Do you guys use DSR with your games on a 1080 screen?

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 14:17

Just found this feature now that i have a 970, so am i right in thinking it lets you run at higher resolutions on lower res screens? so 1440p on a 1080p monitor for example?

i imagine it makes it sharper, just dabbling with it now! do you guys use it? i imagine its good for older games to still maintain 60 +fps but on newer stuff there would be a big performance hit?

bJN · 9 May 2015 at 14:31

Essentially, yes. It downscales a higher resolution to give a sharper look, removing (some of) the need for anti-aliasing. It works well, and I've found so far that DSR will perform better than say using 8x MSAA, and doesn't have the blurred effect that FXAA and TXAA bring.

P.B · 9 May 2015 at 14:31

Yes I tried mafia II @ 5K still ran smooth as and was a huge improvement in IQ

But I wouldn't recommend it on latest games as its just like running at the set dsr resolution.

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 14:42

i tried it in pillars of eternity but dont think it works well with that one, however it seeme to work if i changed desktop res aswell but the text then had a bit of blur to it.

Rroff · 9 May 2015 at 14:45

Text quality will always be compromised to some level - lesser so when using exact multipliers of the native resolution.

I find it works best with older games though where in some cases it can make them look a lot nicer - some newer ones the performance hit is a bit high.

Overall its a very useful tool to have to hand but I don't run it indiscriminately.

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 15:51

just had a little play in CS:GO, can pop that up really high and maintain really high fps. dont really notice it until you look at it side by side (i took a few shots both 1080p, and higher) much sharper textures etc

nice feature

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 21:51

Shouldnt have dabbled into this.. Now i want a new monitor as i think the 970 can handle games fairly well above 1080! Off to the monitor section i go

neoglow · 9 May 2015 at 21:56

Just use conventional resolution Downsampling with Nvidia Control Panel.
Google for guides.

Eg: http://neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=509076

Witcher1979 · 9 May 2015 at 22:31

kinger8938 said:
Shouldnt have dabbled into this.. Now i want a new monitor as i think the 970 can handle games fairly well above 1080! Off to the monitor section i go

Yeah I have the 980 and I am thinking about 1440, you should be able to max games at that res tbh without much hassle.

Rroff · 9 May 2015 at 22:37

neoglow said:
Just use conventional resolution Downsampling with Nvidia Control Panel.
Google for guides.

Eg: http://neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=509076

Thats great if you want it just for the super sampling/AA side of it but DSR goes a bit beyond that not just to use the extra detail to improve edge quality but to also (via semi-intelligent filtering) try and preserve as much detail from the higher resolution as possible in the down sampled result - also increasing the perceived intra texture detail as well as edge filtering. (Most down sampling systems will use an undiscriminating interpolation mechanism which usually just averages the results sometimes with some basic weighting).

Witcher1979 said:
Yeah I have the 980 and I am thinking about 1440, you should be able to max games at that res tbh without much hassle.

I have no problems with a 780 clocked to stock 980 performance on the Swift (2560x1440).

~>Dg<~ · 9 May 2015 at 22:40

certain games i always use DSR.

Witcher1979 · 9 May 2015 at 22:51

Rroff said:
Thats great if you want it just for the super sampling/AA side of it but DSR goes a bit beyond that not just to use the extra detail to improve edge quality but to also (via semi-intelligent filtering) try and preserve as much detail from the higher resolution as possible in the down sampled result - also increasing the perceived intra texture detail as well as edge filtering. (Most down sampling systems will use an undiscriminating interpolation mechanism which usually just averages the results sometimes with some basic weighting).

I have no problems with a 780 clocked to stock 980 performance on the Swift (2560x1440).

Nice, how is 1440 compared to 1080? Is it worth a £300-£350 upgrade. I think you can get 27" screens for that, either that or a 32" at 1080. Not sure what to do tbh.

Rroff · 9 May 2015 at 22:56

TBH for FPS games online, etc. I'm not really fussed but it is nice to have the extra resolution for single player, MMOs, etc. can't really comment on the value for money side as it wasn't a purchase I had second thoughts over, etc. I wanted it and had the money so did it.

Witcher1979 · 9 May 2015 at 23:02

Rroff said:
TBH for FPS games online, etc. I'm not really fussed but it is nice to have the extra resolution for single player, MMOs, etc. can't really comment on the value for money side as it wasn't a purchase I had second thoughts over, etc. I wanted it and had the money so did it.

Ah I see

Yeah I have to be a bit careful I just spent just over 550 on the 980 and a new PSU. If I want to spend another 300+ I really need to justify it to the wife because as far as she is concerned she does not understand why it costs so much. She just see's the adverts for consoles that cost £300 and you are done for 10 years or however long they last these days.

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 23:21

^same here mate

but i think the monitor will do our cards justice so.. Has to be done.. Right?

Witcher1979 · 9 May 2015 at 23:28

kinger8938 said:
^same here mate but i think the monitor will do our cards justice so.. Has to be done.. Right?

I think you are right tbh, we pretty much have the exact same setup with the exact same overclock on the CPU as well lol. Runs GTA 5 well though doesnt it.

kinger8938 · 9 May 2015 at 23:46

Witcher1979 said:
I think you are right tbh, we pretty much have the exact same setup with the exact same overclock on the CPU as well lol. Runs GTA 5 well though doesnt it.

indeed, rather impressed

i have the 970 though but still for my needs its miles ahead of what i had

coupe69 · 10 May 2015 at 00:19

I'm finding my 980 copes pretty well at 1440, although you will still have to turn certain settings down in some games if you want to maintain that magical 60fps. I couldn't imagine having to go back down to peasant 1080/1200p resolution nowadays

kinger8938 · 10 May 2015 at 15:49

coupe69 said:
I'm finding my 980 copes pretty well at 1440, although you will still have to turn certain settings down in some games if you want to maintain that magical 60fps. I couldn't imagine having to go back down to peasant 1080/1200p resolution nowadays

true that

so to confirm, this is pretty much running the games at these resolutions, so if i go for a 1440p monitor, i can expect the same performance that im getting using DSR at 1440p on my 1080p screen? no trickery involved?

really impressed with the 970, but its made me want this new screen

been recommended a 25" dell one over in the monitor section so may just go for it

Rroff · 10 May 2015 at 15:54

DSR basically works by rendering the scene as if you had a higher resolution monitor i.e. 2560x1440 if you use that level of scaling with DSR then using that information to try and rebuild the image at your native resolution as closely as possible using semi intelligent filtering - so theoretically you should see slightly higher performance if you were rendering 2560x1440 natively though the filters used by DSR have fairly low performance impact.

Which is why if you screenshot a game with DSR active you get a huge image which is the original image as rendered by the game before any DSR processing is applied instead of a screenshot at your native resolution.