DLSS vs Freesync @ 4k/120hz

Nebell

Nebell

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So I have a 4k/120hz monitor (Asus ROG Strix XG438Q). It's the older version of their newest 4k/144hz G-Sync. A bit worse specs but I don't justify the upgrade, it's too expensive.
Now my monitor only has Freesync. Last time I checked (a few months ago), it wasn't G-Sync supported by Nvidia.

I play RPG games mostly, not fast games. To me, image quality is a lot more important than fluidity. As long as the game is above 45 fps, I'm good.
Ray Tracing seems nice, but it's also up to the developers if the game will support it. Same with DLSS.
It's not like Freesync, you can have it in every game. But on the other side, Freesync does not improve image quality.

Since Big Navi will support Ray Tracing and ends up being close to 3080Ti/3090, should I opt for DLSS or Freesync?
Would FreeSync help with a big performance impact from Ray Tracing?
 
Freesync works just fine on Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia 20xx series and up support G-Sync (displays with G-Sync module), G-Sync Compatible (Freesync displays) and HDMI 2.1 Variable Refresh Rate. These are all branded as G-Sync because of Nvidia fuckery.

DLSS 2.0 is excellent. It allows not only for great framerates but also a lot more stable image quality compared to other antialiasing methods. I would consider it the biggest reason to stay with Nvidia cards. Digital Foundry has good comparisons against AMD's Content Aware Sharpening which is just rendering at 75% scale and then adding a sharpening filter to it. It does not come even close to the quality of DLSS 2.0.
 
FreeSync is supported in both NVIDIA and AMD cards, so that makes no difference for what brand you want to buy. So really you only need to decide if you want DLSS or not (no word on if AMD will have anything similar yet). I prefer to wait for reviews before I make a decision though as you never know. If I can get an AMD card that's 30% faster for the same price as an nvidia card with DLSS... that means I can just run native instead of faking it. That said, I have no clue what range or brand I am looking and will wait for benchmarks before I make any decisions.
 
I had 1080Ti, so that's why Freesync on it was unstable. I guess that means I most likely will go Nvidia again. Mainly because of DLSS and RT combo.
 
Ready4Dis said:
FreeSync is supported in both NVIDIA and AMD cards, so that makes no difference for what brand you want to buy. So really you only need to decide if you want DLSS or not (no word on if AMD will have anything similar yet). I prefer to wait for reviews before I make a decision though as you never know. If I can get an AMD card that's 30% faster for the same price as an nvidia card with DLSS... that means I can just run native instead of faking it. That said, I have no clue what range or brand I am looking and will wait for benchmarks before I make any decisions.
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I'd say even if you had a 30% faster card, you would still gain a bigger benefit from DLSS if raytracing is involved. For example Control with raytracing enabled is pretty much unplayable even on a 2080 Ti at 4K, getting something like 20 fps regularly. Turn on DLSS and that jumps to 40 or even 60 depending on the setting used. I don't think just a faster card would be able to quite match that at native 4K when you can get visuals that are hard to tell apart from native 4K, very stable antialiasing and good performance.

I do agree with waiting for benchmarks. I am in no hurry to replace my 2080 Ti until I have seen the whole lineup and how it performs, including AMD's offerings. While I don't see myself jumping off the Nvidia train, I hope AMD delivers something really good so that Nvidia needs to compete with pricing.
 
kasakka said:
I'd say even if you had a 30% faster card, you would still gain a bigger benefit from DLSS if raytracing is involved. For example Control with raytracing enabled is pretty much unplayable even on a 2080 Ti at 4K, getting something like 20 fps regularly. Turn on DLSS and that jumps to 40 or even 60 depending on the setting used. I don't think just a faster card would be able to quite match that at native 4K when you can get visuals that are hard to tell apart from native 4K, very stable antialiasing and good performance.

I do agree with waiting for benchmarks. I am in no hurry to replace my 2080 Ti until I have seen the whole lineup and how it performs, including AMD's offerings. While I don't see myself jumping off the Nvidia train, I hope AMD delivers something really good so that Nvidia needs to compete with pricing.
Click to expand...
Yeah, sorry, that 30% was just a number, it wasn't an exact value and as we've seen, DLSS is great in some and meh in others. So far dlss 2.0 looks good, but I wouldn't mind a few more examples to compare. I was just saying DLSS is nice's but if I can the same/similar native performance I'd go that route, if there is a big difference, probably not. I'll normally wait to see how things flesh out before jumping on anything, that and I'm cheap ;). I don't play games as much either so, I'm not the 3090ti target market. I'm more the 1650 or 5500 market. I have 5 desktops I try to keep in decent playing condition. I just bought 2 3700x's + 1 b550 MB and a Vega 64 recently to upgrade some, so that took a bit of a chunk out already. 3 more PCs, to upgrade and shift parts around ;).
 
DLSS and FreeSync are totally unrelated things, but you can use both at the same time.

FreeSync can reduce or eliminate screen tearing and certain types of stuttering, so while not exact picture quality improvement, they do help improve the overall feel.

DLSS is basically an image reconstruction algorithm, that allows you do render games in lower resolution to upscale to much better quality, giving you a significant performance increase and some picture quality improvement.

You can use them together, there is no problem.
 
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