Poll: Do you care about ray tracing / upscaling?

[psolord]

Right right, one more, I've forgotten about Forspoken. This one was meant to be dlss vs fsr3, but I took a screenshot from native 4k, but I moved the camera a little.

So, 4070ti, 4k maxed

dlss balanced





fsr3 4k



4k native


It does not really show in the pics, but fsr3 is really really bad. I don't see the point. There is obvious pixel degredation with camera motion. It's 100% better with just dlss balanced.


Oh yeah and look at that power draw. 211 with dlss balanced, lol. Yeah that's because its super heavy and there is RT here as well. However you can see in the native 4k, we are getting 40fps at 250W, which is unplayable in by book. With dlss balanced its absolutely playable. So this an example in which the upscaler, takes a game from the unplayable zone, to the enjoyable zone.

 

[AdamK47]

Timestamped at the right spot. Why develop better hardware with better native performance when you can rely on software trickery to boost numbers for marketing purposes?

 

[psolord]

Upscalers are a double edged sword, that's for certain. The proper orthodox upscalers, are good in my book. The framegenerating addition, not so much.

 

[psolord]

I did a couple more upscaling tests on the 6600 and 4070ti, in Robocop Rogue City. This was a very interesting test, as it runs on Unreal Engine 5 and because neither card managed 60fps in their native resolution, 1080p for the 6600 and 4k for the 4070ti.

Only videos this time, because there is a specific problem with fsr2 this time, that needed highlighting. I show all rendering methods, tsr, taa, fsr2, dlss and xess, the latter three in quality mode this time.

The problem is shown at 1:18 for the 6600, with a lot of tingling pixels on the road, which go away with xess. Same thing for the 4070ti at 1:30, and the problem goes away with dlss and xess.

Xess once again consumes more power, but is far better than fsr2 this time.For the 4070ti, dlss is the clear winner, as it provides the best visual quality to power draw ratio. Normally this wouldn't be a metric, but the increase of power draw, means that the 4070ti has more frame drops compared to dlss.

However, xess is the best option for the rx6600. Ok Intel is doing AMD a solid here. Come to think of it, wherever fsr2 has some shortcomings, xess is a solid alternative. In all my tests xess has proven very solid, with the only drawback, that it has more power draw.

Here are the mandatory vids, to show the tingling. (non monetized channel-just for fun)

 

[psolord]

Also another quick word. I've been looking at some next fest demos at steam. Found one more Unreal Engine 5 game, the Thaumaturge.

Same thing as before. Not very high vram requirements, extremely high gpu processing requirements. Upscaling is mandatory for 4k/epic on a 4070ti.

This is with 4k/epic/balanced. I'll see if I do a more thorough testing. Seems interesting and actually shows UE5's superior rendering. If the extra processing power, justifies the output, compared to say, something like Baldur's Gate 3, can be disputed. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyhow...



Link here to test yourselves.

The Thaumaturge on Steam

The Thaumaturge is a story-driven RPG with morally ambiguous choices, taking place in the culturally diverse world of early 20th-century Warsaw. In this world, salutors exist: esoteric beings that only thaumaturges can truly perceive and use for their needs.

store.steampowered.com

 

[AdamK47]

The Thaumaturge looks like my kind of game. I'll have to keep an eye on that one

 

[AdamK47]

Enjoy your upscaling. You asked for it.

Game optimizations? What's that?

 

[SolidQ]

Game optimizations? What's that?

RE2/3/4 running on potato PC, Alan need future GPU, despite graphic looks around same

 

[Ranulf]

Just buy a 4090, gosh. Simple solution.

RE2/3/4 running on potato PC, Alan need future GPU, despite graphic looks around same

Its got all the rays traced bro. Tracing equals better bro. It just works.

 

[SolidQ]

Its got all the rays traced bro.

We talking about without RT.
P.S RE 2/3/4 also have RT

 

[GodisanAtheist]

We talking about without RT.
P.S RE 2/3/4 also have RT

- Doesn't matter bruh, trace those rays bruh.

AW2 uses deferred raytracing, where it raytraces in the background now for when you eventually turn on raytracing 5 years from now.

 

[AdamK47]

- Doesn't matter bruh, trace those rays bruh.

AW2 uses deferred raytracing, where it raytraces in the background now for when you eventually turn on raytracing 5 years from now.

5 years from now the game breaks because some NVidia/AMD upscale, frame gen, or ray trace implementation doesn't work anymore either through a driver or a generational hardware change. They won't be bothered by breaking some old game they had involvement with.

 

[Ranulf]

5 years from now the game breaks because some NVidia/AMD upscale, frame gen, or ray trace implementation doesn't work anymore either through a driver or a generational hardware change. They won't be bothered by breaking some old game they had involvement with.

The game makers will just sell a re-mastered game version so we can buy the game all over again.

 

[jpiniero]

FWIW all the speculation currently is that the PS5 Pro's main focus is on RT.

 

[AdamK47]

Nvidia's marketing on Alan Wake 2. Benchmark results showcasing fake frame rates with fake resolutions. All thanks to the regressive features of DLSS.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Looks like Pathtracing in AW2 also has some weird rendering errors at times, erasing shadows that show up in raster and doing that thing that Raytracing is supposed to solve allowing light to pass through objects and seams.

Its not often and likely wouldn't be an issue unless pixel peeping, but even then a lot of RT only looks better than the raster solution when pixel peeping to begin with so...

 

[Zenoth]

I don't really care about Ray Tracing, but I do care about Upscaling.

With Upscaling I can potentially increase performance in demanding games. With Ray Tracing nothing is 'added' to my experience of a game, and it can severely impact performance. I'd argue that Upscaling methods and tech is always useful, whereas Ray Tracing is... extremely subjective. It's not exactly "useful" per se (it's just for 'eye candy') and isn't even well implemented in most games. To me Ray Tracing feels very niche, a bit like VR gaming; it doesn't seem to be 'taking off'. It's not like 90%+ of the gaming industry 'adopted' Ray Tracing.

Additionally, IF we have to include Ray Tracing, then Upscaling becomes nearly required anyways to alleviate the performance hit. In the end I think Upscaling is the big winner.

 

[Leeea]

I wish I could change my vote.

I voted both were important.

But more and more I see ick raytracing implementations.

Up-scaling still matters. But raytracing feels like a gimmick that is getting old.

 

[NTMBK]

Is anybody testing input latency on these DLSS3 games? How long is it from mouse click to gunshot on screen?

 

[mikeymikec]

I haven't kept up with this thread, nor am I well-read on the topic of upscaling but I thought it would be more relevant to post comments largely in response to posts in the "8GB is not enough" thread here:

I wonder if the best response to upscaling is for reviewers not to enable it; just review games/GPUs with it disabled (or at least show both results of non-upscaled and up-scaled content) and provide commentary.

The other thing I'm wondering about upscaling is that by halving the screen resolution, doesn't that also mean that a display's ability to draw content at a non-native resolution is also highly relevant? For example, my Iiyama XU2292HS draws non-native content differently depending on whether I use a HDMI or DisplayPort connection; with HDMI the spinning circles on the Win10 loading screen look extremely pixely whereas with a DP connection it's smoothed out and looking a lot more like what I was used to with my previous display did with DVI. Also, are say pixel response times affected by running at non-native resolutions?

 

[coercitiv]

The other thing I'm wondering about upscaling is that by halving the screen resolution, doesn't that also mean that a display's ability to draw content at a non-native resolution is also highly relevant?

Display scaling quality is no longer relevant. The final output from the game is at native resolution, the internal rendering is done at lower resolution and the upsampled to match native.

Quite a number of games did this or allowed the user to do this before AI upscalers became a thing. One of the advantages was exactly the lack of monitor scaling issues and eliminating the need for switching between resolutions, another great advantage was the game UI could be rendered at native resolution, enhancing perceived quality.

 

[jpiniero]

It's not like 90%+ of the gaming industry 'adopted' Ray Tracing.

That's because developers were mainly making last gen games. That is slowly changing.

 

[AdamK47]

Display scaling quality is no longer relevant. The final output from the game is at native resolution, the internal rendering is done at lower resolution and the upsampled to match native.

Quite a number of games did this or allowed the user to do this before AI upscalers became a thing. One of the advantages was exactly the lack of monitor scaling issues and eliminating the need for switching between resolutions, another great advantage was the game UI could be rendered at native resolution, enhancing perceived quality.

It's very important to mention. It's deception. Not caring or not mentioning the resolution a game is rendering at is falling into Nvidia's marketing narrative. People should know the resolution a game renders at internally. Don't hide it. Show the truth.

 

[coercitiv]

It's very important to mention. It's deception.

I was addressing @mikeymikec 's question about monitor scaling quality. Monitor hardware upscaling is not important here, since the input is at native resolution.

As far as the deception of presenting "output resolution" as if it were "render resolution", that's another story... with a sad ending.

 

[poke01]

Now that mobile and Apple have added RT to their GPUs. It will only get more important.