Value of Hardware Unboxed benchmarking

[Kaotik]

Without Reflex 2 you will not get anything, you will be "stuck" inside the frame latency until it ends and then you'll see the next frame. Reflex 2 warps the current frame according to your input and provides an intermediate frame with in-painting which is shown between the previous and next frame at about half of latency. So w/o Reflex 2 there is no "advantage" in seeing something unless you somehow run at more than twice the framerate. With Reflex 2 you may see an artifact at half the input lag instead of not seeing anything at all with full frame latency - that's your choice here. It is highly likely that the ability to move the camera with half the latency is a lot more preferable than not being able to move it at all as you may see something from the actual previous frame in which case the minor artifacting won't be an issue.

You're not seeing the problem.
Let's say you're protecting a bombsite and have Reflex 2 on, you flick turn and see there's no enemies there because warping doesn't know what is or isn't there. Except that the enemy is there. Boom you're dead. Without warping your turn happens that few ms slower but you actually do see that the enemy is there. Boom, he's dead instead.

 

[DegustatoR]

You're not seeing the problem.
Let's say you're protecting a bombsite and have Reflex 2 on, you flick turn and see there's no enemies there because warping doesn't know what is or isn't there. Except that the enemy is there. Boom you're dead. Without warping your turn happens that few ms slower but you actually do see that the enemy is there. Boom, he's dead instead.

That's not what will happen.
With Reflex 2 you turn and see a warped frame and then a real one with the new enemy. W/o Reflex 2 you turn and see the new real one with the new enemy - after the same latency it would be to see both warped and the next real frame. So the only thing which changes here is the reaction to your input, not the moment when you will see the new enemy.
Now imagine a different scenario: you see a new enemy in the previous frame already and you start moving the camera towards it. With Reflex 2 you get camera response in 1/2 of latency and get a warped frame and then a new real one. W/o Reflex 2 you get camera response only after a full new frame of latency. In the first case you may already pull the trigger, in the second one you'll wait twice longer to see the next frame.
Also remember that we're talking about 200+ fps here.

 

[Kaotik]

That's not what will happen.
With Reflex 2 you turn and see a warped frame and then a real one with the new enemy. W/o Reflex 2 you turn and see the new real one with the new enemy - after the same latency it would be to see both warped and the next real frame. So the only thing which changes here is the reaction to your input, not the moment when you will see the new enemy.
Now imagine a different scenario: you see a new enemy in the previous frame already and you start moving the camera towards it. With Reflex 2 you get camera response in 1/2 of latency and get a warped frame and then a new real one. W/o Reflex 2 you get camera response only after a full new frame of latency. In the first case you may already pull the trigger, in the second one you'll wait twice longer to see the next frame.
Also remember than we're talking about 200+ fps here.

You get the sense of safety when there's nothing there, before it just manifests itself in there after clearing warping hallucinations.
Yes, your second scenario favors Reflex 2, but you know the enemy is there regardless already and there's no false sense of safety.

 

[homerdog]

At 200+fps is this something that will be of any benefit to anyone? The latency should already be so low that I'm not sure it would matter if it were cut in half. Looking forward to some testing, like Linus did a while back with CSGO aim trainer on monitors with varying refresh rates. IIRC even very high refresh rates were of some benefit, but mostly only to highly skilled players.

As a thought experiment, there would be a point where cutting latency in half would make no difference at all, like going from .5ms to .25 ms. Just don't know where the threshold is and it surely varies from person to person.

 

[DegustatoR]

You get the sense of safety when there's nothing there, before it just manifests itself in there after clearing warping hallucinations.

You get the exact same "sense of safety" from not seeing a warped frame at all so there is nothing different.

At 200+fps is this something that will be of any benefit to anyone?

For e-sports it will be. For a general user I dunno. Generally you can sense lower latency better than framerates above 100 so it could also be of benefit in some lighter games probably.

 

[Seanspeed]

Without Reflex 2 you will not get anything, you will be "stuck" inside the frame latency until it ends and then you'll see the next frame. Reflex 2 warps the current frame according to your input and provides an intermediate frame with in-painting which is shown between the previous and next frame at about half of latency. So w/o Reflex 2 there is no "advantage" in seeing something unless you somehow run at more than twice the framerate. With Reflex 2 you may see an artifact at half the input lag instead of not seeing anything at all with full frame latency - that's your choice here. It is highly likely that the ability to move the camera with half the latency is a lot more preferable than not being able to move it at all as you may see something from the actual previous frame in which case the minor artifacting won't be an issue.

Nobody is saying there's an 'advantage' without Reflex 2, the argument was only that if there's artifacting on the sides of the screen, it could be distracting and a detriment to player performance. Without Reflex 2, things will just be normal as always.

And we're not talking about 'half' the latency here in comparison to Reflex 1 in raw numbers.

 

[DegustatoR]

Nobody is saying there's an 'advantage' without Reflex 2

This is exactly what Kaotik is saying.

 

[Seanspeed]

This is exactly what Kaotik is saying.

They are proposing an 'IF' situation. IF the sides of the screen are artifacting distractingly, then yes, it could absolutely be undesirable for many competitive types.

You're trying your hardest to argue around this obvious theoretical, but that's all it is. They aren't saying it will definitely be an advantage to have it off, just that in a situation where it does artifact distractingly, it could be undesirable.

It's not at all like you're trying to frame things and it's a 100% reasonable claim. And you know that.

 

[DegustatoR]

They are proposing an 'IF' situation. IF the sides of the screen are artifacting distractingly, then yes, it could absolutely be undesirable for many competitive types.

No, they are clearly saying that no Reflex 2 could be an advantage. Don't try to frame that into something which it isn't. This is the point which started this discussion and now you're literally trying to say that it didn't happen.

 

[Seanspeed]

No, they are clearly saying that no Reflex 2 could be an advantage. Don't try to frame that into something which it isn't. This is the point which started this discussion and now you're literally trying to say that it didn't happen.

Could. COULD.

If. IF.

If you're really gonna ignore the very important context behind that, you're clearly not here for a reasonable and constructive discussion, only to try and win an argument.

 

[DegustatoR]

Could. COULD.

If. IF.

No "ifs", it couldn't. Just by design.

 

[RobertR1]

This is how I see things for typical use cases:

High fps esports titles: reflex 2.0 with or without dlss. No FG

AA or AAA SP titles: DLAA with FG if starting fps > 75. DLSS + FG if starting FPS < 75

Of course there would be various combinations in between that.

The problem for hub is they have backed themselves into a corner by having a very rigid cost per raster frame metric that sets the narrative for the entire review. This doesn’t take into account actual use cases and user habits. You also have the issue that as technology moves forward you’re still relying on a legacy metric and forcing it along. At some point if you’re too disconnected from reality, your reviews don’t align to the landscape. I’d say they’re already there.

A weighted system would be a lot more viable. Assigning weight to the four main criteria such as Raster performance, Ray tracing performance, upscaling, and frame generation would align a lot better. This also gives you more flexibility when reviewing cards at different price tiers. For example a 5090 might score 8 out of 10 on Ray tracing because it’s viable yet a 5060 might score one out of 10. This is much better for the end user to understand the viability of a function in real world usage then just having a check box or ignored completely from the overall rating.