Question I'm dumb. Is DLSS supposed to be used or not?

[Stg-Flame]

From what I've read, it appears to be similar to V-Sync in that if you don't need it, don't use it, but I've heard so many differing opinions on a game-by-game basis that I'm thoroughly confused now. Granted, 99% of my information is coming from users on Reddit and Steam discussions and I'm aware that different hardware configurations will change a user's experience so I take everything I read with a massive grain of salt but I'd like to understand whether or not this option is good or not. For a game like Escape From Tarkov, I don't see any noticeable improvement to FPS with or without DLSS and a lot of users report they see a significant boost without it enabled. For Cyberpunk, I saw a very slight increase to performance but it seemed like some of the graphics appeared blurry or out of focus in some sequences after enabling it. I had a similar effect with Tarkov when DLSS was enabled, some of my movement made certain scenery objects appear to have a "warp-speed" effect if I turned too sharp. However, when I was playing Dying Light 2, the graphics appeared sharp and much more clear with DLSS enabled while not seeing any change to my FPS.

I've been out of the graphical loop for over a decade so I never kept up with this feature but I kept hearing people rave about DLSS cards and I honestly can't tell the difference when playing a game. Can someone break this down for me? Hardware is in my signature (I just got my new PSU back from EVGA so I need to stress test the absolute **** out of my machine tonight to see if my past crashing issues were in-fact PSU related).

Edit: All my games are being played at 4K resolution (3840X2160) @ 144hz G-Sync.

 

[CP5670]

I'm comparing 4K native to 4K with quality DLSS. In Cyberpunk objects in the distance in outdoor areas (especially NPCs) look noticeably blurrier, you can tell it's being upscaled. I settled on using 4K without RT or DLSS. I do use it in other games like Control where long viewing distances are less common.

 

[BFG10K]

The tech often has artifacts and the "there's no reason to ever not use it because it's better than native!" is a lie.

Latest test in a brand new game on a 4090, visible "twinkling" artifacts on the water.

 

[Khanan]

I'm comparing 4K native to 4K with quality DLSS. In Cyberpunk objects in the distance in outdoor areas (especially NPCs) look noticeably blurrier, you can tell it's being upscaled. I settled on using 4K without RT or DLSS. I do use it in other games like Control where long viewing distances are less common.

Not the case when I play and even with lower resolution. You seem to be imagining things. Negative placebo effect

 

[CP5670]

I can see just fine. You are just trolling yet again, as you seem to in every thread here. Play a game with long draw distances, it's more visible there.

 

[BFG10K]

You seem to be imagining things. Negative placebo effect

If you can't see the obvious flashing artifacts I posted in the video, you have a serious vision impairment that needs prompt attention from a medical professional.

 

[Khanan]

If you can't see the obvious flashing artifacts I posted in the video, you have a serious vision impairment that needs prompt attention from a medical professional.

I don’t need a video cause I played the game a zillion times. It has nearly perfect quality with DLSS, you got serious issues, buddy. You can also go and discuss this with the countless reviewers that said that DLSS has excellent quality in CP2077.

edit: it’s funny that you’re attacking me, did I talk to you? No. Did I give a F about your video? No. Like I said, it’s obvious who got issues here.

 

[Khanan]

I can see just fine. You are just trolling yet again, as you seem to in every thread here. Play a game with long draw distances, it's more visible there.

So if someone doesn’t agree with you it’s “trolling”. You’re imagining things because you want DLSS to suck in your head. It’s called a negative placebo.

 

[CP5670]

You have been arguing with and attacking people over nothing in numerous threads here in the last few days. I suspect it's a hacked forum account, as someone else said in one of your other threads.

Why would I "want DLSS to suck?" I use it in several games and it's a useful feature. That doesn't mean it's perfect.

 

[Khanan]

You have been arguing with and attacking people over nothing in numerous threads here in the last few days. I suspect it's a hacked forum account, as someone else said in one of your other threads.

Why would I "want DLSS to suck?" I use it in several games and it's a useful feature. That doesn't mean it's perfect.

Just because I say you have a negative placebo this isn’t a “attack” it means you dislike DLSS and you want it to suck. Doesn’t change the fact that DLSS at least in CP2077, is regarded as absolutely flawless, I didn’t say it’s like that in every game. Though fixable.

“Hacked forum account” funny one mate. No actually people been attacking me, since the last 1-2 days, you can make a case that it was different the days prior, I will admit that, but only that.

Whatever this isn’t worth another argument or fight, agree to disagree. For me it works great and I’m on 1440p - 4K DLSS is of even higher quality. So, it’s highly unlikely you’re right. Not in CP2077 at least.

edit: nobody said my account got allegedly “hacked”, I searched it. Nice try at a gaslighting attempt though, I’ll keep that in mind.

 

[igor_kavinski]

edit: nobody said my account got allegedly “hacked”, I searched it. Nice try at a gaslighting attempt though, I’ll keep that in mind.

You went and did a search on that???

I wish I had as much free time as you

 

[Heartbreaker]

The tech often has artifacts and the "there's no reason to ever not use it because it's better than native!" is a lie.

Latest test in a brand new game on a 4090, visible "twinkling" artifacts on the water.

To be fair. I just watched the whole section on DLSS in that video.

der8auer repeatedly states that it's generally impossible to tell the difference when running the videos sequentially.
That is exactly what you want and why most of the time, you would just use it, unless you are maxing out quality settings and hitting the frame rate cap of your monitor. This is generally the same take I see in the vast majority of these comparisons. By all means if you see some strange artifact that then switch it off and see if it's corrected, but most of the time it's basically indistinguishable.

It's generally only when running videos side by side and pausing that he can pick out minor differences.

The exception being that strange water flashing. Which is in original, but DLSS greatly boosts it. It would be interesting to find out if that's an artifact of regular DLSS, or the DLSS 3 Fake Frame generation. Which leads to another issue, the Fake Frame generation issue is ignored.

So, unfortunately the video also shows how NVidia is winning with it's misleading marketing campaign on DLSS 3.

der8auer is a hardcore and very smart computer technology guy.

Yet, he just accepts the DLSS 3 frame rate as a true frame, never acknowledging the fake generated frames. Quoting numbers like 300% boosts in frame rate as if all the boost is real.

NVidia is flooding youtube with a bunch of short misleading DLSS 3 comparison videos (search 4K nvidia dlss 3 comparison in YT). Show 2X, 3X or even 4X frame rates.

NVidia is flooding the channels with misleading DLSS fake frame BS, the have smart, tech savvy, people like der8auer falling for it. They have LTT doing puff pieces on how great it is.

They are clearly winning the fake frame marketing war.

 

[CP5670]

Just because I say you have a negative placebo this isn’t a “attack” it means you dislike DLSS and you want it to suck. Doesn’t change the fact that DLSS at least in CP2077, is regarded as absolutely flawless, I didn’t say it’s like that in every game. Though fixable.

“Hacked forum account” funny one mate. No actually people been attacking me, since the last 1-2 days, you can make a case that it was different the days prior, I will admit that, but only that.

Whatever this isn’t worth another argument or fight, agree to disagree. For me it works great and I’m on 1440p - 4K DLSS is of even higher quality. So, it’s highly unlikely you’re right. Not in CP2077 at least.

edit: nobody said my account got allegedly “hacked”, I searched it. Nice try at a gaslighting attempt though, I’ll keep that in mind.

I was referring to this thread. And again, why would I "want it to suck?" It's a good feature that I use in several games. If it "sucked," I would have a worse experience with something I paid for. That doesn't mean it is flawless, and you cannot expect any upscaling method to be perfect.

 

[Khanan]

You went and did a search on that???

I wish I had as much free time as you

It took me 1 minute and I was curious

I was referring to this thread. And again, why would I "want it to suck?" It's a good feature that I use in several games. If it "sucked," I would have a worse experience with something I paid for. That doesn't mean it is flawless, and you cannot expect any upscaling method to be perfect.

Must be that aggressive guy I took on ignore after he started to attack me out of the blue in 2 different threads. It’s fine you can have a bad opinion about DLSS, it’s your opinion ) like the other guy with a longer post explained above me, der Bauers take is a bit flawed, though like every other reviewer admits that these minimal quality differences can only be seen by heavily analyzing them and never if you actually sit in a normal distance to the monitor and actually play the game. I have stood still in CP2077 and analyzed it btw, and couldn’t find any problems with picture quality. The best case of DLSS or FSR isn’t even comparable picture quality to native, but being actually better by replacing the flawed TAA that is used otherwise.

 

[igor_kavinski]

They are clearly winning the fake frame marketing war.

AMD will soon join them coz that's what the kiddies want. They don't care what's real or fake. They want moar fpssss!!!

FFG is here to stay. It's not going away. It may get better with more enhancements.

If you don't want it, turn it off.

 

[Khanan]

AMD will soon join them coz that's what the kiddies want. They don't care what's real or fake. They want moar fpssss!!!

FFG is here to stay. It's not going away. It may get better with more enhancements.

If you don't want it, turn it off.

At least it’s useful in some edge cases.

 

[Heartbreaker]

If you don't want it, turn it off.

Not sure you can always separate the beneficial regular DLSS scaling, from the Fake Frame generation.

Some people were saying the Portal RTX update just lets you turn DLSS on or off. Not FFG control.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Not sure you can always separate the beneficial regular DLSS scaling, from the Fake Frame generation.

Some people were saying the Portal RTX update just lets you turn DLSS on or off. Not FFG control.

Well, Nvidia will obviously push its technologies in games that it sponsors in some capacity. They can't do it for every game. I don't see anything to worry about in general.

 

[Khanan]

I’m not even sure if Portal RTX (it’s not only RT it’s path traced, which means way more perf is needed) would run with sufficient fps only using normal DLSS 2. But nonetheless it should have the option to turn it off, and run on other cards than just RTX 4000, that’s a shame

 

[igor_kavinski]

I’m not even sure if Portal RTX (it’s not only RT it’s path traced, which means way more perf is needed) would run with sufficient fps only using normal DLSS 2. But nonetheless it should have the option to turn it off, and run on other cards than just RTX 4000, that’s a shame

What seems surprising is how Nvidia got Valve on board with it. Valve is seemingly more aligned with AMD in such matters.

 

[Mopetar]

At least it’s useful in some edge cases.

DLSS/FSR is beneficial to anyone with an older, lower-end card to be able to stretch out the lifespan a little bit longer. The technique and performance are good enough that you could argue the overall difference between using them and the alternative of lowering the resolution or the graphics settings is negligible.

But the frames are real and responsiveness would improve with the increase in frame rate. DLSS3 and whatever AMD calls their version of this crud is the opposite. If the frame rate is low enough where extra frames would help, it will make the latency even worse. If you have a high enough FPS already where a few extra milliseconds of frame time won't be noticeable, then your FPS is already high enough that the added fake frames provide no real benefit outside of any feeling that the big number in the FPS counter might give you.

 

[Khanan]

DLSS/FSR is beneficial to anyone with an older, lower-end card to be able to stretch out the lifespan a little bit longer. The technique and performance are good enough that you could argue the overall difference between using them and the alternative of lowering the resolution or the graphics settings is negligible.

But the frames are real and responsiveness would improve with the increase in frame rate. DLSS3 and whatever AMD calls their version of this crud is the opposite. If the frame rate is low enough where extra frames would help, it will make the latency even worse. If you have a high enough FPS already where a few extra milliseconds of frame time won't be noticeable, then your FPS is already high enough that the added fake frames provide no real benefit outside of any feeling that the big number in the FPS counter might give you.

I know and you’re preaching to the choir - and still it is useful in some cases. You can’t make a case that DLSS 3 is completely useless, that won’t happen.

If you want to reach 60 fps and can’t otherwise it’s better than to play with way lower fps. Latency doesn’t matter in a lot of games, not every game is competitive.

If you want to reach 120fps or more and can’t otherwise. Again, latency doesn’t matter much in games such as Spider-Man - MM.

Just two quick examples, there could be more.

 

[Mopetar]

I know and you’re preaching to the choir - and still it is useful in some cases. You can’t make a case that DLSS 3 is completely useless, that won’t happen.

It's highly useful for Nvidia's marketing department, I'll grant you that, but less so for players.

If you want to reach 60 fps and can’t otherwise it’s better than to play with way lower fps. Latency doesn’t matter in a lot of games, not every game is competitive.

This assumes DLSS3 or bust. Why not use DLSS2, turn down the resolution, or turn down the settings instead? I'm struggling to think of games where the latency doesn't matter, but the FPS remains important.

If you want to reach 120fps or more and can’t otherwise. Again, latency doesn’t matter much in games such as Spider-Man - MM.

I haven't played it, but I can't imagine any game where you have to fight against enemies in real time benefiting from more sluggish input and control. People might habitually think that higher FPS gives them more responsive controls, but the opposite is happening with DLSS3 when this was not the case with earlier versions of the technology.

I'm also not sure how anyone who claims they could notice the difference between the already high frame rate and what you could get with DLSS3 (I guess 120 FPS in your example) not being able to notice the decrease in the responsiveness of the controls. If your using DLSS3 when the FPS is really low, it will make for an even more noticeable set of sluggish controls.

We could certainly take the idea further. Why generate only one fake frame between real frames when you could do two of them. Sure the latency increases a little bit more, but now there's a higher FPS. Let's see if we can squeeze in a third fake frame and maybe even dedicate more transistors in the next generation to allowing for more fake frames to be inserted. Who cares if we can't put in as many shaders, everyone told us that they loved the higher FPS.

If we push the concept far enough you can take a card that could have maybe gotten 60 FPS that can now max out the 240 Hz monitor you have. Sure the controls probably feel clunky, but you're getting so many frames now that it surely must be better. It's not any different than a card that could actually get 240 FPS without using that technology. The graphics are still set to Ultra in both cases.

 

[Khanan]

It's highly useful for Nvidia's marketing department, I'll grant you that, but less so for players.



This assumes DLSS3 or bust. Why not use DLSS2, turn down the resolution, or turn down the settings instead? I'm struggling to think of games where the latency doesn't matter, but the FPS remains important.



I haven't played it, but I can't imagine any game where you have to fight against enemies in real time benefiting from more sluggish input and control. People might habitually think that higher FPS gives them more responsive controls, but the opposite is happening with DLSS3 when this was not the case with earlier versions of the technology.

I'm also not sure how anyone who claims they could notice the difference between the already high frame rate and what you could get with DLSS3 (I guess 120 FPS in your example) not being able to notice the decrease in the responsiveness of the controls. If your using DLSS3 when the FPS is really low, it will make for an even more noticeable set of sluggish controls.

We could certainly take the idea further. Why generate only one fake frame between real frames when you could do two of them. Sure the latency increases a little bit more, but now there's a higher FPS. Let's see if we can squeeze in a third fake frame and maybe even dedicate more transistors in the next generation to allowing for more fake frames to be inserted. Who cares if we can't put in as many shaders, everyone told us that they loved the higher FPS.

If we push the concept far enough you can take a card that could have maybe gotten 60 FPS that can now max out the 240 Hz monitor you have. Sure the controls probably feel clunky, but you're getting so many frames now that it surely must be better. It's not any different than a card that could actually get 240 FPS without using that technology. The graphics are still set to Ultra in both cases.

The point is that people who have used it like in my examples have reported that the experience was good, particularly with the 2nd example. The thought of "oh my god it introduces extra latency and thus it's unusable" is not correct. It depends on the game, it's surely not for competitive games where every millisecond counts, but games like Spider-Man or other SP games, it won't make it "sluggish" enough for you to care. Like I said, if your point is to argue that DLSS 3 is useless, you can't make that point. There are scenarios where it is absolutely useful. The only time I wouldn't use it otherwise, if it has graphical glitches, but those have been reported to be also rare and game dependant.

 

[Heartbreaker]

The point is that people who have used it like in my examples have reported that the experience was good, particularly with the 2nd example. The thought of "oh my god it introduces extra latency and thus it's unusable" is not correct. It depends on the game, it's surely not for competitive games where every millisecond counts, but games like Spider-Man or other SP games, it won't make it "sluggish" enough for you to care. Like I said, if your point is to argue that DLSS 3 is useless, you can't make that point. There are scenarios where it is absolutely useful. The only time I wouldn't use it otherwise, if it has graphical glitches, but those have been reported to be also rare and game dependant.

It's not useless, in the same way "motion smoothing" on TVs is not useless.

I'd have no problem if they made it a separate feature from DLSS (call it what it is: Motion Smoothing), because it has absolutely nothing to do with DLSS.

I'd have no problem if they didn't market it as the True frame rate, because it isn't.

Even Samsung one of the more misleading companies when it comes to marketing, doesn't pretend motion smoothing increases your frame rate, like NVidia does.

NVidia is on a massive marketing push to Mislead people into thinking the fake frame rate is the same as a real frame rate.

It's what they use to tell the bald faced lie, that the 4070 Ti, is between 20% and 200% faster than than 3090 Ti, when in fact the 4070 Ti is slower.

The are flooding the internet with misleading comparisons like this:

What I find funny in these comparisons NVidia labels the side with DLSS off, as "RTX OFF" even though both side have RT ON. Apparently RTX now means DLSS and not Ray Tracing.

 

[Khanan]

It's not useless, in the same way "motion smoothing" on TVs is not useless.

I'd have no problem if they made it a separate feature from DLSS (call it what it is: Motion Smoothing), because it has absolutely nothing to do with DLSS.

I'd have no problem if they didn't market it as the True frame rate, because it isn't.

Even Samsung one of the more misleading companies when it comes to marketing, doesn't pretend motion smoothing increases your frame rate, like NVidia does.

NVidia is on a massive marketing push to Mislead people into thinking the fake frame rate is the same as a real frame rate.

It's what they use to tell the bald faced lie, that the 4070 Ti, is between 20% and 200% faster than than 3090 Ti, when in fact the 4070 Ti is slower.

The are flooding the internet with misleading comparisons like this:

What I find funny in these comparisons NVidia labels the side with DLSS off, as "RTX OFF" even though both side have RT ON. Apparently RTX now means DLSS and not Ray Tracing.

Usually it is a separate feature, not completely but usually you have the option to switch FG off. Not in Portal RTX apparently. Otherwise, I dislike the marketing as well, but this is nothing new with Nvidia, they have atrocious marketing since decades. I’m used to ignoring it.

RTX always meant the whole feature set the first cards (20 series) brought, this is DLSS and RT yes. Common misconception that it means “Raytracing”, that’s why I never used the word RTX to describe RT aside from never using it like that anyway.