Why isn't Nvidia's CAS Sharpen a separate setting from NIS in the Control Panel?

I don't understand why the improved GPU scaling isn't separate from the improved CAS Sharpen feature. Beyond that I can't understand why we're not able to turn NIS ON on a per game profile basis via the control panel.

Suppose I don't want to use NIS, but I do want to use Sharpen. Or, suppose I want to use NIS but with no Sharpening. You can do that second scenario by setting Sharpen to 0% but in its current state this seems to come with a performance penalty despite no sharpening actually taking place (and no scaling for that matter) as per this thread and the tests shown there: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/turning-nis-on-in-ncp-causes-performance-degradation-even-when-playing-at-native-with-0-sharpening.440750/

I think we should be able to turn on NIS on a per game profile basis as opposed to only being accessible globally. Why does it have to be global? In its current state unless you're upscaling basically all your games you really don't want NIS enabled due to the performance penalty it causes even at native resolution with 0% sharpening (which is frankly ridiculous and makes me question Nvidia's Quality Control on this feature -- it should be simple enough to do a check for native resolution + sharpen 0% to just treat the features as if they're off).

Yes, you can do this per game profile via the GeForce overlay but in the tests I've seen using those filters via the GeForce overlay comes with a bit more of a performance penalty VS enabling via the control panel and in any case I much prefer to set things up there not with the overlay (what about folks who manually install drivers and don't use GeForce?).

Since I'm just sort of on a rant here anyway, it's also very weird that the new DLDSR feature defaults to 33% still for smoothness when forums/testers have reported that now this seems to work like an inverted Sharpen slider. Going off Digital Foundry's tests something more like 60-67% is more of a close match for native (as even at 50% smoothness you can see in their images that VS the 4x DSR with 0% smoothness the image is still over sharpened slightly).

I just get the impression Nvidia is rushing these features out the door and/or not putting in the correct amount of effort integrating them into their existing control panel. Anyhow, thanks for your time all, here's hoping Nvidia sorts this stuff out down the line. The feature's themselves are of course excellent.

 

@RealNC Thanks for bringing this up in that other thread, you made a very good point mate.

 

Here i am still waiting for: 1) A fix for NIS performance cost at native resolution, it should only work on upscaled resolutions. 2) A separate sharpening filter and scaling filter, like in the old drivers, 3) The old sharpening filter which looks a lot better than the sharpener shipped with NIS. It's been over 2 months and we have not gotten any sort of change in this, sometimes seems to be like nvidia barely listens to customer feedback and it's getting tiresome, i sent them an e-mail like 3 days ago explaining these problems and seems like i just got ignored. I do get that new drivers work great for some people and they don't care about a lot about the issues the drivers could have or don't notice them, it doesn't mean they are not present. Rememeber the nvidia driver overhead problem explained by Hardware Unboxed? Nvidia never spoke about this and seems like even the new drivers still have these software isssues, so they haven't done anything to fix this either. Also now forcing DCH drivers and fully removing Standard drivers? Why?

Seems it is time to go fully on Red Team, honestly this doesn't even reach pathetic, it is past that point. It's like sometimes there's a branch of experimental, weird drivers and then others with very good drivers and quickly abandoning older products too to presents us their brand new gimmicks.

 

NIS performance won't be getting fixed on cards that emulate the capability.

 

By selecting "Integer Scaling" in "Adjust desktop size and position" Image Scaling option changes back to Image Sharpening



But I do agree that nvidia should separate them.

 

What particularly frustrates me is that nVidia seems to have forgotten Surround users in switching to the new mode. 'Integer scaling' mode isn't available on the virtual Surround display, so sharpening can't be enabled via per-program, and neither is NIS or DLDSR.

As a result, without the reg hack to re-enable the old sharpening pathway, Surround users currently have no sharpening options available at all presented to them.

 

But why? I'm not asking them to fix the performance when its actually running, I'm asking that they fix the performance penalty when it's NOT running (e.g. when it's enabled globally but the user is playing a game at native with 0% sharpening). It should be simple enough for the driver to see that the resolution is native and that no sharpening is being used, no?

 

This isn't a solution, for that matter i'd just use older drivers instead of doing some registry stuff. This isn't a fix, is a lame band-aid to force the driver to work as previous ones, thus losing a new feature due to nvidia ignoring this problem. If i install newer drivers, i'd like to use all features they have, including NIS, except is not properly coded, as others have pointed out.

 

Whether they fix this or not depends on whether nvidia actually care about their customers.

 

With how radiosilent Nvidia is on this issue I feel like the answer is clear.

 

arguably, you haven't been there customer since 2014 when the 980 ti came out.

Added-on features don't have to perform to your satisfaction on a product from before its time.

 

I feel like there's some sort of communication issue happening here. If I'm understanding you correctly you're referring to how these features cost more on older GPUs.

But that's not what I (or I expect) the others in this thread are referring to. We understand that there is a performance penalty when Nvidia's Sharpen and/or the NIS GPU scaler are in use. We also recognize that it has a higher cost on older GPUs.

I think everybody is on the same page at this point with you.

What I'm saying is that there should be no performance penalty at all (old or new hardware) if a user has NIS turned ON (global tab of Nvidia Control Panel) with a Sharpen value of 0% when they are playing a game at native resolution. It should be fairly straight forward I believe for the driver to know when Sharpen is set to 0% and when a game is running at native. In such cases the driver should automatically treat NIS/Sharpen "as if" they are OFF.

Or do you mean something else?

Even if Nvidia doesn't do what I suggest there, they could at least 1) let us turn on NIS on a per game profile in the Nvidia control panel and 2) split off sharpening into its own setting that can be used without NIS turned ON. I don't see why these things can't be done or what that has to do with older VS newer GPUs (correct me if I've missed something).

 

when you turn NIS on, its on for all resolutions, not just the ones above or below native.

 

Complaint is more around having it as a global option instead of as a per game option to avoid a performance penalty because one has to turn it on/off globally when it is wanted/not wanted.
The old scaling implementation was better in that regard, but since NIS still is as new as it is, it might get improved in the future to avoid getting that global penalty added, shouldn't be that hard for Nvidia to figure it out.

 

Except it also affects more recent products, so no idea what is your "argument" here exactly. Guess is is just another of your "everything is fine here and you are wrong because i said so". Also isn't NIS meant for less capable gpu's, which would include older products that would have issues at native resolutions at more demanding games? Why would it be needed on newer products that have stuff such as DLSS?

 

NIS probably can't be invoked at application start time because mode queries n such.

 

Shitty practices apologist spotted.

Well done mate. Well done.

Oh, and btw, the 900 series is still supported. But you very conveniently seem to have forgotten that.

 

You'd be the guy that complains at nvidia that DXR Raytracing on the GTX 1080ti is slow.

 

yes it's supported
but it's old as hell,2014
the fact it's supported doesn't mean it'll run features it doesn't have.
amd products from that time and even younger went legacy last year

 

No. I'm the guy that complaints that the new GPU upscaler slows things down a 1080. It was fast before. Now it's slow. There's no way you can justify that. Making people's hardware slower is not a good thing.

See above. You can't just make people's hardware slower. Sharpening was working fine before and it was fast. Now it's slow.

How on earth can you defend what happened here?