The Medium: DLSS vs. FSR Comparison

[W1zzard]

We may need to see comparisons of video for this

I wonder how to achieve that without uploads butchering quality....

@W1zzard you're the filehosting guy, can something like a single second of 60FPS recording be captured in some lossless format? or would the filesizes be immense (or too small to be useful?)

that's a great question. i wonder if i could write something like our image comparator, but for video .. with zoom, slowmo, draggable slider

 

[Mussels]

It'd be amazing to directly compare if we can get the timestamp in a repetitive test exactly the same, which in-game benchmarks would allow

We arent trying for FPS recordings but a visual comparison so that should work?

 

[InVasMani]

Couldn't you do that with a GIF within GIMP!!? Example this is 3 frames in a loop enabled/disabled reshade with a hotkey between screenshots and it had interesting filtered lighting effect look in motion. It does everything except the slow motion, but you can adjust that in GIMP with the ms frame spacing that's pretty easily controllable.

 

[Felix123BU]

that's a great question. i wonder if i could write something like our image comparator, but for video .. with zoom, slowmo, draggable slider

That would be highly interesting, though a simple side by side video would do the trick normally.
It amuses me terribly how militant people become over such a comparison

 

[Vayra86]

Thing is, we are always talking about stills in video games where motion is key to the experience.

Motion = motion resolution, which in large part is directly influenced by the monitor in use, its G2G, refresh rate, its color space even matters now. DCI P3 capable panels are going to make certain detail visible that sRGB wont pronounce for example. With HDR it gets even muddier.

Much like the old battle for microstutter this one is diving deep into the pixels. And when you dive that deep, gameplay is on the bench, really. The actual game is on the bench too - its irrelevant.. and yet, the render tech it uses directly impacts the quality of both the FSR and DLSS implementation.

So... good luck comparing the perceived quality of each solution and finding some form of blanket statement on them. It will always be wrong. Like the other minute differences between camps, this is another one in which the marketing is probably a bigger influencer than the tech at hand.

And this is likely to be the primary influence for whatever tech will survive or even coexist.

They probably can coexist as they do now. So the net result is: with Nvidia you sacrifice more raw GPU grunt for it with limited implementation, while AMD has broad (full?) implementation and does not sacrifice die space (or development focus!) Nvidia will need a LOT of marketing and real USPs over the others to keep that afloat. One USP they probably do have, is more perf for equal IQ.

But its just one consideration here. Better tech is only useful if it gets used and if it is economically viable.

 

[Felix123BU]

Thing is, we are always talking about stills in video games where motion is key to the experience.

Motion = motion resolution, which in large part is directly influenced by the monitor in use, its G2G, refresh rate, its color space even matters now. DCI P3 capable panels are going to make certain detail visible that sRGB wont pronounce for example. With HDR it gets even muddier.

Much like the old battle for microstutter this one is diving deep into the pixels. And when you dive that deep, gameplay is on the bench, really. The actual game is on the bench too - its irrelevant.. and yet, the render tech it uses directly impacts the quality of both the FSR and DLSS implementation.

So... good luck comparing the perceived quality of each solution and finding some form of blanket statement on them. It will always be wrong. Like the other minute differences between camps, this is another one in which the marketing is probably a bigger influencer than the tech at hand.

And this is likely to be the primary influence for whatever tech will survive or even coexist.

They probably can coexist as they do now. So the net result is: with Nvidia you sacrifice more raw GPU grunt for it with limited implementation, while AMD has broad (full?) implementation and does not sacrifice die space (or development focus!) Nvidia will need a LOT of marketing and real USPs over the others to keep that afloat. One USP they probably do have, is more perf for equal IQ.

But its just one consideration here. Better tech is only useful if it gets used and if it is economically viable.

"Thing is, we are always talking about stills in video games where motion is key to the experience."

I agree 99.9%, and it would not be and issue if stills would be indicative for games in motion, they are not, maybe partially indicative for upscaling to 1080p or lower, but not for upscaling above 1080p, at least not with the current solutions, DLSS and FSR.

I was doing some thinking about why this trend of comparing stills started, and why everybody else followed even though its not as you say, the key experience for a game. Its not logical. Reminded me of a social experiment, if you put one person in a room with actors and ask them all a question, if the actors give a wrong answer, most persons will be inclined to go with it against their better judgement

 

[Vayra86]

"Thing is, we are always talking about stills in video games where motion is key to the experience."

I agree 99.9%, and it would not be and issue if stills would be indicative for games in motion, they are not, maybe partially indicative for upscaling to 1080p or lower, but not for upscaling above 1080p, at least not with the current solutions, DLSS and FSR.

I was doing some thinking about why this trend of comparing stills started, and why everybody else followed even though its not as you say, the key experience for a game. Its not logical. Reminded me of a social experiment, if you put one person in a room with actors and ask them all a question, if the actors give a wrong answer, most persons will be inclined to go with it against their better judgement

Herd mentality and Youtube/social media. That is all. Critical thought is dangerous, you might stand out in some way and catch the wrong kind of attention, what if you're not in-crowd anymore? Oh dear, no. The only critical thought you see is the shortest path to creating new buzz, and how to get there with maximum subscribers. Its like TV man. Everybody thinks they're celebrity material now.

Also, keyboard heroics - they've always been there, they won't go away. Gotta talk about something...

You do have me curious on that last 0,1% there, now.

 

[Felix123BU]

Herd mentality and Youtube/social media. That is all. Critical thought is dangerous, you might stand out in some way and catch the wrong kind of attention, what if you're not in-crowd anymore? Oh dear, no. The only critical thought you see is the shortest path to creating new buzz, and how to get there with maximum subscribers. Its like TV man. Everybody thinks they're celebrity material now.

Also, keyboard heroics - they've always been there, they won't go away. Gotta talk about something...

You do have me curious on that last 0,1% there, now.

100% is too extreme

 

[Deleted member 190774]

That would be highly interesting, though a simple side by side video would do the trick normally.
It amuses me terribly how militant people become over such a comparison

Because for one it's a mostly pointless exercise at this stage.

I would hope most people who visit these boards have a modicum of technical nous about them. We should already know that DLSS is technically a superior product, we should also know that FSR is a not-so-simple spacial up-scaler. We should know after all this time what you get with DLSS is softer, and what you get with FSR sharper (by default). We should know that FSR, by definition of what it is, has trouble with retaining detail in fine lines.

When I play a game, I'm not analyising every inch of the screen to appreciate all the work the artists have put into the game, I'm following my objective and much of the unnecessary data will be forgotten after a few seconds as I move on. The key is, MOVING, not standing still. We're not playing a photograph; we're playing what's supposed to be a captivating, immersive story. Much of the time, most imagery is just sitting in my peripheral vision and is basically glossed over for importance.

While I'm disappointed with the approach that FSR takes, and I have the capability to use DLSS and FSR, the only thing that matters is, do I need extra the FPS, and if I do, does each technology allow me to do that without spoiling my experience. For the most part, both do.

Like most sensationalist journalism today, we apparently enjoy getting people to argue. For some of us, this gets tedious real quick.

 

[Felix123BU]

Because for one it's a mostly pointless exercise at this stage.

I would hope most people who visit these boards have a modicum of technical nous about them. We should already know that DLSS is technically a superior product, we should also know that FSR is a not-so-simple spacial up-scaler. We should know after all this time what you get with DLSS is softer, and what you get with FSR sharper (by default). We should know that FSR, by definition of what it is, has trouble with retaining detail in fine lines.

When I play a game, I'm not analyising every inch of the screen to appreciate all the work the artists have put into the game, I'm following my objective and much of the unnecessary data will be forgotten after a few seconds as I move on. The key is, MOVING, not standing still. We're not playing a photograph; we're playing what's supposed to be a captivating, immersive story. Much of the time, most imagery is just sitting in my peripheral vision and is basically glossed over for importance.

While I'm disappointed with the approach that FSR takes, and I have the capability to use DLSS and FSR, the only thing that matters is, do I need extra the FPS, and if I do, does each technology allow me to do that without spoiling my experience. For the most part, both do.

Like most sensationalist journalism today, we apparently enjoy getting people to argue. For some of us, this gets tedious real quick.

Arguing by itself is not the real issue, arguing from fixed unchangeable points of view without any real arguments is as you say not very interesting. And fanboy "arguing" is the most boring of them all

All of us have opinions, and each opinion is by itself very subjective, and if a discussion is to be engaging, each of us must have the capacity to at least listen to the other side. Because this DLSS vs FSR is one more form of taking sides of either Nvidia or AMD, and its not really about the topic of discussion. You get tired of this, I get amused, because for me its really easy to spot who is an ardent supporter of X or Y and notice that the conversation is not about the subject, but about glorifying your preferred party.

I also think this is a result of the tech itself being brought to light more for the purpose of making your competitor look bad and basically marketed that way, and said competitor also coming up with a solution to not look bad. I would have never thought any of the 2 Nvidia or AMD would ever pull this trigger of making upscaling a thing on PC, in the long run most people will keep their cards longer because this tech allows it, and I very very much doubt that would be to the liking of Nvidia or AMD or even Intel when they enter the market. It does benefit us gamers, it does not benefit them. And once all are onboard, it wont go away, leading to longer upgrade cycles especially since prices are on a seemingly never-ending rising trend.

For me this subject is simple, at lower resolutions DLSS is better, at higher resolution I prefer FSR mainly because I don't like the soft images DLSS produces and they are very close anyway in so called quality and performance increases, so extra sharpness wins it for me in those cases. I have not invested a lot of money into my PC to have a PS3 vibe from PC games, and as such, I would want to avoid any upscaling if possible, but especially for RT titles, its kind of a must these days.