Radeon Vulkan Variable Rate Shading Benchmarks For Boosting RDNA2 Performance

[fafreeman]

"minor visual quality loss"?
No, no, no... the quality lost is substantial in many areas. I can't be the only one seeing it.

like dlss quality loss is going to be subjective. i hate dlss as its all blurry to me. even watching gamers nexus dumb cyberpunk 2077 dlss video where they tried lying telling people it was better than native in some places made me rage because to steve, he prefers blurriness. i hate anything blurry.

likewise this is going to be the same. its going to depend on the person. like dlss, some people may like the image reduction if it helps make their game playable regardless.

[LoucMachine]

like dlss quality loss is going to be subjective. i hate dlss as its all blurry to me. even watching gamers nexus dumb cyberpunk 2077 dlss video where they tried lying telling people it was better than native in some places made me rage because to steve, he prefers blurriness. i hate anything blurry.

likewise this is going to be the same. its going to depend on the person. like dlss, some people may like the image reduction if it helps make their game playable regardless.

This is much worst than DLSS, and the performance gain is also much less. Not sure how anyone would want their game to look like that for a mere 8% gain.

[BNieuwenhuizen]

"minor visual quality loss"?
No, no, no... the quality lost is substantial in many areas. I can't be the only one seeing it.

I never said it wasn't substantial It is worth noting that changing the games rendering randomly like this can also cause weird effects in games (e.g. on Shadow of the Tomb Raider I get weird bright spots. Likely some specular + bloom things going on or such?). I think it is not something I'd recommend for the general public to run for a bunch of their gaming at this stage.

(I hoped I got that across appropriately in my blog post, but it feels that at least across the multiple phoronix posts and the reposting on e.g. reddit that got lost a bit)

[theriddick]

Trying to test this out now with RADV_FORCE_VRS=2x2 %command% in steam. (6800xt here). Hoping I have a valid mesa git (Mesa 21.1.0-devel (git-5a61a4dbfa).

[smitty3268]

I never said it wasn't substantial It is worth noting that changing the games rendering randomly like this can also cause weird effects in games (e.g. on Shadow of the Tomb Raider I get weird bright spots. Likely some specular + bloom things going on or such?). I think it is not something I'd recommend for the general public to run for a bunch of their gaming at this stage.

(I hoped I got that across appropriately in my blog post, but it feels that at least across the multiple phoronix posts and the reposting on e.g. reddit that got lost a bit)

Yeah, your blog post was very clear but Michael went for the clickbait headline here and made it sound like this was some kind of DLSS competitor.

[gfunk]

Will this feature not work in proton games because they are DXVK?

Is it something they could try and implement?


I'm switching to a 6700XT when they come in stock so keen to test it out!

[TemplarGR]

The best way to experience "quality loss for a big trade-off in performance" without needing extra features is simply to use a 4K monitor and run the game at 1080p. The scaling is without performance cost, it is perfect so it doesn't ruin the picture quality and ratios, and in the small PC monitors the difference during gaming between 1080p and 4K is minuscule at best. I have a 45" 4K TV and even when standing 1 meter from it i can't really notice that much of a difference in movies. There is a difference, it is just that it is not that impressive, compared to moving from 480p to 1080p in the past.... In my smaller 24" PC screen, i really don't care if the game is 1080p, the settings it runs at and the framerates are way more important. And also the noise/powerconsumption/pricing of the gpu.

[dpanter]

I never said it wasn't substantial It is worth noting that changing the games rendering randomly like this can also cause weird effects in games (e.g. on Shadow of the Tomb Raider I get weird bright spots. Likely some specular + bloom things going on or such?). I think it is not something I'd recommend for the general public to run for a bunch of their gaming at this stage.

(I hoped I got that across appropriately in my blog post, but it feels that at least across the multiple phoronix posts and the reposting on e.g. reddit that got lost a bit)

Yeah, those exact words were used in Michaels article. Made me think he might need glasses...
Your blog was a great read, definitely clear what to expect from forcing this setting.

Some quick testing on my 8700K/6900XT in 3440x1440 showed a ~15% fps increase in Islanders (native) and ~4% fps increase in Dying Light (Proton-6.5-GE-2/DXVK), both showing drastic quality reduction. The effect is akin to anti-antialiasing in some places. This example gif (200% zoom) illustrates the effect on the Islanders logo letters, but the pillar on the left is unaffected. Dying Light screenshots do not illustrate the terrible feeling of seeing strong aliasing everywhere, it's really jarring.

[ThoreauHD]

The closer to 60 fps it gets, the less useful it seems to be. Not so sure about this one.

[M@yeulC]

Yeah, those exact words were used in Michaels article. Made me think he might need glasses...
Your blog was a great read, definitely clear what to expect from forcing this setting.

Some quick testing on my 8700K/6900XT in 3440x1440 showed a ~15% fps increase in Islanders (native) and ~4% fps increase in Dying Light (Proton-6.5-GE-2/DXVK), both showing drastic quality reduction. The effect is akin to anti-antialiasing in some places. This example gif (200% zoom) illustrates the effect on the Islanders logo letters, but the pillar on the left is unaffected. Dying Light screenshots do not illustrate the terrible feeling of seeing strong aliasing everywhere, it's really jarring.

IIRC from the blog post, there are heuristics in place to disable it on 2D UI elements due to this, but I guess the heuristics don't work in some corner cases like in your screenshot above.

Now, I wonder how it would look/perform with some shader-based post-processing anti-aliasing (I forgot the name)? Also, ideally VRS should be controlled by the game, and selectively applied to game elements, and during some sequences.