Downsampling: How to

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by wasteomind, Jun 17, 2011.

  1. NeoEnigma

    NeoEnigma Master Guru

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    I think one of my limiting factors is that I can't drop below 56 for my refresh rate. I don't have a lot of room for squeezing in pixels and staying under the target pixel clock.

    For some reason, I can do 3449 x 1940, a completely bonkers resolution. But if I try to do 3840x2160, even with a really low pixel clock, I get a window that says "test failed." It's not even the normal black screen with a bouncing box that I get when I turn my refresh rate too low. Straaaaaange....
     
  2. UNREAL_2004

    UNREAL_2004 Master Guru

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    3840x2160 here @ 60hz with the 670

    With 480's (3 months ago) i only got 3840x2160 but @ 56hz.
     
  3. NeoEnigma

    NeoEnigma Master Guru

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    2160p with 56hz? What were your total pixels? I thought you had to get relatively close to your resolution (at least on the width)?

    I wish I could go lower than 56 on the refresh rate... though 3449x1940 is hitting my performance pretty hard xD
     
  4. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    Did you leave Timing at automatic or set manually?
     

  5. NeoEnigma

    NeoEnigma Master Guru

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    Manual, so that I can modify the total pixels at the bottom.
     
  6. -Tj-

    -Tj- Ancient Guru

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    Try at auto and test again.

    I also couldn't select some resolutions at manual, i always got monitor signal out of range, if left at auto it worked fine.
     
  7. Xanvast

    Xanvast Guest

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    Thank you, I'll considerate the option of switching to kepler :)
     
  8. Grahf

    Grahf Guest

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    Just wanted to confirm that for whatever reason, *THIS* totally works for me, but any other timings give me a message saying "This resolution is not supported by your monitor."

    Several months later but this is still the sweet spot for me.
     
  9. Wanny

    Wanny Guest

    Oh boy, I just tried at 3840 and it was just an ugly mess of red flickering :D

    Quite interesting tho. Downsampling goes well with SMAA. I still never tried it before...
     
  10. StrikeQ

    StrikeQ Guest

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    Finally went ahead and gave this a go. Managed to get:
    3840x2160
    3200x1800
    2880x1620
    2560x1440

    Not really any issues, aside from no longer being able to keep a solid 60+ fps in some games. And some games text doesn't seem to scale right (XCOM loading screen tips) and some get cut off (Darksiders 2 loading a save "Summary").

    I do have dual monitors and when using a game that is downscaled it kind of messes up my 2nd monitor, basically pushing everything off screen and having monitor 1's desktop take over monitor 2 (minus the taskbar/icons etc).
     

  11. Rusty_

    Rusty_ Member

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    I have a 1920x1080 monitor and followed the steps 100% like 2-3 weeks ago, I can select 2560x1440 in games menus and it runs fine, however things like MSI afterburner OSD text is smaller in the top left corner and also screenshots I take are in 2560x1440 res not 1920x1080, is this normal?
     
  12. Xphome

    Xphome Active Member

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    Yes.
     
  13. Rusty_

    Rusty_ Member

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    I was just wondering but thanks, it's strange most people's downsampling pics are the res of their monitor not their downsample
     
  14. dsbig

    dsbig Ancient Guru

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    this works for me.
     
  15. Fox2232

    Fox2232 Guest

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    Guys, why are you doing such thing in such bad way? I think this kind of down sampling is way worse than old cubic down sampling.

    Ever Heard of Software Triplehead? It's D3D wrapper which tells game that your nV/AMD/intel card supports whatever resolution you desire.
    Game renders at that resolution. And then wrapper cuts section(s) and up/down scale to any resolution you want and sends it to monitor(s). Its built in downsampler is roughly at level of MLAA.

    Here is link:
    www.kegetys.fi/forum/index.php?topic=2123.0
    Supports most games, DX11 included. (I Actually never run into game where It would not run.)

    In config only this really matters:
    sourceRect in this example 1st pixel is at position 0,0 and then it takes another 2880x1620 pixels. This means last is 2879x1619.
    If you used: sourceRect=500,500,1000,1000
    It would cut square starting at pixel 500,500 and made 1000x1000 square. Means bottom right pixel would have coordinates 1499x1499.

    You can send same or overlapping areas to different monitors as information is not cut out, but copied.

    Here is little comparison (No postprocess, resize or anything was done to improve/reduce image quality. Only cut and paste of data blocks.):
    GTA4 zones taken in places where is biggest potential for improvement.
    [​IMG]

    Images on left side are CSS w/ SoftTH. Images on the right are GTA4 from OP.
    CSS Images (images with 8xAA are just to see whole scale from worst to best visuals):
    Code:
    Native resolution     Down sampled
    rope_smooth 0+0xAA    rope_smooth 0+0xAA
    rope_smooth 1+0xAA    rope_smooth 1+0xAA
    rope_smooth 0+8xAA    rope_smooth 0+8xAA
    rope_smooth 1+8xAA    rope_smooth 1+8xAA
    My personal conclusion:
    • From rendering point of view both methods create same images.
    • Main difference is in part when SoftTH resizes/downsizes rendered image.
    • Method used by OP is more fuzzy.
    • SoftTH brings into view more pieces missing from distant objects small(er) than 1 pixel in diameter (ropes, fences, leaves).
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2012

  16. Xanvast

    Xanvast Guest

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    Thank you for sharing, I'll give this a try !
     
  17. Xphome

    Xphome Active Member

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    It says it only supports DX9, and it only has a d3d9.dll so I don't know why you say that. Thanks for the link tho, will definitely check it out.
     
  18. Cyberdyne

    Cyberdyne Guest

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    Why does Fox's post read like an ad?

    My settings in case someone finds it useful.
    [​IMG]
     
  19. Wanny

    Wanny Guest

    Anyone care to elaborate why this method is better than going through nvidia gpu scaling? I'm waiting for feedbacks...
     
  20. applejack

    applejack Master Guru

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    I now tried SoftTH for downsampling Shift 2 Unleashed. while it seems to work, I had to disable EVGA OSD Server (OSD D3D compatibility mode didn't help), and also disable SGSSAA (SoftTH antialiasing override flag didn't help).
    I bet you couldn't use SweetFX either (both SoftTH & SweetFX or other Injectors need their own d3d9.dll wrapper in same folder)

    so for me it just doesn't worth the hassle of managing more dll's / ini's & disabling other 3rd party tools or driver features like SGSSAA (haven't tested plain MSAA).

    Nvidia's driver built in downsampling, once configured, is much more friendly and fail-proof.
    haven't noticed IQ differences either, so until I'm proven SoftTH provides better IQ (without noticed performance penalty), there's really no point in it for the sole purpose of downsampling on a single monitor.
    maybe AMD guys will find it useful though. nevertheless, thanks for sharing the software.

    Edit: one more thing,
    what exactly do you mean ? MLAA has nothing to do with downsampling AFAIK.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2012

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