AMD Radeon™ Image Sharpening

[5150Joker]

So I installed AMD's RIS via Reshade CAS port and it works pretty good but isn't really amazing--it doesn't look any better than what I'd been using with NVIDIAs own FreeStyle/Game filter that's been available for a long time now. The performance hit is less with NVIDIA game filter for me obviously but its still very negligible even with ReShade so I'm not sure why AMD is trying to make RIS an exclusive Navi feature as I guarantee their other GPUs could use it easily. I'll post some screenshots here soon using Apex Legends at 1080p on a 1440p display to compare NVIDIA game filter to AMD RIS via Reshade CAS.

 

[Rvenger]

So I installed AMD's RIS via Reshade CAS port and it works pretty good but isn't really amazing--it doesn't look any better than what I'd been using with NVIDIAs own FreeStyle/Game filter that's been available for a long time now. The performance hit is less with NVIDIA game filter for me obviously but its still very negligible even with ReShade so I'm not sure why AMD is trying to make RIS an exclusive Navi feature as I guarantee their other GPUs could use it easily. I'll post some screenshots here soon using Apex Legends at 1080p on a 1440p display to compare NVIDIA game filter to AMD RIS via Reshade CAS.

Looking forward to your unbiased results.


Thanks

 

[5150Joker]

Looking forward to your unbiased results.


Thanks

So screenshots weren't working as nvidia game filter wouldn't show up for some reason. So I opted to make a short video comparing the two instead which is better anyway. Just as a disclaimer: I selected the nvidia game filter settings based on what I like and they are completely arbitrary and not scientific in any way. Someone else could probably tweak them to make them look better or worse depending on their taste as NVIDIA Game Filter has a lot of filters and choices to work with. The AMD CAS was set at 0.92 as I found that to be a sweet spot for Apex and it's actually what I use in Apex legends rather than NVIDIA GF as I do like ReShade best (when combined with other filters):

NVGF settings (they won't show up in screenshots):


Video:
Game settings: Everything on full except AA was off.



The video is still processing as of 10:51 PM PST so give it sometime to reach HD quality.

Source for the files: https://reshade.me/forum/shader-discussion/5577-new-contrast-adaptive-sharpening-from-amd#34976

I didn't include a vibrance filter with RIS/CAS as I wanted to show what it does on its own. Some may say that's unfair because the NVIDIA filters had vibrance but again, NVIDIA game filters gives you a myriad of choices to select. I'm not sure how RIS works on Radeon cards and if you can add vibrance and other filters on top of RIS if you're strictly using that and not in conjunction with ReShade.

They really should- not just to reattain parity with RIS, but because they have the infrastructure to do what RIS does, but better, with their current hardware and research resources.

I suspect NVIDIA doesn't market Game Filters very aggressively because they want everyone to buy into the DLSS lie and spend money on useless tensor cores.

 

[Snowdog]

I suspect NVIDIA doesn't market Game Filters very aggressively because they want everyone to buy into the DLSS lie and spend money on useless tensor cores.

I suspect it wasn't marketed aggressively because it really isn't that big of a deal. People have been doing this for years with reshade.

I remember seeing a minor derisive reaction to NVidia Freestyle after it was announced, saying that it was proprietary version of reshade.

The external reaction isn't from AMD better marketing. NVidia does way more with Freestyle and gets derision. AMD does a much more limited version and gets high praise.

There seems to be a pent up desire to kick the leader of the segment, and praise the underdog, even when unwarranted.

It's a bit disappointing that HWUB didn't even mention the direct competitor that NVidia has to this, that has many more effects and IIRC is completely tweakable, and remembers settings for each game, while AMD just blanket applies to all games it supports.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

I suspect NVIDIA doesn't market Game Filters very aggressively because they want everyone to buy into the DLSS lie and spend money on useless tensor cores.

Well, that's one way to put it- as I put it above, I suspect that they would just prefer that people bought a more expensive GPU.

Beyond that, Freestyle does detract from marketing toward DLSS and RTX, which are both needed to make ray tracing viable.

However, as I also mentioned above, I'd like to see Nvidia use their resources to implement a 'smart sharpen' that goes beyond a simple contrast filter (which works pretty well itself) so as to avoid additional artifacts.

This would absolutely be useful for TDP-limited applications like mobile GPUs, for instance, and would allow for the option to tune for higher framerates or lower power (and noise), for example.

 

[5150Joker]

Well, that's one way to put it- as I put it above, I suspect that they would just prefer that people bought a more expensive GPU.

Beyond that, Freestyle does detract from marketing toward DLSS and RTX, which are both needed to make ray tracing viable.

However, as I also mentioned above, I'd like to see Nvidia use their resources to implement a 'smart sharpen' that goes beyond a simple contrast filter (which works pretty well itself) so as to avoid additional artifacts.

This would absolutely be useful for TDP-limited applications like mobile GPUs, for instance, and would allow for the option to tune for higher framerates or lower power (and noise), for example.

Yeah I'm actually surprised they offer game filters considering the marketing push was all about DLSS + RTX. It would be something they could use in say Nintendo Switch though I bet Nintendo has its own special sauce that it uses as it is.

I suspect it wasn't marketed aggressively because it really isn't that big of a deal. People have been doing this for years with reshade.

I remember seeing a minor derisive reaction to NVidia Freestyle after it was announced, saying that it was proprietary version of reshade.

The external reaction isn't from AMD better marketing. NVidia does way more with Freestyle and gets derision. AMD does a much more limited version and gets high praise.

There seems to be a pent up desire to kick the leader of the segment, and praise the underdog, even when unwarranted.

It's a bit disappointing that HWUB didn't even mention the direct competitor that NVidia has to this, that has many more effects and IIRC is completely tweakable, and remembers settings for each game, while AMD just blanket applies to all games it supports.

No doubt about that, G-Sync was awful because it was proprietary even though NVIDIA was the first on the market with a viable VRR solution. They've had Game Filter/FreeStyle for sometime now which has more options than RIS from what I've seen yet nobody mentions it and instead they focus on DLSS. Also don't forget Game Filters/FreeStyle also supports DX 11 which RIS does not at this time. So AMD owners would actually be better off running ReShade + CAS than AMD's own RIS lol!

 

[IdiotInCharge]

No doubt about that, G-Sync was awful because it was proprietary even though NVIDIA was the first on the market with a viable VRR solution.

It's still the better solution- not just technically compared to the very best Freesync solutions, but also because G-Sync guarantees a broad level of support that is extremely variable and difficult to research on Freesync displays. Freesync is better than nothing and good Freesync displays are very good, but Freesync overall is still a shitshow.

[and I wish it wasn't... but man]