NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Technical Deep Dive

[JustBenching]

Because side by side image comparison is way easier that noticing the quality difference when playing the game. I wanted overall graphics quality assessment, like when comparing image quality of a new game to 5-year old game. People often say a new game is unoptimized, because graphics quality looks similar, but FPS is much lower. They forget that quality improvement get harder and harder to notice as graphics get better.

Both screenshots are from TPU reviews.

Answers:

God of War: Low
Horizon: Medium

Exactly, side by side medium vs high is way easier to tell apart than dlss. Wasn't that the point?

 

[Vya Domus]

Using the GeForce 2MX in 2006 would have been an awful experience, with many games just refusing to launch since the market changed so much. Crysis won't even launch when a 2080Ti is still a decent performer in modern games.

It's not about this, RTRT and upscaling have been pushed onto people with no foresight. Back in those days engines and features weren't standard, if a developer felt like they could add "X" feature they would do so and then if others felt it was necessary they would all have their own solution. The reason 2080Ti is a still a "decent performer" is precisely because advancements have been handicapped by poor choices the industry made, that's not normal nor is it a good thing.

Because side by side image comparison is way easier

Yet it seems people correctly recognized that it was on medium or low, how about that.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

What quality setting is this (low, medium, high, ultra)?'
View attachment 380174

If I had to say; Low, Maybe medium, the textures are too blended and undefined, lighting/reflections is lacking, same for shadows.

(Never played God of War)

Because side by side image comparison is way easier that noticing the quality difference when playing the game. I wanted overall graphics quality assessment, like when comparing image quality of a new game to 5-year old game. People often say a new game is unoptimized, because graphics quality looks similar, but FPS is much lower. They forget that quality improvement get harder and harder to notice as graphics get better.

Both screenshots are from TPU reviews.

Answers:

God of War: Low
Horizon: Medium

Ah, nvm, guess I should have read further, I was right.

 

[duckface]

why this fp4 not in 20,30 or 40 series?

 

[Scircura]

Exactly, side by side medium vs high is way easier to tell apart than dlss. Wasn't that the point?

My takeaway is that most games look playable even on lower settings. Also, now I want a whole thread dedicated to "guess the graphics preset", if only to distract me from the wonderful https://guessthe.game/

The hardware also advanced significantly. You cannot compare the jump from the Geforce 2 Ti to the GTX 8800 to the 2080TI to the 5090. Using the GeForce 2MX in 2006 would have been an awful experience, with many games just refusing to launch since the market changed so much. Crysis won't even launch when a 2080Ti is still a decent performer in modern games.

Even the Jump from the Geforce 2 ti to the geforce 3 Ti was subanstial, and that was within one year. now it's taking at least 4 years to get a similar jump

I was going to challenge your claim about how long it's taking for each leap in hardware. I recently compiled a list of my last 25 years of graphics cards and I was surprised at how consistently my upgrades gained +200% performance for roughly +50% power consumption. But I looked up release dates of the cards and, sure enough, I'm waiting longer each time. 2.5 years between upgrades through the 2000's, but then 5 years and 6 years between upgrades in the 2010's.

(OT: it was hard to find benchmarks for old products. Other than TPU, TomsHardware, and Anandtech, every other review site is linkrotted or entirely gone, and many performance graphs were not backed up by the Internet Archive.)

 

[zigzag]

Exactly, side by side medium vs high is way easier to tell apart than dlss. Wasn't that the point?

I just tried to show that low doesn't mean PS2 quality anymore, but more like console quality.

Yet it seems people correctly recognized that it was on medium or low, how about that.

Some weren't 100% sure. If it was side-by-side comparison, no one would have any doubt.

In games with good DLSS implementation, the difference (between DLSS & native) is even harder to see (but not impossible) than between low-medium & high graphics quality settings. For current DLSS softer details is a giveaway. Transformers based DLSS 4 seems to (at least to some degree) fix that. I'm looking forward to see how it compares to native.

 

[Bwaze]

My takeaway is that most games look playable even on lower settings. Also, now I want a whole thread dedicated to "guess the graphics preset", if only to distract me from the wonderful https://guessthe.game/

I was going to challenge your claim about how long it's taking for each leap in hardware. I recently compiled a list of my last 25 years of graphics cards and I was surprised at how consistently my upgrades gained +200% performance for roughly +50% power consumption. But I looked up release dates of the cards and, sure enough, I'm waiting longer each time. 2.5 years between upgrades through the 2000's, but then 5 years and 6 years between upgrades in the 2010's.

(OT: it was hard to find benchmarks for old products. Other than TPU, TomsHardware, and Anandtech, every other review site is linkrotted or entirely gone, and many performance graphs were not backed up by the Internet Archive.)

Commendable. I started buying 3D accelerators with Riva TNT2, and I completely forgot what I had and for how long - luckily there are still posts from early 2000' on forums where I described my upgrade paths. :-D

 

[Scircura]

I see far less difference between low and ultra graphics in most games than I do between native and FSR at any setting.

It depends on the game for sure. All TAA games have some amount of softness to them which is slightly worsened by DLSS-Q @ 4K, but it's not something that bothers me much. I run my games with very little post-process sharpening, sometimes even with an .ini tweak to go below the minimum sharpening offered by in-game settings, because I don't like specular aliasing or pixel crawl. What is it in particular that stands out to you with upscalers, and are there certain games where it's worse?

I imagine that you miss the time before games switched to post-process AA and everything became a bit blurry. I have nostalgia for DX9 games which now can run with SGSSAA, and slightly worried that future graphics cards will stop supporting all the old flavors of MSAA. I don't know if there is/was dedicated hardware support to accelerate multisampling: does it still exist in today's cards, serving a purpose with shaders? Would there be any academic interest in seeing how fast a 5090 can run DX:HR with 8xSGSSAA @ 4K compared to previous product generations?

Also I'm waiting for the trend in retro-3D-aesthetics to catch up to the DX9 era... there are some games this year that are very PS1-stylized, so maybe another decade until the wheel finishes its turn.

 

[JustBenching]

I just tried to show that low doesn't mean PS2 quality anymore, but more like console quality.

Some weren't 100% sure. If it was side-by-side comparison, no one would have any doubt.

In games with good DLSS implementation, the difference (between DLSS & native) is even harder to see (but not impossible) than between low-medium & high graphics quality settings. For current DLSS softer details is a giveaway. Transformers based DLSS 4 seems to (at least to some degree) fix that. I'm looking forward to see how it compares to native.

Well the claim was that's preferable to drop settings than use dlss, which obviously isn't the case. Especially when you get into medium territory and most games start to look like ass. I mean i was on the phone and the horizon ss you posted looked like crap.

But it seems that we agree anyways. There are games that native look a lot lot worse than dlss. I would be posting pictures but people wouldn't believe that the crap one is the native. Eg in cod dlss performance looks better than native in static. Obviously in movement it isn't, but quality is.

 

[Vya Domus]

In games with good DLSS implementation, the difference (between DLSS & native) is even harder to see

In static scenes they all resolve pretty close to native but during motion you can absolutely tell that it isn't native, the image is full of stairstep artifacts.

 

[zigzag]

Well the claim was that's preferable to drop settings than use dlss, which obviously isn't the case. Especially when you get into medium territory and most games start to look like ass. I mean i was on the phone and the horizon ss you posted looked like crap.

But it seems that we agree anyways. There are games that native look a lot lot worse than dlss. I would be posting pictures but people wouldn't believe that the crap one is the native. Eg in cod dlss performance looks better than native in static. Obviously in movement it isn't, but quality is.

I agree that DLSS will usually give you better image-quality than lower settings, but I don't that they always look that bad. Some look quite acceptable even on low (like GoW). Horizon lowers texture resolution way too much.

In static scenes they all resolve pretty close to native but during motion you can absolutely tell that it isn't native, the image is full of stairstep artifacts.

You mean FSR or DLSS? DLSS is much better than FSR in that regard (but not perfect).

 

[Vya Domus]

You mean FSR or DLSS

All of them.

 

[Waldorf]

@JustBenching
just because something is cheaper/faster, doesnt make it the better deal.
whats the cuda perf on amd dgpu (vs Nv)?

the same way if i have +100K to spend (just) on a car, still wont make me buy a toyota for 20K, just because its cheaper.

moni res has NOTHING to do with the res you set in games, nor are you fixed to run games in 4K just because you're using a 4K screen.
i rather play at FHD/QHD on a large screen thats 4K, than the same screen in lower res and get pissed off from the screen door effect.

@AusWolf
cant talk about recent games, but anything i have from the past 10y will never look as good on low like they do on high/ultra,
and my F1 from 2012 (as i dont care for anything less than V8@18000 rpm) modded to ultra high/ultra max, looks so much better, most dont even know how old the game is when i show them vids.

the main reason why i spend more money on a dgpu than any console would cost, is to have improvements in image quality/fps or (more) options i can use (vs console).