Nvidia just made a spatial upscaler availabe for all games through nvcp/gfe

Unless I'm misinterpreting results, scaling seems to only work on those custom "scaled" resolutions created by NIS.
I have a default resolution that gets "promoted" to the scaled list when NIS is enabled, and when taking a screenshot with GFE while NIS is on, screenshot gets captured in upscaled native resolution. Without NIS on the same resolution screenshot gets captured in downscaled resolution. Performance difference is also there, with NIS my framerate is lower in the same resolution compared to NIS off.
So NIS does something different, or at least it looks like it does.

@ManuelG can we please get a clarification on this? Does NIS only works on the custom resolutions it creates or any resolution that's lower than native? Do we get identical scaling to NIS minus sharpening if we have NIS disabled but set "perform scaling on GPU" in Adjust Desktop size and position section? If not then what scaler is used in that case?

 

It can be used on AMD GPUs, thanks to Lossless Scaling

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/993090

 

Why so many people think that dlss used only to regain performance lost from rtx ? Fsr ...dlss and the upscaler now are options and options are good. A 4k or 1440p desktop can be a great work place in caparison of 1080 p , allowing you to fit more things in the same real estate . Now when you get to gaming dlss and upscalers can be used as the go to setting before you are forced to lower resolution . Mind you at that point you are already making sacrifices in visual fidelity such things helping you minimize em . At least this is how i see it and running 1440 p on a gtx 1060 6gb with a cancelled gpu update for obvious reasons ... I know about sacrifice in details to hit 60 fps

 

Jup, DLSS and other temporal upscalers (TAA U or Checkerboarding) allow a GPU to punch above its weight class.

For example the 2060, without DLSS it's a 1080p Ultra 60FPS GPU, but instead of limiting yourself to 1080p panels, you can buy a 1440p panel and enjoy higher fidelity afforded by DLSS. Overall 1440p DLSS on a 1440p screen will look much better than 1080p screen, same does 4K DLSS on a 4K screen will look way better than 1440p screen.

 

I also noticed that NIS completely breaks aspect ratio scaling if you select a resolution with AR that differs from your monitor.
For example on a 16:10 1080p display native resolution is 1920x1200 so switching to standard 1920x1080 would normally result in black bars on top and bottom. With NIS however switching to 1080p just turns the image into some weird boxed 4:3 AR with huge black bars on all sides. Switching ARs back and forth also got me an eventual display crash with display disconnected sound.
Overall the more I play around with this feature it the more disappointed I am in it. Performance hits for no reason, not just on native but on any downscaled resolution even when NIS doesn't seem to work on those despite the green overlay icon or even if it does work, then why GFE is not capturing the upscaled frame unless downscaled resolution is on the "NIS scaled" list? Broken AR scaling with it enabled. Not possible to actually disable sharpening without disabling NIS scaling, which is what I suspect leads to performance loss because sharpening is always on essentially.

 

NIS and FSR are jokes that some people take too seriously . Your display can sometimes do a better job with spatial upscaling than NIS/FSR, difference is you can't take upscaled screenshots when the upscaling is done at the display.

I tried GPU scaling vs Display scaling and display scaling look much much better (well it's the LG OLED CX so it has high quality graphic processors inside)

 

I saw that article but it doesn't give a clear "yes or no" answer.
It's never directly stated that NIS only works with those five resolutions (then what scaler is used for the rest of the resolutions?). Okay so it works just with those resolutions then? Well the article makes you doubt it, because right away the article lists 2880 as an upscale example, a resolution not listed in the table above which has an implication that it works with any resolution below native. NIS overlay also turns green on any resolution below native, not just those five, indicating that scaling is working but not really because GFE screenshots don't seem to reflect that?

My monitor is pretty old and it even lacks some aspect ratio scaling, doubt it's a better solution that a GPU scaler even if it's not NIS/FSR one, so I always used GPU scaler.

 

They can, but chose not too due to FSR being better implemented on a game by game basis. This way developers can tweak it to their liking and to better suite their game. It is also less setup for the end user, just toggle on in the game settings and you are done.

Not to mention but it needs to be implemented into a games render pipeline before UI and post process effects are rendered. So that it doesn't cause blurry text, UI, or effects. You can't do this with a global setting in the drivers.

This is why programs like magpie or lossless scaling are worse than official FSR as they add the upscaling after all the game has finished rendering and it can blur stuff.

The option would be ok though, and now Nvidia has done this in response to FSR I am sure AMD will do the same thing.

 

On my 3440x1440 21:9 display all NIS resolutions in Elite:Odyssey don't maintain aspect ratio. Tried to set them in desktop, same result, image stretched.
Either I'm doing something wrong or Ultra-Wide NIS resolutions are screwed up.

EDIT: tried Hardspace:Shipbreaker, same deal. At any NIS resolution the image stretches, i.e. it doesn't maintain aspect ratio. Also, higher refresh rates become unavailable , only 60Hz. Wtf.

 

I'm csgo when using NIS this thing put me black bars on my resolution

 

Do you use one of the NIS resolutions or your custom one to play stretched?
You can't do stretched with NIS enabled since it forces aspect ratio scaling.

 

I use my default resolution and in game I play with other res and NIS put me black bars. In cs go I play 1280x960 and automatically when open cs go it put black bars no stretched

 

Well 1280x960 is 4:3 so you will get black bars with NIS unless you have 4:3 monitor, NIS changes your scaling mode to aspect ratio scaling so everything works as it should here.

 

The sharpening alone seems to assist me playing COD: WarZone on the laptop 17" and eternal 24" monitors. No need to scale lower but I immediately noticed a slightly crisper image especially when ADS long distance in-game which I attribute to NIS 50% sharpenss.

 

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/t...n-playing-at-native-with-0-sharpening.440750/

Apparently their implementation has some issues -- namely that it seems to be still running its operations when enabled even when you're already at native resolution and even when sharpening amount is set to 0%.

E.G. Enable NIS Globally with Sharpening set to 0% (since you can’t set sharpening per application and may not want to sharpen a game you're running at native). Despite this, there's still a performance impact -- there really shouldn't be as no sharpening and no scaling have taken place. Of course good scaling and good sharpening algos aren't free, but given they aren't used, no reason this should be happening seems to me.

If Nvidia let us enable NIS on a per game basis from the control panel (and not just from GeforceExperience -- looking at those tests i'm wondering if doing this from the overlay actually has a slightly higher perf cost VS control panel) then we could work around this by leaving it OFF globally and only enabling it per game, but we can't do that at the moment.

 

It really depends what we're comparing it with. Traditional bilinear or bicubic upscalers, modern spatial approaches are going to be preferred. Digital Foundry and other outlets on YT have done comparisons between FSR / DLSS / traditional bilinear upscales for example.

That said, it's not reconstruction like DLSS or TAAU -- those solutions are going to be preferred to modern spatial upscalers. Of course "True Native" would be what I'd like, but true native is very expensive -- the whole reason we're doing this upscaling and/or reconstruction is because of performance benefits after all.

Sometimes I miss CRTs, low latency and rather low resolution images still look pretty crisp on those. Flat panels are convenient but have come along with this nasty upscaling problem.

 

GFE detects my native res correctly and scales it to 85% with NIS (3440x1440 becomes 2924x1224).
As soon as I open NVCP, a whole bunch of ultraHD, HD and SD resolutions are detected, the top one being 3840x2160, which totally messes up NIS resolutions as they all loose aspect ratio (2924x1224 disappears completely from the list).
I can neither eliminate those useless resolutions with CRU nor set a custom resolution of 2924x1224, because NIS only works with the ones it auto-detects.
Nice.

 

Try using modern image sharpening on quality CRTs, the effects are awesome.

 

Nvidia's on a freakin role here.

You can't use CP sharpening unless the game is supported by gameworks *insert derp face here*. It doesn't work with DSR either. I switched back to DSR from custom resolution because CR caused problems.