344.48 WHQL DSR query

[Kyo]

Hi

Been reading this DSR function on the new driver but dont completely follow it or know how to best utilise it. I have it enabled but dont really know what the best options. I have a older card but meaning to upgrade in the near future .

I am currently play on 1920 x 1080 so is DSR only for higher resolution because it higher res then downscaled via filter right?

DSR Factor - is this magnification to whatever res i am set to?

DSR Smoothness - this is quality vs performnace? , think i leave it at 33%

Cheers
Kyo

 

[almighty15]

The DSR factor is the increase the game will render compared to your native resolution, just tick all the available boxes as that will give you more options to play with.

DSR smoothness relates the blur the final image produces, the filter that Nvidia uses in DSR adds blur to the final image to provide a little extra anti-aliasing but this comes at the expense of sharpness, the higher the value the more blurry the final image on your monitor is.

I have my smoothness set at 20%, setting it to 0% makes the games look overly sharp.

 

[titaniumx3]

The DSR factor is simply how many times bigger the resolution will be compared to your native res. So for example, the highest factor which is x4.0 will give a res of 3840x2160 which is precisely four times as much pixels as 1920x1080. Factors less than x4.0 will obviously give corresponding resolutions inbetween those already mentioned.

Once you have selected the DSR factors (however many you want) and applied your setting in the nvidia control panel, you will notice that you now have these new higher resolutions available to use in any games and even the windows desktop. If you now select one of these higher resolutions in a particular game, the graphics card will render the game at that resolution and then simply downsample it down to your native res. The whole down sampling process should be completely transparent to the game you're playing, meaning that it will actually think you have a higher res screen.

The smoothness percentage doesn't affect performance, but controls how smooth the image is after it is downsampled. A higher percentage will give a smoother image with less visible aliasing at the expense of some fine detail. A lower percentage will give better detail, at the expense of more visible aliasing. Simply choose what balance you prefer.

Remember, the whole process is transparent to games, so you can still use normal AA methods in addition to DSR. The peformance penalty will of course be huge. Still, it's not unfeasible, especially if it's an older or less demanding title. For example, on my 980 I can play Portal 2 at DSR x4.0 (3840x2160) with 4xMSAA enabled, but still play v-synced at 60fps.

 

[Kyo]

Thanks for the quick response and explain action guys

 

[D1craig]

I tried the DSR feature and tbh it was dissappointing.

They way I understand it is - it makes the screen 4k then shrinks it down to fit your resolution.

Isnt that exactly what playing at a lower resolution does anyway? The other way around - up scaling - I can completely see how that would work.

Anyway I used it for wow. My pc handled it brilliantly - gtx 970. But it blurred all the text ie. Action buttons lettering, chat ( I could make chat better but I like it small ).

 

[vintage-x]

I tried the DSR feature and tbh it was dissappointing.

They way I understand it is - it makes the screen 4k then shrinks it down to fit your resolution.

Isnt that exactly what playing at a lower resolution does anyway? The other way around - up scaling - I can completely see how that would work.

Anyway I used it for wow. My pc handled it brilliantly - gtx 970. But it blurred all the text ie. Action buttons lettering, chat ( I could make chat better but I like it small ).

As it's been said it's basically a more acurate form of AA
you can mess with the smoothness to make the image sharper. I have mine set to 50% at the moment but I do play on a 50" plasma from 7ft away

 

[Rroff]

I tried the DSR feature and tbh it was dissappointing.

They way I understand it is - it makes the screen 4k then shrinks it down to fit your resolution.

Isnt that exactly what playing at a lower resolution does anyway? The other way around - up scaling - I can completely see how that would work.

Anyway I used it for wow. My pc handled it brilliantly - gtx 970. But it blurred all the text ie. Action buttons lettering, chat ( I could make chat better but I like it small ).

Playing at a lower resolution never renders finer details anyway, often they don't even enter the rendering pipeline.

Ostensibly DSR renders at huge resolution including all the finer details then uses intelligent filtering to try and preserve/represent more of the finer detail in the resulting lower resolution image that would normally be lost either through not being rendered in the first place or destroyed by the downscaling process.

As part of the downscaling process it does allow it to use that extra detail to reduce the jaggedness of edges.

In practise I'm not overly impressed by it there is some increase in quality i.e. if you look at text on long range objects its a bit clearer but I don't really consider it worth the performance hit.

 

[titaniumx3]

That's why its intended for older games or less demanding ones. I've been playing through games like Portal 2, Dead space, etc and I'm still getting min fps over 60. The quality increase is also huge. Sure the physical resolution is the same as before, but each pixel is showing a much more accurate representation of what's actually there, hence the increase in detail. Portal 2 looks pre-rendered right now.

It doesn't suit every game though as I mentioned and also games that have a UI that doesn't scale up with increasing resolutions.