Thursday, January 11th 2024
AMD Believes NVIDIA is Behind in Driver-Based Upscaler Development
AMD is readying its Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) technology for public release later this month (January 24 to be exact). Aaron Steinman, a Senior Radeon Manager, believes that arch rival NVIDIA will need to take some drastic steps once AFMF arrives due to its more open nature. He stated in a short interaction with PC Gamer: "I would be curious to know if NVIDIA feels now they have to match what we've done in making some of these solutions driver-based." His software engineering buddies have already released the Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) technology, which functions via in-driver operation.
Unlike Team Red's heavily marketed FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) system, AFMF and RSR are not reliant on official support from games developers. The driver-based solutions will be packaged within an upcoming version of AMD's HYPR-RX feature set. Steinman continued with his statement: "I think what we're gonna start seeing, DLSS is only available on certain solutions, so either NVIDIA is going to have to benefit from our solution because we did make it open-source and cross-vendor, or they're probably going to need to do something similar." The publication points out that Team Green has something in the same ballpark—NVIDIA Image Scaling—but its nowhere near as advanced as their headlining "AI-infused" DLSS tech. Steinman conceded to PC Gamer that his main opponent will inevitably pull ahead in the future: "I mean, the competition will never end, right? We'll have new technologies, they (NVIDIA) will have new technologies."
Sources:
PC Gamer, VideoCardz
Unlike Team Red's heavily marketed FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) system, AFMF and RSR are not reliant on official support from games developers. The driver-based solutions will be packaged within an upcoming version of AMD's HYPR-RX feature set. Steinman continued with his statement: "I think what we're gonna start seeing, DLSS is only available on certain solutions, so either NVIDIA is going to have to benefit from our solution because we did make it open-source and cross-vendor, or they're probably going to need to do something similar." The publication points out that Team Green has something in the same ballpark—NVIDIA Image Scaling—but its nowhere near as advanced as their headlining "AI-infused" DLSS tech. Steinman conceded to PC Gamer that his main opponent will inevitably pull ahead in the future: "I mean, the competition will never end, right? We'll have new technologies, they (NVIDIA) will have new technologies."
84 Comments on AMD Believes NVIDIA is Behind in Driver-Based Upscaler Development
One example was Starfield. When you walk straight FMF works as intended and you get high FPS. But once you turn the camera fast, it turns off and you get the lower FPS.
It is practically unusable in shooters or any fast-paced game.
Frame interpolation is pretty solid so far, but your upscaling quite frankly isn't great, behind intel even.
Joking aside, this really isn't something AMD should be trying to lay shots on Nvidia for. FSR/FRTC is great and all, open source good, but DLSS demolishes it 9 times out of 10. If anything they should be coming at a price/performance angle.
AMD couldn't dig themselves deeper..........
The only problem with RSR is that there is still a slight performance hit (and possibly a small amount of frame/input lag) when enabled, at least when I try it in Apex Legends from 1280x720 upscaled to 1920x1080 (ROG Ally), most likely due to the sharpening filter it does post-process. I did not try it on the RX 7900XTX since its powerful enough to handle anything out at the moment, and I prefer Integer Scaling for 2160p down to 1080p since there is no extra processing.
The output resolution really matters. If you have a 1080p monitor, stay away from upscaling. But I've used FSR2 with a 4k monitor and it is world's better than it is with a 1080p/1440p monitor. 1080p to 4k FSR2 and DLSS2 can both be decent. In the future if we have 8k monitors, you'll probably find that 4k to 8k FSR2 or DLSS2 will be even more effective.
--- one of the reasons Ori and the new Assassin's Creed game released today look so great is that they have a fixed camera perspective and don't use TAA. Play those games at native 4k and voila, you forgot how good games used to look at 4k when there was no TAA. SHARP!
((( Also the entire NVidia versus AMD debate is tiring because the only proper way to do it is pretend you don't know the card's brand, just review card A, B, and C for example. Let's do an example: Card A is 18 percent slower at 1440p, but Card B is 2.1x the price... so basically Card A is ahead by 75 percent in performance per dollar, basically an entire generation ahead of Card B. Later you find out that Card A is the 7900 XTX and Card B is the RTX 4090. IE the 7900 XTX's value is so high it beats the 4090 by massive margins, and might even beat the RTX 5090 too. So first evaluate performance and price, then reveal the names, and you'll find that most NVidia cards are a generation behind. Heck, the RTX 4080 was a generation behind the RTX 3080, no joke. The RTX 4080 was an RTX 2080 class card in perf/dollar. Ridiculous )))
EDIT: Additionally, I don't think AMD should be pushing AFMF as an advantage specifically for their mobile APUs (Z1, Z1 Extreme) as because it is frame generation, the recommendation is to have a minimum of 60 FPS, which is not always doable on heavier titles on the current Windows handhelds. It should be fine on their desktop and laptop GPUs.
AMD are MAD though.
The difference in fidelity is real. Calculating power grows, upscaling technology improves. It's a matter of time. Maybe in 10 or 15 years we will have 8K monitors for sub 800 USD and GPUs capable of reasonable 8K gaming at High or at least Medium settings at sub 1000 USD mark. Doesn't sound insane to me (15 years ago, 1080p60 was not a thing, just FYI).