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Comment by wredue | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, who would have ever thought that a shitty, squashed, artifact laden, completely fake frames that don’t mean anything architecture would win?

Personally, I didn’t think it would, but the power of a small number in the top of your screen beats facts for most people. And here we are I guess.

But there’s also the problem that AMD drivers are STILL shit. This is 20 straight years of poor drivers. Something tells me that if AMD would just get their software act together, the DLSS train may not have taken off the way it did. You do see a lot of comments that the drivers haven’t been bad for a while, but anecdotally, they definitely are.

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> shitty, squashed, artifact laden, completely fake frames that don’t mean anything architecture would win?

I'm sorry but what does this even mean?

I think this is a dig aimed at DLSS, and the complaint seems to be that it's only meant to make framerates higher at the expense of quality.

I'm almost certain this refers to DLSS which uses "AI" (DLSS means Deep Learning Super Sampling) to generate a higher resolution output frame from smaller resolution renders by combining data from multiple frames over time using various AI approaches (i'm not exactly sure how) and, as of DLSS 3, being able to interpolate frames asynchronously from the rendering so that it can double the framerate.

The process is not perfect and can introduce various visual artifacts, which are especially visible at lower monitor/output resolutions and the artifacts are more likely to occur when the render resolution is also much lower than the output resolution. These two also feed into each other as in general cheaper/weaker hardware (where the lower render resolutions would be used) tends to be paired with lower resolution monitors (where the artifacts would be more visible). I guess the "shitty, squashed, artifact laden" comes from there.

DLSS 3 doubles the framerate by interpolating frames in the GPU (so the game doesn't "know" about them and player input isn't handled), hence "fake frames".

It doesn’t “double” anything except a number in the corner of your screen.

The frames you’re getting are not based on gamestate, so they’re just fake placebos. This is why it’s curious to me that gamers by and large have completely accepted DLSS to the point that they’re actually completely okay with losing rasterization perf as long as a numbers in the corner of their screen is sufficiently faked.

DLSS doesn't mandate frame generation (added in DLSS 3) it can still be used to upscale without frame generation, and indeed this is how DLSS 2 works as it had no frame generation.

Even in games supporting DLSS 3, there is to best of my knowledge and experience almost always a separate configuration option to turn frame generation on or off, allowing you to use DLSS solely to render non-"placebo" frames and upscale the output.

This absolutely allows you to run at a lower internal resolution, get higher "real" FPS and enjoy a reasonable upscaled output image. Sure it won't be as dramatic a difference as with frame generation, but it doesn't have the drawbacks of non-gamestate frames either. I've found DLSS for upscaling (without frame gen) fantastic frankly for getting older Nvidia parts to run new games for budget conscious gamers who don't have hundreds or thousands of dollars to drop on a new 30xx/40xx part.

Supersampled images are nothing new. I am specifically discussing the fake frames, which is what Nvidia advertises with (imo this is bordering on straight up lies).

Nvidia did slap “Hurr durr AI driven” buzzwords in front of theirs, but supersampling exists super far back. As far as gaming goes, supersampling was probably popularized in super old emulators, particularly zsnes.

Sure, but the quality of DLSS (and AMD's FSR2) has generally been much better than previous super sampling solutions, and this is borne out in virtually all independent testing of the feature. Supersampling algorithms in old emulators are not great in comparison.

The drivers have been fine for years now, anyone using a current or previous gen knows it, the only reason people think they are still bad is because people are still parroting it.

Unfortunately this isn't true. They're certainly better than what they used to be, but they are no where near as reliable as Nvidia's. We tried a build out roughly 6 months ago and we couldn't switch back fast enough.

Are you talking about windows GPU drivers for gaming? I haven't had problems on Linux in a long time and I am honestly surprised with how many hours I have spent gaming on Linux with Proton.

As of 2 years ago, which saw similar “the drivers are fine now and have been for a couple generations”, they are anecdotally not okay.

Way more crashes. Way more weird bullshit (like audio disappearing????) that just doesn’t happen when you run an Nvidia card.

“AMD drivers are fine now” has lost all meaning. I will continue to give them a chance now and again, but it’s based on keeping competitive up, not on the drivers being good now.

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