as I would shift that into my portable Mini-ITX gaming HTPC once better performing cards became reasonably affordable.
The performance of the 1070 is for the most part still acceptable, again I don't mind reducing settings for the performance I want. Obviously 120 Hz would need more work, so the 6600 XT would most definitely be just a stop gap solution if I decided to get one.
Regards,
SB
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