Your thoughts on DSR on 23/24/27" 1080p displays (and big TVs, too)?

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[not sure if this is more nvidia or display oriented, but I'm posting here since it's about an NVIDIA tech, apologies if it needs to be moved]

So there's an article over at Tech Report that has some pretty handy comparisons of different AA modes, along with NVIDIA's new DSR method side-by-side:

http://techreport.com/review/27102/maxwell-dynamic-super-resolution-explored

The short version: it's super effective, even at half-steps (like using 2560x on a 1920x display).

Right up until I read that article I'd been thinking to buy a 2560x1440 display alongside a 970, thinking it would "hold me over" for another year or two, when 4k displays with freesync were readily available.

Now, though, I'm thinking I may as well just test the DSR on my current display (a Viewsonic VX2770Smh-LED, which I'm very happy with) and see how it goes. I have a feeling that it will sufficiently smooth out the edges that I don't notice the pixels as much as I do now in some games, making the higher dpi of a 27" 1440p display much less coss-effective than just waiting for 4k+freesync displays.

Still, I have to save up some cash for the 970, so I'd like to live vicariously in the meantime. :) For those of you have have already picked up a 970/980 and have plugged it in to a 1080p display - whether it be a typical desktop 23/24/27" one, or a big 50" HDTV - have you used DSR? What do you think?
 
1080p TV here.

I've always loved SGSSAA. I hack support for it into every game I can find. Everything looks as flawless as possible at 1080p. Games will look noticeably clearer on a 1080p display with downsampling.

As for DSR, I've been experimenting with it in some titles where SGSSAA doesn't work. It produces a very similar effect. This is essentially NVIDIA expanding SGSSAA compatibility into newer, DX11 based games.

These two images accurately demonstrate how much downsampling can really clean up a game:
http://www.abload.de/img/noaakft3.png
http://www.abload.de/img/8xqaa8xsgssaa_0x004010cg5f.png

Image 1 is Hot Pursuit 2010 running at 1080p with no AA.
Image 2 is Hot Pursuit 2010 running at 1080p with 8x SGSSAA and 8x MSAA.

The effects of downsampling games from 4K to 1080p via Nvidia's new official driver implementation should be similar. Nvidia's always had a lot better support for this type of stuff than AMD and it's a key reason why I always go with Team Green.
 
Wow! That looks amazing, Xizer, thank you for sharing those. The effect on the scenery is especially impressive - the Crysis shots in the Tech Report's article were almost as spectacular a difference as the ones you've posted.

Are you running a 980, using DSR for 4k resolution, or doing something different? I'm eyeballing a 970 and 2560x for the 27" screen I'm using, thinking it would be a good balance of performance and quality (and price!).
 
only downside to DSR currently is the lack of SLi support, but Nvidia is working on it.
 
deruberhanyok said:
Wow! That looks amazing, Xizer, thank you for sharing those. The effect on the scenery is especially impressive - the Crysis shots in the Tech Report's article were almost as spectacular a difference as the ones you've posted.

Are you running a 980, using DSR for 4k resolution, or doing something different? I'm eyeballing a 970 and 2560x for the 27" screen I'm using, thinking it would be a good balance of performance and quality (and price!).
Click to expand...

I have 2x GTX 980s and a 1080p TV; I use DSR to set in-game resolution at 3840x2160.

Essentially I play everything I can at 4K, but on a 1080p display, which certainly does look better than playing everything at 1080p on a 1080p display.

Performance hit is enormous of course - look at the framerates in reviews of the 970 or 980 with games running at 4K - and that's what they'll run like with DSR set to 4x. It's why I've opted for the SLI setup, to have that extra horsepower.

This is basically my stop-gap solution before buying a 4K display in another two years or so and upgrading to Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti or 1180 series based on 22nm with a huge amount of VRAM.

Driving 4K even with two GTX 980s at 60 FPS can be a challenging task with the most recent and demanding titles like Metro.

I tried Dead Rising 3 for example (very taxing game with tons of draw calls due to number of zombies rendered on-screen at once) and it runs at 15 FPS on a GTX 980 at 4K resolution. :(

pandora's box said:
only downside to DSR currently is the lack of SLi support, but Nvidia is working on it.
Click to expand...

What's that supposed to mean? I have DSR on my SLI setup.
 
Quick question..I only see the DSR option in glaobal settings and not in the game settings..Is that all there is to it?? Also the smoothness setting. What should it be??I currently have it at 50%. TIA.
 
Xizer said:
What's that supposed to mean? I have DSR on my SLI setup.
Click to expand...
Official word from NVIDIA is that DSR is currently not supported with SLI.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...king-in-a-lot-of-games-/post/4318036/#4318036
I would check and see if both cards are still actually scaling with DSR enabled. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd really like to know if it does work. I'm going to play around with tonight on my GTX 970 SLI.
g1xx3r said:
Quick question..I only see the DSR option in glaobal settings and not in the game settings..Is that all there is to it?? Also the smoothness setting. What should it be??I currently have it at 50%. TIA.
Click to expand...
DSR will and should only be a global setting, because then it will expose all those resolutions to the games you play. No need to set it on a per-game basis.

Smoothness applies a Gaussian blur filter to smooth out the sharp edges and eliminate shimmering that is exacerbated by a higher pixel count. Basically, the closer Smoothness is to 100% the blurrier the image will appear. Most people seem to like it around 15-20% when downsampling from 4k, more still like to turn it off completely by setting it to 0% to keep the higher resolution image sharp.
 
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g1xx3r said:
Quick question..I only see the DSR option in glaobal settings and not in the game settings..Is that all there is to it?? Also the smoothness setting. What should it be??I currently have it at 50%. TIA.
Click to expand...

You check all the DSR options, then any game you load up you can go to the game's in-game resolution settings and you will have a plethora of different resolutions higher than your display's native resolution to select.

You select the highest resolution you can before you hit the one that turns your framerate into a slideshow :p
 
Armenius said:
Official word from NVIDIA is that DSR is currently not supported with SLI.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...king-in-a-lot-of-games-/post/4318036/#4318036
I would check and see if both cards are still actually scaling with DSR enabled. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd really like to know if it does work. I'm going to play around with tonight on my GTX 970 SLI.
DSR will and should only be a global setting, because then it will expose all those resolutions to the games you play. No need to set it on a per-game basis.

Smoothness applies a Gaussian blur filter to smooth out the sharp edges and eliminate shimmering that is exacerbated by a higher pixel count. Basically, the closer Smoothness is to 100% the blurrier the image will appear. Most people seem to like it around 15-20% when downsampling from 4k, more still like to turn it off completely by setting it to 0% to keep the higher resolution image sharp.
Click to expand...

Xizer said:
You check all the DSR options, then any game you load up you can go to the game's in-game resolution settings and you will have a plethora of different resolutions higher than your display's native resolution to select.

You select the highest resolution you can before you hit the one that turns your framerate into a slideshow :p
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the replies. Didnt know I could set the rez in game also. :cool:
 
Reality check: if DSR is like running 4k, then it will likely be 20nm Maxwell with more vram that makes that possible, not this card, which I am fortunate enough to own in duplicate. I hate to be a cynical troll of my own SLI setup, but DSR is probably not in the cards.

I can run BF4 at 200 supersampling at acceptable, but not knock it out of the park frame rates. But that is more like the tail end of the last console generation.

I will NOT be moving to a 4k display as my 60 inch plasma is superior in every conceivable way to any LED or LCD on the market. On the one hand, I am glad there is potentially image quality enhancements from DSR for my display. On the other hand, if the performance hit is really that huge, this is NVIDIA's way of keeping 1080p gamers interested in their cards, even GTX 980 SLI owners! That is a brilliant business model. I thought I was going to be taking a vacation from the hobby after plugging in GTX 980. Not so fast.

I have owned the GTX 980 SLI for less than two weeks and I am already wondering about the next card. That doesn't bode well for GTX 980.
 
Just got my 970 last night. I tried DSR @ 1.78/ 2560x1440.

While on the desktop there seems to be a little square around my mouse cursor while moving near the task bar/start menu areas. I only tried the default 33% sharpening. I appreciated the extra room while browsing the internet but the blurriness was irritating.

Only game I tried was Diablo 3. In game was set to 1440p & 100hz. Game looked phenomenal I have to say. I think DSR will be great for older type games where there is performance to spare. Overall I'm very happy with it. I really think it would shine on a living room tv. This bodes well for the lower end Maxwells being thrown into HTPCs for more casual gaming.

I'm still on Win7 & I'm not sure if the scaling on Win8.1 is better for this type of thing.
Running on 1080p monitor.
 
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Found a weird issue with DSR: I made a custom 120 hz resolution for my Benq XL2411Z monitor, with the total vertical pixel adjustment to double the brightness of the Blur Reduction mode (blurbusters utility setting saved in the monitor).

When I enable DSR in the 3D global settings (so it enables DSR for the desktop) with the NVIDIA Control Panel, I lose my 120 hz custom resolution. The monitor reverts to 60 hz I think, and I am not able to create new custom resolutions.

I think this means that DSR will not allow ULMB/lightboost to work anymore!

Anyone else have this issue?
 
I absolutely love DSR. A great way to make everything look better when you have extra frames.

I loved resolution scaling in BF4 so I was stoked when I heard about DSR. I didn't get to try SSAA with DSR yet but I bet it's awesome :)
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
I think this means that DSR will not allow ULMB/lightboost to work anymore!
Anyone else have this issue?
Click to expand...

I use ToastX latest beta as well for my VG248. I deleted all profiles in ToastyX when I installed my 970 and both 100 & 120Hz worked fine for me at 1.67 DSR.
Maybe get the latest version and then delete old profiles and try again?
 
Hmm thanks for that suggestion - I only used NVIDIA control panel to make that custom resolution.

Any advice you can suggest for setting up toastyx for that? I tried it once, but I couldn't figure out how it worked. :(
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
Any advice you can suggest for setting up toastyx for that? I tried it once, but I couldn't figure out how it worked. :(
Click to expand...

I use ToastyX for ULMB on all the time which is its main use. All the info you could need is here including the download. It's very self explanatory. Just make sure to add a "strobed" refresh rate when you open up "strobelight-setup.exe".

You can also change your ULMB brightness level on the fly once ToastyX is installed on the fly through the lightbulb icon in your taskbar.
I believe the ULMB brightness was the reason you had to make a custom resolution, yes?

Just to make sure. I'm typing this on 1.78(1440p) DSR on. Just tested and the ULMB through ToastyX is working just fine at both 100hz and 120hz on VG248QE
 
DSR is amazing on a 120Hz 1080P monitor. Basically 4K at 120Hz - assuming you can maintain the fps lol
 
I tried DSR myself last night in Shadow of Mordor and CS:GO and can confirm that it is working with SLI scaling if the options are exposed for you in the driver control panel. It nicely made up for the current lack of any AA options in Shadow of Mordor :). Even 1.78x makes a huge improvement at 1080p. 970 SLI has plenty of horsepower to maintain triple digits at 1440p if you're using a 120/144Hz monitor, so I think that will be the sweet spot. Games running on older engines should have no problem at 4k. CS:GO ran and looked superb at 4k :D. Not noticing any blurring using 15% smoothness.
 
I tried it on L4D at 4x and honestly it was not a big difference. I mean, I could see that it looked better, but it wasn't the night and day improvement I was expecting. Since you guys seem to be having luck, maybe I will try some other games next.
 
It clears up the jaggies big time in games with lots of aliasing such as Dishonored, Wolfenstein and the original Crysis but other than that is hardly a big deal. Just like with real 4k, its overly exaggerated how good it looks.
 
I will tell you down scaling from 2700 to 1920 is better than 8x MSAA in Crysis. In most games I do 2700 or 2300 (depending on performance) down to 1920 with FXAA or 2x MSAA and it looks fantastic. All jaggies are gone...
 
Texture crawling on grass/foliage is almost non-existent. Jaggies are well taken care of but not gone. (Can't wait for MFAA)

Also, am I going crazy or do things look almost as sharp as they do on a native 4K display? I mean I know it's kind of faking it but damn it looks good.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Texture crawling on grass/foliage is almost non-existent. Jaggies are well taken care of but not gone. (Can't wait for MFAA)

Also, am I going crazy or do things look almost as sharp as they do on a native 4K display? I mean I know it's kind of faking it but damn it looks good.
Click to expand...

I agree. Down sampling with a little bit of AA (MFAA should be perfect) and I am amazed... Didn't know my monitor could look this good.
 
cybereality said:
I tried it on L4D at 4x and honestly it was not a big difference. I mean, I could see that it looked better, but it wasn't the night and day improvement I was expecting. Since you guys seem to be having luck, maybe I will try some other games next.
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L4D isn't really the best way to showcase it. Games with a lot of transparencies (read: foliage) and lighting that produces a lot of contrast between objects will demonstrate it best. Try Skyrim (during the daytime) or Crysis/Crysis 3 and the results should be more pronounced.
 
I like it alot to be honest. Alot of games that hardly use GPU power can really shine. specially when you use 4k!!

Games I have tested and works in 4k with DSR:

Ultra Street Figher 4
World of Warcraft
Dayz
Battlefield 4
Alien Isolation
Shadows of Mordor

Personally I have to turn down smoothness to 5-7%, otherwise it hurts my damn eyes.

The only games I honestly don't play in in 4k with DSR is BF4 and Wow. I cannot handle those games at 60hz. Just a personal choice, but I like 1440@120hz over 4k for those 2.
 
I tested it out when NVIDIA released the new drivers that enabled it on Fermi/Kepler GPUs. Pretty big performance hit for me (560Ti) going to 2560x1440 from 1080p, but I liked how it cleaned up the image - I had the blur filter set to 33% initially and it was a bit too much, but dropping it down to 20% looked a lot nicer.

It wasn't as clear as an actual 2560x1440 screen would be, obviously, but if you have a nice 1080p screen, you like the colors, response time, etc, I can absolutely see it as a reason to not buy a new display. Especially if you're planning to buy a 4k, freesync-enabled display when those ever become available. It really elimiates the "half-step" in native resolution as necessary, IMO, for gaming at least.
 
Tgrove said:
I'm able to run my monitor at 87hz still with dsr enabled with CRU custom resolution utility
Click to expand...

I've been having trouble getting CRU to take my 1920x1080@120hz custom resolution with the vertical pixel setting of 1350 (to increase brightness with my Benq XL2411Z). It ends up removing 120 hz completely from the list! I never could find a good tutorial for CRU, even though I read dozens of posts on it - it just didn't work! (Geforce 980).
 
Very happy with it at 2X on my 1080 native screen. 4X seems like overkill for me. Love that in works on the desktop too. Free space!
 
melk said:
Very happy with it at 2X on my 1080 native screen. 4X seems like overkill for me. Love that in works on the desktop too. Free space!
Click to expand...
Lol if you think this is useful on the desktop then you need your eyes checked.
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
I've been having trouble getting CRU to take my 1920x1080@120hz custom resolution with the vertical pixel setting of 1350 (to increase brightness with my Benq XL2411Z). It ends up removing 120 hz completely from the list! I never could find a good tutorial for CRU, even though I read dozens of posts on it - it just didn't work! (Geforce 980).
Click to expand...

From what I know, the custom resolution you want to use has to be first on the list in CRU. I actually deleted all the other resolutions there so the only one it even shows is the 2560x1440@87hz. You can take it a step further and make a custom edid for the monitor with the 120hz through something like power strip. Sorry if that doesn't help you, I'm not expert
 
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