[ Digital Trends ] Radeon Image Sharpening competes with DLSS

[BFG10K]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-radeon-image-sharpening-dlss-ray-tracing-e3-2019/

DLSS is an utter failure with virtually no game support. What little games do support it, they work equal to or better with simple upscaling that works on any hardware in any game with any API.

AMD's new method looks like a simple driver switch that automatically works in thousands of games with no developer effort, for little performance hit.

We'll have to see how it works in practice of course, but on paper it looks far superior to DLSS.

Speaking of which, 10 months after RTX launch, not a peep out of nVidia about the mythical DLSS 2x mode. How many more months/years of "training" are expected before we see it?

 

[Dribble]

As far as I can tell it is just a sharpening filter for blury AA which is not really new tech - you could get any video card to do that for a small performance hit. These days there's more much more impressive image tweaking - e.g. Reshade - that works on all sorts of gpu's.

 

[Asterox]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-radeon-image-sharpening-dlss-ray-tracing-e3-2019/

DLSS is an utter failure with virtually no game support. What little games do support it, they work equal to or better with simple upscaling that works on any hardware in any game with any API.

AMD's new method looks like a simple driver switch that automatically works in thousands of games with no developer effort, for little performance hit.

We'll have to see how it works in practice of course, but on paper it looks far superior to DLSS.

Speaking of which, 10 months after RTX launch, not a peep out of nVidia about the mythical DLSS 2x mode. How many more months/years of "training" are expected before we see it?

Well in reality it is obviously much beeter option vs Nvidia super-cool DLSS FPS drop.

 

[NTMBK]

Spare us from automagical image sharpening filters.

 

[kondziowy]

People were adding DLSS as something that adds value to Geforce cards, so AMD just had to do it. Thank god it's done the proper way though - without the need of developer support per game.

 

[railven]

Spare us from automagical image sharpening filters.

No, let them fight. After the MLAA vs FXAA fiasco, I'm about done with using their "features" for AA. SSAA/SMAA (through injectors) or bust!

 

[EXCellR8]

Injectors? Is that like Reshade, SweetFX and the like?

 

[railven]

Injectors? Is that like Reshade, SweetFX and the like?

Yes sir. ReShade alone has made some older games that I can't brute force 2xSSAA ever more pleasant.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

On Topic: Any tricks that make the transition to 4K smoother, I'm all for. I'd always rather play something at native resolution, but if some feature helps a card fake it good enough to make it, I'm ok with that. The tensor cores were always there primarily to denoise ray traces scenes and NV decided to tack on the half-half baked (quarter baked?) DLSS as another feature box to check (and its worked in a way, with a lot of complaining about Navi not reaching "feature" parity with NV cards regardless of how useful those features are).

More power to NV if they can make the thing work, but their whole shtick requiring machine learning and training etc etc just has way too much overhead for DLSS to see wide scale adoption.

Wouldn't be surprised if NV decides to launch a DLSS lite that works exactly like AMD's approach, except it uses the tensor cores to perform a proprietary version of FidelityFX client side on only NV GPUs.

Yes sir. ReShade alone has made some older games that I can't brute force 2xSSAA ever more pleasant.

Gonna go off topic for a bit but honest question asked in earnest: how are injectors for SSAA better than that DSR/VSR features built into NV/AMD drivers?

I've been using NV's DSR feature with my 980TI to down sample from 4K to 1080p on a lot of older and semi modern games to put some of the extra gpu grunt to use and its really made older games *pop* visually. Some more modern games are even taking on those marketing/promo shot "why doesn't the game actually look like that when I play it" looks when actually playing it thanks to down sampling.

Am I really missing out by not going through an injector?

If it is that much better, is it a pain in the ass to get it running?

 

[TypoFairy©]

Gonna go off topic for a bit but honest question asked in earnest: how are injectors for SSAA better than that DSR/VSR features built into NV/AMD drivers?

I've been using NV's DSR feature with my 980TI to down sample from 4K to 1080p on a lot of older and semi modern games to put some of the extra gpu grunt to use and its really made older games *pop* visually. Some more modern games are even taking on those marketing/promo shot "why doesn't the game actually look like that when I play it" looks when actually playing it thanks to down sampling.

Am I really missing out by not going through an injector?

If it is that much better, is it a pain in the ass to get it running?

injectors are ussually used to add fxaa/smaa to older games that either had poor implementations or no implementations of post processing based AA. You dont get the bigger performance hit of rendering at higher resolutions like u do with dsr/vsr. Also if u wanted to could still apply it and enable dsr/vsr.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If AMD has truly open-sourced everything behind their image sharpening feature, then at least they've stayed true to their tradition of open-sourcing a lot of things. Not everything, but a lot of things. And that's a positive.

 

[Face2Face]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-radeon-image-sharpening-dlss-ray-tracing-e3-2019/

DLSS is an utter failure with virtually no game support. What little games do support it, they work equal to or better with simple upscaling that works on any hardware in any game with any API.

AMD's new method looks like a simple driver switch that automatically works in thousands of games with no developer effort, for little performance hit.

We'll have to see how it works in practice of course, but on paper it looks far superior to DLSS.

Speaking of which, 10 months after RTX launch, not a peep out of nVidia about the mythical DLSS 2x mode. How many more months/years of "training" are expected before we see it?

I guess I’m the odd duck here… So just some personal experience here with DLSS. I’m only using an RTX 2060 to play Metro Exodus at 1440p/Ultra settings with RT enabled and no Tess. For me, it’s been an acceptable experience FPS wise (40-70 FPS) area depending. Enabling RT using these settings wouldn’t be possible without DLSS.

I believe Metro Exodus is on its third DLSS update, and it’s pretty dern impressive considering the performance it gives back. I played through a lot of the game with the 2nd DLSS update and noticed quite a few areas with visual imperfections. For one, the fire effects from torches and barrels looked very pixelated and the same thing applies to god rays, and headlights on vehicles. These have been fixed with the 3rd DLSS update. I’m pretty sure if I showed any of you DLSS off and on, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference while actually playing the game. Screenshots, you’d could pick out some differences. A lot of people claim that adjusting the resolution scale to 80% will give you the same performance bump with better IQ, and that’s simply not true in this game. I’ve tested this many times in different areas of the game and .8 resolution scale looks noticeable worse.

Understandably there was also a lot of hate on DLSS, but with updates it’s getting much better and welcome addition for games that use some form of RT. I know for future games like CyberPunk 2077, I’ll happily enable DLSS if I can use RT and get OK performance.

 

[railven]

Gonna go off topic for a bit but honest question asked in earnest: how are injectors for SSAA better than that DSR/VSR features built into NV/AMD drivers?

Pretty much what he says:

injectors are ussually used to add fxaa/smaa to older games that either had poor implementations or no implementations of post processing based AA. You dont get the bigger performance hit of rendering at higher resolutions like u do with dsr/vsr. Also if u wanted to could still apply it and enable dsr/vsr.

I realized after the way I worded it, it could be confusing. But I stick to SSAA (either through driver or if game has internal option) and if I can't I'll resort to SMAA through an injector when possible. Sometimes I can't do either and in those situations I just go with no form of AA. I'd rather see jaggies then blur.

 

[Headfoot]

Even if it is just a Reshade sharpen filter that's been slightly improved and stuck into the drivers, that will be useful.
Most competitive online games will ban you for using any injectors include simple sharpen filters. If its in the driver, you won't be banned.

I don't play it any more but PUBG looked like garbage with AA on (smudgey) and garbage with AA off (jaggies). Luckily they added an ingame sharpen which resolved it back in the day. Same idea here

 

[railven]

Even if it is just a Reshade sharpen filter that's been slightly improved and stuck into the drivers, that will be useful.
Most competitive online games will ban you for using any injectors include simple sharpen filters. If its in the driver, you won't be banned.

I don't play it any more but PUBG looked like garbage with AA on (smudgey) and garbage with AA off (jaggies). Luckily they added an ingame sharpen which resolved it back in the day. Same idea here

I hope they implement sliders. Sharpening is a weird beast. The presentation capture that Anandtech caught doesn't help it's fight regarding AA. If anything, the image on the right looks worse to me because the sharpening made the edges too hard, thus more distinct, thus more edged. In motion this would create more shimmering. You can see it on the gun. And yes, this is a blown up image, and it's all subjective. This is far better than NV's roll out of DLSS, but it is a feature I personally wouldn't ever use (I include DLSS in this equation too, unless required for DXR because I've yet to still see anything look as good as the Port Royal, and I fear I won't for a LONG TIME ).

EDIT: Looking at this again, there is so much noise on the right side.

 

[beginner99]

Enabling RT using these settings wouldn’t be possible without DLSS.

The main point is you could just render at 1080p and upscale and get better IQ and higher fps.

 

[maddie]

I hope they implement sliders. Sharpening is a weird beast. The presentation capture that Anandtech caught doesn't help it's fight regarding AA. If anything, the image on the right looks worse to me because the sharpening made the edges too hard, thus more distinct, thus more edged. In motion this would create more shimmering. You can see it on the gun. And yes, this is a blown up image, and it's all subjective. This is far better than NV's roll out of DLSS, but it is a feature I personally wouldn't ever use (I include DLSS in this equation too, unless required for DXR because I've yet to still see anything look as good as the Port Royal, and I fear I won't for a LONG TIME ).

EDIT: Looking at this again, there is so much noise on the right side.

How did the developers intend for it to look?

 

[DrMrLordX]

I like how activating FidelityFX makes the ugly human disappear.

 

[railven]

How did the developers intend for it to look?

I'm not sure, I didn't work on Borderlands 3.

I like how activating FidelityFX makes the ugly human disappear.

That's a fair trade off. Haha.

 

[TypoFairy©]

I like how activating FidelityFX makes the ugly human disappear.

/s Obviously fidelity fx aggressively culls unnecessary artifacts from the image

 

[zinfamous]

I hope they implement sliders. Sharpening is a weird beast. The presentation capture that Anandtech caught doesn't help it's fight regarding AA. If anything, the image on the right looks worse to me because the sharpening made the edges too hard, thus more distinct, thus more edged. In motion this would create more shimmering. You can see it on the gun. And yes, this is a blown up image, and it's all subjective. This is far better than NV's roll out of DLSS, but it is a feature I personally wouldn't ever use (I include DLSS in this equation too, unless required for DXR because I've yet to still see anything look as good as the Port Royal, and I fear I won't for a LONG TIME ).

EDIT: Looking at this again, there is so much noise on the right side.

It seems to magically reintroduce jaggies by removing the blurry....so basically turning off AA?

 

[railven]

It seems to magically reintroduce jaggies by removing the blurry....so basically turning off AA?

Then you turn on a separate AA flag and you're back to the FidelityFX Off image!

Progress!

 

[zinfamous]

Then you turn on a separate AA flag and you're back to the FidelityFX Off image!

Progress!

I know right? It seems like we are just being pushed into a current paradigm where "pre-AA" was actually good, everybody! You know things just cycle back into style? Large phones bad! tiny phones hip! ...now we're all into giant phones that look like tables on our faces (not me). "Pixel Art" games? really..."pixel art"

I guess now the bleeding edge technology in these GPUs is a bunch of garbly techno speak that actually translates to: "the fidelity of around 1993 was actually kinda neat so that is what we are doing again....but here's all these amazing new features that do that for us and of course it's really expensive!"

 

[BFG10K]

Spare us from automagical image sharpening filters.

Don't get me wrong, aside from some corner cases, all of this is generally a gimmick at best. nVidia taking $99 DVD upscaling and slapping it with marketing doesn't change that fact.

If nVidia just came out and said "RTX is too slow so we're gonna make you upscale from non-native resolutions", even the die-hards wouldn't accept that. So they called it deeeeeeep learning "super sampling" instead.

Enabling RT using these settings wouldn’t be possible without DLSS.

Sure it would, just upscale. And there are no artificial software locks with upscaling, unlike DLSS.

 

[Adawy]

Just use Reshade and be done with it.

/thread