Poll: How do you game? Upscaling or native? (updated poll choices - 24/12, revote!)

[Tinek]

If you haven't already, it's worth experimenting with different presets for DLSS as ever since nvidia introduced this preset concept, nvidias' guide:



But devs are tending to use the D preset, where as the C preset often works out better (especially for lower res. or/and lower presets) e.g.

Personally I haven't encountered one instance where TAA ever looks better than DLSS and if it is, it's because of the DLSS preset not being the C preset.

Not a huge fan of sharpening filters, they can be good for the cases where there is extreme blur issues because of TAA but more often than not, they just increase the artifacts with halo'ing, shimmering and so on, which is present in the base/native frame.

I got into the once human beta recently and sadly it's AA choices are awful, SMAA (shimmering and jaggy mess and somehow still blurry) and the TAA doesn't fix jaggies and is even worse for blur. Devs are going to be including dlss here though so will be interesting to see how it does, for now, I've forced 4x msaa via nvidia control panel.

I was not aware of these presets with DLSS! Good to know!

Sadly, Warthunder has really weird approach to diss - it's both very blurry even on quality settings (and library in it is sensibly recent), with very obvious ghosting and other visual issues included. In this case, even though also blurry, TAA just looks considerably better. DLDRS looks even better (and then DLSS isn't too bad on quality) when on max setting but has too many downsides for me to use it. There's a few games like that in general though they are less and less common as time passes, gladly.

Regarding sharpening and haloing - here AMD has big advantage with 0 FPS loss, no haloing etc. CAS. Comparable sharpening+ from GFE has considerable performance hit even on 4090.

 

[Nexus18]

I was not aware of these presets with DLSS! Good to know!

Sadly, Warthunder has really weird approach to diss - it's both very blurry even on quality settings (and library in it is sensibly recent), with very obvious ghosting and other visual issues included. In this case, even though also blurry, TAA just looks considerably better. DLDRS looks even better (and then DLSS isn't too bad on quality) when on max setting but has too many downsides for me to use it. There's a few games like that in general though they are less and less common as time passes, gladly.

Regarding sharpening and haloing - here AMD has big advantage with 0 FPS loss, no haloing etc. CAS. Comparable sharpening+ from GFE has considerable performance hit even on 4090.

Yeah definetly always worth experimenting with DLSS now, nvidia ****** up when they added the sharpening for DLSS then they undone this with DLSS 2.5.1 and with the 3.0+ ones, we now have these presets, which has re-introduced some old ghosting issues back (probably because devs don't test the presets themselves). You can use DLSSTweaks to switch the preset or or just switch to 2.5.1 dlss version but then you won't get the other improvements we have seen with the 3. versions especially if using lower presets.

Haven't played warthunder so can't comment on it but sometimes if a games dlss implementation is noticeably bad compared to TAA, it is most likely the devs haven't done the correct mip map bias setting or/and a depth setting so does sound like a bad/wrong implementation here, sadly this is where it is an issue as switching out dlss or using dlsstweaks could be seen as a cheat so wouldn't risky any tampering here.

Amds sharpness slider is very good from when I used amd, I kept it at a pretty low %, iirc 40-50%, redux/sweetfx always does the best job but it is more faff. For nvidia, use the sharpness in the old NVCP as the geforce filters aren't as good.

 

[Tinek]

Yeah definetly always worth experimenting with DLSS now, nvidia ****** up when they added the sharpening for DLSS then they undone this with DLSS 2.5.1 and with the 3.0+ ones, we now have these presets, which has re-introduced some old ghosting issues back (probably because devs don't test the presets themselves). You can use DLSSTweaks to switch the preset or or just switch to 2.5.1 dlss version but then you won't get the other improvements we have seen with the 3. versions especially if using lower presets.

Haven't played warthunder so can't comment on it but sometimes if a games dlss implementation is noticeably bad compared to TAA, it is most likely the devs haven't done the correct mip map bias setting or/and a depth setting so does sound like a bad/wrong implementation here, sadly this is where it is an issue as switching out dlss or using dlsstweaks could be seen as a cheat so wouldn't risky any tampering here.

Amds sharpness slider is very good from when I used amd, I kept it at a pretty low %, iirc 40-50%, redux/sweetfx always does the best job but it is more faff. For nvidia, use the sharpness in the old NVCP as the geforce filters aren't as good.

WT is also an online game, so no way to change dlss library or so deep tweaking as it just reverts it all back to standard instantly (and one risks being banned for cheating). Which makes it even worse is that sharp image is very important in such games as it's a life/death difference often.

With AMD I just keep it at 1% as that was already huge improvement comparing to 0% with zero artefacts and issues. And it's even open source method so nothing stops NVIDIA from supporting it aside pride, I recon.

I've tried three NvCP one too and it's similar but any changes require game restart each time. Not ideal.

 

[t2na]

Native

Either 1080p @ 240hz or 1440p @ 165hz - typically prefer 1080p for fps games and 1440p for singe player games.

7900XT - although I had the same approach with my 3070 (Although using DLSS if frame rates were ever below 60 in single player games)

 

[MartinPrince]

Recently been trying DLSS as the games I'm currently playing look OK with it on.

Using a 4090 with 4K 120Hz or 1440p 180Hz, though I do tend to cap games at 90fps as I can't tell the difference above and I like the lower noise and power.

 

[Amraam]

Voted DLSS but as I'm a 3080 gamer and don't have access to nvidia Frame Generation, I've been using FSR3 mod for performance boosts in Cyberpunk. Everything else has just been DLSS where supported, otherwise just native

 

[ebilcake]

DLSS always when available, 3080FE. Since DLSS 2.0 there's no reason not enable at least DLSS Quality now, unless there's game specific artifacting, which is the developers fault..

 

[almoststew1990]

6800XT at 1440p

I prefer native res 60fps to higher fps for with fsr. I don’t like the soft smudginess in the mid to far distance that TAA has and FSR and DLSS use TAA. I even prefer FXAA to TAA (I made a thread about it)

If I have GPU power to spare I’ll run at higher than 100% resolutions.

Games that my 6800XT struggles with like starfield I use FSR to get close to 60fps.

Considering how everyone from Digital Foundry down to individual forum members go on about scaling, a surprising proportion have voted that they use native res.

 

[almoststew1990]

Will wait to see if DF/John does a video on upscaling and TAA first though before creating a thread, given all the noise about TAA/upscaling in general going about now, I suspect we'll be seeing some video channels covering it perhaps, especially now that gamers who can't stand it are pushing at it from an "accessibility" pov, which will most likely get attention driven towards this from game devs.

I don't follow DF or anyone so haven't heard any noise about TAA - are people now (rightly in my opinion and use cases) saying that TAA doesn't or can sometimes not look great?

 

[Nexus18]

I don't follow DF or anyone so haven't heard any noise about TAA - are people now (rightly in my opinion and use cases) saying that TAA doesn't or can sometimes not look great?

Pretty much, been a huge hate bandwagon on it last few weeks, there is a popular sub reddit for TAA , can't link due to sweary but you'll probably be able to find it from a google search. So Alex/DF are going to be doing a video looking into TAA pros/cons and all this month.

6800XT at 1440p

I prefer native res 60fps to higher fps for with fsr. I don’t like the soft smudginess in the mid to far distance that TAA has and FSR and DLSS use TAA. I even prefer FXAA to TAA (I made a thread about it)

If I have GPU power to spare I’ll run at higher than 100% resolutions.

Games that my 6800XT struggles with like starfield I use FSR to get close to 60fps.

Considering how everyone from Digital Foundry down to individual forum members go on about scaling, a surprising proportion have voted that they use native res.

Got a link to the thread? Would be a good read.

 

[almoststew1990]

Pretty much, been a huge hate bandwagon on it last few weeks, there is a popular sub reddit for TAA , can't link due to sweary but you'll probably be able to find it from a google search. So Alex/DF are going to be doing a video looking into TAA pros/cons and all this month.


Got a link to the thread? Would be a good read.

It’s this thread: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/falling-out-of-love-with-anti-aliasing.18946304/

 

[Nexus18]

It’s this thread: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/falling-out-of-love-with-anti-aliasing.18946304/

Ah that thread, yeah I posted in there a lot too about how bad TAA and other AA methods were/are

RDR 2 is probably one of, if not the worst examples of TAA. DLSS and DLDSR is also the best showcase in that game. My post looking at the different AA in that game

Falling out of love with Anti-Aliasing

I used to envy AA and have it disabled by default because I never had a graphics card powerful enough for it (going back to, like, FX5200 in the family computer days). Now games seem to be based around it and jaggies seem a thing of the past and It's great I can turn up the AA in most games...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Poneros]

Honestly, even when I have the performance for native I usually still go for upscaling (even RSR/FSR1) just because the power savings make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Obviously if the image quality is complete crap then I'll stick to native but on a 4K 65" display most everything looks good even upscaled. Perhaps if the AA of games was so much better than what it actually is I'd trade the performance for IQ but outside of Forza Horizon 4 I never find myself making that trade.

 

[t2na]

RDR 2 is probably one of, if not the worst examples of TAA. DLSS and DLDSR is also the best showcase in that game. My post looking at the different AA in that game

Falling out of love with Anti-Aliasing

I used to envy AA and have it disabled by default because I never had a graphics card powerful enough for it (going back to, like, FX5200 in the family computer days). Now games seem to be based around it and jaggies seem a thing of the past and It's great I can turn up the AA in most games...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

It really does annoy me how awful RDR2's TAA is. It's such a phenomenal game, incredible story and visually stunning but I basically ended up playing the game using DSR for a 4k resolution and stomaching the wobbly frames to try and get through the TAA.

 

[Borsch]

I love neural nets, deep learning and AI, so DLSS was always going to be easy to love... But, yep almost exclusively use DLSS now. i was recently further surprised by the SSS (Screen Space Shadows) addition to DLSS and the resulting shadow maps just make the whole picture much richer than the supposedly cleaner MSAA. DLSS ftw!

 

[thewanted]

Is it normal for DLSS to cause screen tearing?

In The Last of Us, if I use DLSS I can see the slightest of screen tearing, but when disabled it completely disappears.

 

[Nexus18]

Is it normal for DLSS to cause screen tearing?

In The Last of Us, if I use DLSS I can see the slightest of screen tearing, but when disabled it completely disappears.

Nope, upscaling doesn't cause this. First thought is you're going outside your screen refresh rate with dlss so either make sure reflex is enabled or manually cap your fps to 3-5 FPS below your screen refresh rate.

 

[thewanted]

Nope, upscaling doesn't cause this. First thought is you're going outside your screen refresh rate with dlss so either make sure reflex is enabled or manually cap your fps to 3-5 FPS below your screen refresh rate.

Ah okay, thanks. I don’t have the FPS counter enabled in-game so I’ll try that.

 

[Nexus18]

Make sure in NVCP you have vsync set to on too (and vsync disabled in game)

 

[thewanted]

Make sure in NVCP you have vsync set to on too (and vsync disabled in game)

Oh cool, thanks! Pretty sure I’ve never opened NVCP