Discussion AMD FSR vs Nvidia DLSS2.0 vs Temporal Super Resolution (TSR)

[Kedas]

"Edge of Eternity" is one of the first games that have FSR and DLSS I assume.
This is an interesting interview with the game developer about the difference between both.
It looks indeed that the difference between FSR and DLSS may not be worth it to implement both.

Edge of Eternity Tech Q&A - Midgar CEO on AMD FSR vs NVIDIA DLSS, PS5 vs XSX and More

We interviewed Midgar CEO Jérémy Zeler-Maury, also the Lead Programmer on Edge of Eternity, one of the first games to support FSR and DLSS.

wccftech.com

Cost to add it

I think FSR being very easy to integrate means more games are going to get it, DLSS is more complicated to integrate.

Quality

Quality-wise, when there is a lot of pixel info available for upscaling to 4K, both technologies give amazing results, and I have a hard time seeing differences between them. I’d even say that I slightly prefer the FSR for 4K resolution since it doesn’t introduce any artifacts/minor blurriness that DLSS can sometimes introduce. For lower resolutions like upscaling to 1080p or 720p, I think DLSS gives a better result since it can reconstruct parts of missing details due to the nature of the technique.

I didn't expect him to say this below, since now people assume DLSS2.0 is still always better:

I slightly prefer the FSR for 4K resolution since it doesn’t introduce any artifacts/minor blurriness that DLSS can sometimes introduce

From another interview with AMD it was clear they were already busy with FSR2.0
I wonder if this will have time involved because that introduces artifacts, so may be harder to get right, certainly if you compare it to a good FSR 1.0
The likely comment for FSR2.0 will then probably be: looks a bit better than FSR1.0 but has sometimes extra artifacts.

 

[blckgrffn]

AMD FSR vs Nvidia DLSS: Same Games, Which is Better?
DLSS and FSR tested in games that currently support both techniques: Necromunda and Avengers.

Any interesting conclusions to be drawn for those of us who prefer walls of text?

 

[Leeea]

Any interesting conclusions to be drawn for those of us who prefer walls of text?

not much difference on the high setting @ 4k or 1440

FSR inferior on medium or low FSR settings
FSR inferior at 1080p

DLSS better at fixing developer rendering mistakes in avengers
DLSS more prone to introducing rendering errors in necromunda

Both are good for +30%ish rendering performance on high quality high resolutions

 

[BFG10K]

FSR now on PS5:

Arcadegeddon Receives AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support on PlayStation 5

The first console game to receive AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support appears to be the cooperative shooter Arcadegeddon on the PlayStation 5. AMD FSR support is currently limited to a handful of PC titles but we expect the list to grow quickly given the integration of the technology...

www.techpowerup.com

It's also part of the Xbox Game Development Kit. DLSS won't ever be on those consoles.

 

[sdifox]

FSR now on PS5:

Arcadegeddon Receives AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution Support on PlayStation 5

The first console game to receive AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support appears to be the cooperative shooter Arcadegeddon on the PlayStation 5. AMD FSR support is currently limited to a handful of PC titles but we expect the list to grow quickly given the integration of the technology...

www.techpowerup.com

It's also part of the Xbox Game Development Kit. DLSS won't ever be on those consoles.

Well if the consoles don't move to nvidia GPU that is.

 

[Dribble]

Apparently the DLSS SDK is now openly available to anyone, but more importantly the latest version has a sharpening slider built in so end users can tune the sharpness to their liking.

 

[blckgrffn]

Well if the consoles don't move to nvidia GPU that is.

lol, when would that be happening? Like 2030?

And so much would have to change between now and then.

Heck, at this point its more likely, imo, the Switch successor to be an AMD graphics product (again, like the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U) than nvidia. There is no Tegra successor currently in production that Nintendo can reach back in time for

But it's likely there will be a Samsung mobile product with RDNA2 soon, and that's probably a solid contender in like 2024. (IMO)

Apparently the DLSS SDK is now openly available to anyone, but more importantly the latest version has a sharpening slider built in so end users can tune the sharpness to their liking.

More control is good

 

[sdifox]

lol, when would that be happening? Like 2030?

And so much would have to change between now and then.

Heck, at this point its more likely, imo, the Switch successor to be an AMD graphics product (again, like the Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U) than nvidia. There is no Tegra successor currently in production that Nintendo can reach back in time for

But it's likely there will be a Samsung mobile product with RDNA2 soon, and that's probably a solid contender in like 2024. (IMO)



More control is good

My point was that Nvidia never cared for openess. AMD has to open up in order to fight NVidia.

 

[uzzi38]

Apparently the DLSS SDK is now openly available to anyone, but more importantly the latest version has a sharpening slider built in so end users can tune the sharpness to their liking.

It's always had a sharpening filter, it's just not always used by developers.

 

[coercitiv]

Apparently the DLSS SDK is now openly available to anyone, but more importantly the latest version has a sharpening slider built in so end users can tune the sharpness to their liking.

It's always had a sharpening filter, it's just not always used by developers.

Straight from an Nvidia research scientist, more than a year ago:

 

[BFG10K]

Now working in some SteamVR games: https://www.techspot.com/news/90541-mod-adds-amd-fidelityfx-super-resolution-steamvr-games.html

Also now working in many Vulkan games on Linux, including through Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/wine/pull/116

At this rate FSR will easily overtake DLSS in adoption, just like freesync overtook gsync.

 

[Kenmitch]

At this rate FSR will easily overtake DLSS in adoption, just like freesync overtook gsync.

What's Nvidia going to rename it? You think they'll just throw FSR compatible stickers on the box's? lol

 

[Panino Manino]

This is what FSR really is about and why it matters, right? It helps the most the majority with low end and old cards.

 

[Gideon]

Pretty interesting slides from Siggraph 2021 about FSR:

link1 PDF (low quality screenshots)
link2 PPTX (good quality screenshots)

Overall the results seem to be quite a bit better when FSR is integrated into the engine itself, as adding negative mipmap bias and not allowing transparencies to go to 1/4 the resolution ends up with much better results than just adding only the upscaler would:

The bad part about the presentation is that the presenter and long-time AMDer Timoty Lottes has been snagged up by Unity.

While it's only a single person, the perception still isn't great. AMD should really invest massively in their software department, and keeping people of that caliber is part of that. They still have a lot catching up to do to Nvidia and Intel (CPU side) in this regard and just having a record number of relevant job-openings alone is not enough.

If I were them and were unable to expand quickly enough organically, I'd even go so far as to outright poach a small / mid-sized game-studio's engine team (with the entire studio, if needed). There are plenty of those that deliver incredible results within their engines and these devs could really help AMD deliver killer features in drivers and OpenGPU projects and help integrate stuff into other engines.

Considering they had $4 billion to blow on stock buyback, they could afford well ... pretty much all of them.

 

[moinmoin]

The bad part about the presentation is that the presenter and long-time AMDer Timoty Lottes has been snagged up by Unity.

You sure about the bolded part? His bios on that page states "Currently focusing on new graphics technology at Unity as part of the Graphics Innovation Group. Prior work included authoring FidelityFX shaders like CAS and LPM at AMD, working on TAA and mobile post processing at Epic, and authoring FXAA/TXAA at NVIDIA." He's credited in plenty games for that, and to me it doesn't look like he was long at AMD (most credits seem to be for FXAA as part of Nvidia).

A neat tidbit on the page: "First part dives into the details and inner workings of AMD's FSR1 scaling algorithm." Not sure they did that elsewhere before, but calling FSR explicitly FSR1 implies work on an improved version is known to be already underway. In the presentation it's FSR 1.0 which makes sense since that's what Timothy Lottes likely was involved in (from when was the patent for it, for a more specific date?).

 

[Gideon]

You sure about the bolded part?

Yeah I probably worded it too strongly, as it depends how long one has to work to qualify as an old-timer. I wrote it as I saw he had a talk for GDC 2016 and was already at AMD at the time. Considering from my own experience (and that of other software engineers 5 years in one place probably isn't fair to call on "old timer" but is definitely above the norm for many. 10 years is a serious outliner.

So yeah, saying "old-timer" is probably a bit too much but definitely not a quick detourer either. He was already at AMD months before Polaris even launched and their best card was Fury X.

 

[moinmoin]

Looking at AMD's gaming super resolution patent he wasn't listed as inventor, and that was filled in late 2019 so I'd guess he already left at that point.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

The bad part about the presentation is that the presenter and long-time AMDer Timoty Lottes has been snagged up by Unity.

While it's only a single person, the perception still isn't great. AMD should really invest massively in their software department, and keeping people of that caliber is part of that. They still have a lot catching up to do to Nvidia and Intel (CPU side) in this regard and just having a record number of relevant job-openings alone is not enough.

Timothy is far from the worst of AMD's losses ...

AMD has lost more highly prolific employees like Jeff Golds (held so many positions), Phil Rogers (2 decades/mastermind behind HSA), Graham Sellers (most recognized Khronos rep for AMD in the past) and there's so many more along with a countless number of other defections as well ...

Senior ex-AMD employees pivot to greener pastures (literally) because AMD keeps ignoring the clear deficit they have in their GPU guru culture so some of them don't stay there and naturally leaves for their competitor instead because of this lack of culture. A well fostered culture of expertise can mean that experienced employees are willing to put aside their loyalty in order to participate with the brightest minds in the industry ...

Their only employees who will stay most likely dedicated to AMD in their graphics division are often from Canada because Nvidia doesn't even care to improve their reach over there. RTG's most recent hires involves a lot of staff from Imagination Technologies jumping ship. Hopefully their new batches of recruits turns out to be good ...

 

[Hitman928]

Timothy is far from the worst of AMD's losses ...

AMD has lost more highly prolific employees like Jeff Golds (held so many positions), Phil Rogers (2 decades/mastermind behind HSA), Graham Sellers (most recognized Khronos rep for AMD in the past) and there's so many more along with a countless number of other defections as well ...

Senior ex-AMD employees pivot to greener pastures (literally) because AMD keeps ignoring the clear deficit they have in their GPU guru culture so some of them don't stay there and naturally leaves for their competitor instead because of this lack of culture. A well fostered culture of expertise can mean that experienced employees are willing to put aside their loyalty in order to participate with the brightest minds in the industry ...

Their only employees who will stay most likely dedicated to AMD in their graphics division are often from Canada because Nvidia doesn't even care to improve their reach over there. RTG's most recent hires involves a lot of staff from Imagination Technologies jumping ship. Hopefully their new batches of recruits turns out to be good ...

The vast majority of people you pointed to left AMD a while ago, most around a decade ago. AMD is a very different company today than it was 5 and 10 years ago and the time frame where most of the people you pointed to left, AMD was going through major restructuring and huge budget cuts as they tried to recover from several years of terrible CEO leadership. During that time frame, AMD did not have the best reputation as a place you want to go and build your career. That's no longer the case and AMD has more money now to bring in more qualified engineers. More recently, they still have lost some high profile people to Intel and Nvidia, but they've also picked up some high profile people and high quality engineers from many other companies (NV and Intel included). In today's corporate world, people move around a lot more than they used to. People's careers often look more like Jim Keller's than Mike Clark's.

 

[moinmoin]

Note that there were several major changes that may lead to people wanting to leave: The whole new leadership back in 2012. The graphics division being split off as Radeon Technology Group in 2015. And the leadership change from Raja Koduri to David Wang in 2017.

Then as @Hitman928 indicated there was AMD's own state which wasn't all that well before Zen launched, which is reflected by the number of employees AMD had over time (the zero line is 8000):



The negative changes are all likely connected to some bigger layoffs.

 

[Mopetar]

Who would leave because Raja got the boot? That seems like the kind of reason to make a person have more confidence in the upper management and stick around a bit longer.

 

[moinmoin]

Dunno, people close to him?

 

[Mopetar]

If anyone did leave it sounds like AMD saving on a severance package.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

The vast majority of people you pointed to left AMD a while ago, most around a decade ago. AMD is a very different company today than it was 5 and 10 years ago and the time frame where most of the people you pointed to left, AMD was going through major restructuring and huge budget cuts as they tried to recover from several years of terrible CEO leadership. During that time frame, AMD did not have the best reputation as a place you want to go and build your career. That's no longer the case and AMD has more money now to bring in more qualified engineers. More recently, they still have lost some high profile people to Intel and Nvidia, but they've also picked up some high profile people and high quality engineers from many other companies (NV and Intel included). In today's corporate world, people move around a lot more than they used to. People's careers often look more like Jim Keller's than Mike Clark's.

Yes but I don't think much has changed in regards to the lack of GPU expertise culture even though a lot of the damage was done during the last decade. Sure some employees will naturally move out but we're talking about former AMD employees who have virtually settled there for nearly or over 10 years and those people are frequently leaving which shows that there are still deeply rooted cultural problems ...

I think the biggest reason for experienced employees leaving was that AMD was not seen as 'prestigious' enough in the industry to keep them while Nvidia are seen as the breadwinner's of high-end graphics research & technology and they consequently want to be with the likes of Aaron Lefohn, Marco Salvi, Chris Wyman, Jeff Bolz, or Morgan Mcguire even though he left recently. Those guys have made names for themselves across the graphics industry during their tenure at Nvidia as senior research scientists. Nvidia has it all. They've got the research papers, culture, most specialists, software, etc ...

When I look at RTG, I don't see them producing state of the art research papers or there's not nearly as many people to aspire to look up to. RTG IMO owes it to Canada for holding them up through both the good and the bad times. A lot of AMD's graphics employees have worked for over 15 years at their offices near Toronto. AMD should try to convince Morgan Mcguire to get him on board because RTG needs new visionaries with a more research oriented background like him plus he'd be the perfect candidate since he lives in Canada so it makes it more likely he'll staying there at AMD for some time like the others over there ...

 

[Dribble]

Who would leave because Raja got the boot? That seems like the kind of reason to make a person have more confidence in the upper management and stick around a bit longer.

It's no surprise he left because he had no budget and his gpu dev team was relocated to China where they could be hired cheaper so he lost a lot of devs. I suspect the same things that convinced him to go also convinced others.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It's no surprise he left because he had no budget and his gpu dev team was relocated to China where they could be hired cheaper so he lost a lot of devs. I suspect the same things that convinced him to go also convinced others.

- Yeah people really like to **** on Raja but he was basically the only guy crazy enough to run AMD's GPU division during their dark ages and he still put a lot of work and effort into turning around AMD's image in terms of software (AMD had some really solid drivers under his tenure and even had their once a year Adrenalin driver package start up under his term I believe).

I think the guy just has a bad habit of biting off more than he can chew. The dude is trying to basically get Intel of all companies competitive in the DGPU space with AMD and NV, which is insane if you take even a half second to think about it.