Guess what resolution this game’s running at. 720p? Think again. 480p? Nope, still too
high. It is running at just 240p. That’s the setting you avoid on Youtube because it
sucks too much to use. Yet here, it results in a surprisingly coherent image, considering
it’s running at just 427 x 240 pixels, then using the new DLSS Ultra Performance mode
to try and stretch that up to 720p. I think you’ll agree, it doesn’t quite
manage it. The result is fuzzy. And worse than that- checkerboarded. Distant stuff like
those towers shimmer and fizz, with there not being quite enough information for DLSS
to produce a stable image from. But remember, I’m gaming at just 427 x 240 pixels. My
framerates are insane. Upping the resolution to 1080p improves things.
Now DLSS is running at 640x360… or roughly the resolution used by some Nintendo 64 games.
I think you’ll agree, it doesn’t pass as proper 1080p. Nor does it look like a Nintendo
64 game. But it’s crazy to think that it’s running at a resolution lower than PC gamers
were using in the 90’s. Now the game’s at 1440p, which DLSS runs
at 853x480. It’s still imperfect, but we’re approaching ‘acceptable’ quality now,
albeit with a bit more fuzz and artifacts than usual. And the framerates will still
be stupidly high. Finally, reaching 4K, the game’s now running
at 1280x720. On a 4K screen, I can still tell it isn’t quite 4K. But it’s reaching the
point where I just don’t care. Because in motion, things are moving about so I can’t
study the pixels, and if I stop, the DLSS quickly gathers enough information about the
image to fill in the gaps. What I’m using here is the brand new DLSS
2.1 feature known as Ultra Performance mode. And it’s ridiculous. Its official use is
to enable 8K gaming. Because even the most powerful Geforce 3090 card doesn’t have
enough raw performance to manage this in modern titles, so instead relies on DLSS Ultra Performance
to run the game at 1440p, then to use the magic of upscaling to get it the rest of the
way. You might say that’s cheating. And I agree, it is. But if you can’t tell the
difference on an 8K screen, so what. Plus you’ll actually be getting playable framerates.
Which you might kind of want. I can tell you already- if you’re going to game at 8K,
DLSS is your only real option right now.
To fill you in: DLSS is about rendering a game at a lower resolution, then using clever
upscaling trickery to try and return it to the original resolution again. The benefits
of this are numerous: if sensibly configured, the result can still look BETTER than the
native image, and because it’s running at a lower resolution, it runs much faster than
if DLSS wasn’t being used. And on top of that it applies beautiful anti-aliasing to
the image. Because why not. So it’s kind of like magic. You get better
image quality and framerates with it enabled. It’s redefined how we see resolutions, quite
literally blurring the boundaries that used to separate them. And it isn’t going away-
current consoles already use smart upscaling to hit 4K, and the next generation will rely
on it more than ever. There are, of course, downsides to upscaling, but they’re so vastly
outweighed by the benefits that nobody cares. Up until now, DLSS has come in several modes,
like Quality and Performance. Quality looks better than native resolution, and Performance
is roughly on par with it, despite only rendering at ¼ the resolution.
But in this video I’m using the new ULTRA PERFORMANCE setting, which goes much, much
further, rendering at just 1/9 the resolution. Even with all of the fancy AI trickery in
the world, surely there’s no way it can make 9 pixels from just 1! There’s no way
the resulting image can possibly look as good as native resolution! And as you’ve already
seen it doesn’t manage it. It isn’t up to native quality. It ends up looking like
a really aggressive form of FXAA, but with noticeable checkerboarding around the edges
of things. And you’ll want motion blur on to disguise these artifacts, which only get
worse when the game’s in motion. But still, for the base resolution it’s
using, it punches well above its weight. If we compare native 720p with 720p DLSS upscaled
to 4K, you can see how much more information it appears to add to the image. It does come
at a bit of a performance penalty, but when it’s rendering at such a low resolution
in the first place, you’ll hardly care. In fact, the higher the framerate, the faster
it can fill in the gaps, so when I’m gaming on a Geforce 3080 at a resolution this low
it takes just a fraction of a second for it to do a reasonable job of imitating a higher
resolution than the one it’s actually running at. It’s only if I capture the first rendered
frame like I have in this example that you can see how few initial pixels it’s got
to work with. But moving on a few frames, you can see how
much extra detail it has applied to the image. This isn’t magic. But it’s the next best
thing, using a combination of upscaling, numerous samples from a sub-pixel level, and motion
vectors.
What if you don’t want DLSS to upscale at all, but simply to act as anti-aliasing? You
can do this by getting DLSS to render at your monitor’s resolution and then to upscale
to something greater. And I can tell you now: this looks great, with all of the improvements
being condensed down into a really robust anti-aliasing solution. In fact, the anti-aliasing
it produces is like, so good I feel it does away with the need for MSAA and even Super-sampling
almost entirely. Being just an anti-aliasing technique is actually how DLSS was first presented
to us, but then by release Nvidia had changed direction, instead only using DLSS at sub-native
resolutions so as to improve performance. But if you have the computing power to spare,
this option is open to you. And I really suggest you check it out to see it for yourself because
it makes you realise the compromises and limitations other methods of AA have in comparison.
But it turns out that DLSS isn’t free. Firstly because the graphics cards that support it
cost quite a lot of money. But also because, simply by upscaling the image, the framerate
will drop. Or at least it did on my Geforce 3080. 1440p without DLSS ran at 74 FPS average.
1440p upscaled to 4K dropped that to 64 fps, and 1440p upscaled to 8K dropped down to just
34 FPS. If I’m honest, if DLSS is already at native
resolution then no matter what it’s upscaling to, the result will be so smooth looking you
might as well keep the upscaled resolution to the bare minimum. Don’t feel like you’re
missing out by not upscaling your game all the way to 8K or something stupid like that.
Doing so is simply throwing performance away for no noticeable benefit to the image quality.
Perhaps I should have made it clearer earlier, but this new DLSS mode was never intended
to be used at low resolutions. Nvidia doesn’t want everybody gaming at 240p being all like
‘ew DLSS makes everything look blocky’. But so what. Running at such a low resolution
really reveals the workings of the technology, which I think is cool. It’s particularly
noticeable at this lowest 427 x 240 resolution. I was going to comment on the compromises
you make by gaming at this resolution, but it’s more like a list of things to read
out. Here I go: there’s too much blur and the textures look smeary. The shading and
shadows seem to be at a lower resolution and hence, lower accuracy, you can spot ugly blocks
in hair and skin gets airbrushed to oblivion. And this is just from comparing still images-
when in motion, even more artifacts come into play! The image stability – well, what image
stability? There’s a visible halo around the main character where it panics because
it doesn’t have enough pixels to resolve the edges properly. Thin moving objects fizz
and fuzz across the screen, noticeably jumping from pixel to pixel. And even when stood still,
there’s noticeable shimmering and flickering around the edges of objects.
Welcome to the ugly truth behind DLSS! These are the compromises you make by using it.
It’s just that, up until now, it’s used resolutions high enough to hide these problems.
And that’s just it- by the time you reach sensible resolutions, these problems end up
becoming quite unnoticeable, and you’re simply left with great anti-aliasing and superior
performance to simply gaming at native resolution. So it’s kind of unfair that I’m using
Ultra Performance DLSS at lower resolutions where it just was never intended to be used
in the first place.
DLSS Ultra Performance lets you game at 8K, AND punches well above its weight at lower
resolutions, gives semi-acceptable image quality even as low as 240p. Is there anything else
it can do?!
I’m imagining the Nintendo Switch’s successor being able to use this. When in portable mode,
the Switch drops to a lower resolution because there’s not so much power to render stuff.
But why not do this and then use Ultra Performance DLSS to bring it up to an acceptable resolution
again? And better still, on such a small screen the artifacts will be harder to notice any
way. Another use would be in VR to enable high
resolutions and framerates. Support for VR rolled out along with the Ultra Performance
mode so I expect that’s one of the intended uses for this new setting.
In fact, why stop here? Why not have an SUPER SUPER performance setting that renders at
just 1/16th the resolution. Sure, it would look like crap but I’d do a video about
it, no questions asked. Why not have a ‘Potato’ mode that upscales from just a single pixel,
relying on the past 1000 frames to produce an image of some kind from. I’d do a video
about that too.
As fun as it’s been to abuse this feature in ways it wasn’t intended to be used, I
might as well end the video by using it PROPERLY. That is, to run games at 8K. I’ve already
done a video testing the Geforce 3080 at 8K – spoiler alert: it didn’t do so well.
But then neither does the 3090, so please stop saying it’s because the 3080 has just
10 GB of VRAM. 8K’s just a crazily difficult thing to power at the moment.
But perhaps that will all change now this new DLSS mode has rolled out! Wolfenstein
apparently also supports it, but I couldn’t find it in the options so I skipped that game
entirely. Death Stranding refused to run at 8K without DLSS of some sort. And I didn’t
bother testing Control at 8K without DLSS because- well, it’s not going to manage
it. So here are the benchmark results that I DID manage to get. Death Stranding, at 8K
with DLSS Quality setting averaged 40, Performance averaged 54, and the new Ultra Performance
setting boosted it to 70 FPS on average, which put it well within the realms of smooth, perfect
playability. As for Control, I tested gameplay only by
rushing through the game until I reached the first lift, and it averaged 50 FPS. Which
makes sense, since Nvidia claims the 3090 can average 57 FPS in the game at these settings.
So this sounds about right to me. But let’s end this video by taking a step
back and by realising how silly Ultra Performance DLSS is. It makes sense at 8K resolutions…
which itself doesn’t make sense at the moment. And while it’s interesting to test at lower
resolutions, right now there’s no need to run these games at these settings, with the
cards that support this feature. In my opinion, Ultra Performance setting’s most useful
purpose for existing right now is probably to enable this video you’ve been watching.
I like to think it was some weird experiment by somebody at Nvidia who was equally curious
about how far DLSS could be pushed. For science. Whoever it was, I commend that person. But
the technology itself is ridiculous.