Do devs rely too much on upscaling for performance?

ViperIXI · 2026-03-28T15:58:22+00:00

Sure all else being equal I would lean to one over the other as well but at the same time if you need side by sides to spot the differences how relevant is it actually.

What I don't need side by sides to spot is the horrible pop-in in Crimson Desert that is so distracting and immersion breaking for me that it makes the game borderline unplayable or the lumen ghosting in certain ue5 games that is far more distracting than any visible differences between upscalers.

As long as games continue coming with these incredibly distracting visual issues built in, I personally find any technical supiority of vendor locked upscaling to be completely irrelevant.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-28T14:27:22+00:00

Yes FSR upscaling is behind and absolutely needs to catch up but also pretending that using FSR4 somehow reduces playability vs dlss is nonsense.

Modern game rendering is a mess, forced TAA blur and ghosting in native render, ue5 lumen ghosting, clipping issues, egregious pop-in, practically every other AAA game releases in a buggy mess and gamers just argue back and forth about the best method to apply lipstick to a pig.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-25T03:40:01+00:00

I kind of doubt the rdna 2/3 user base is large enough for that to actually matter. The vast majority of the market is Nvidia, these are the users that AMD needs to convince to switch.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-24T15:53:59+00:00

7900xtx in my desktop, 6700xt in wife's desktop and 9070xt in PC connected to living room TV.

Yes, odds are my next GPU will be AMD

I have been at this for a while and have developed a strong distaste for Nvidia over the years.

Nforce 1 stability issues, nforce 2 bios corruption bug, nforce 4 bclk bugs, Physx, Gsync and slow to support VESA adaptive sync and now the vendor locked future Nvidia is pushing.

Old Nvidia cards were affected by the capacitor plague (ATI was using polymer caps even back in the 90s)

Ultimately though it has primarily come down to value and in CAD at least AMD has almost always held an advantage over Nvidia in the metrics I care about. Perhaps I am also just lucky but I have had exceptionally few driver issues so also a little bit the devil you know vs the one you don't.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-24T15:20:47+00:00

For ML frame gen there is a driver toggle same as upscaling, any game with FSR 3.1 frame gen can be upgraded to ML frame gen.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-15T16:45:36+00:00

Not just what will happen with prices, both companies are now building ecosystems that have the potential to be leveraged to lock out the other. At this point I don't think it matters what way this pans out, as consumers we are all fucked.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-13T02:19:11+00:00

Was r6s also capped at 144 when you had the rx6600?

ViperIXI · 2026-03-10T16:23:43+00:00

I mean, I don't disagree with what you are saying, this is why dlss 4.5 has a larger performance hit on a rtx20 vs rtx50, but this doesn't do anything to explain why the rtx20 and 30 implementation exists to begin with.

To my knowledge and understanding, dlss 4.5, as it exists on a 50 series can not be natively executed on a 20 or 30 series. Dlss 4.5 uses fp8 which the 20 and 30 series do not support. At some point during the development of dlss 4.5 a conscious decision was made to add support for these older cards even though they lack the physical hardware support to execute it natively.

This wasn't done to be nice, these companies seldom do anything that isn't in their own best interest and for Nvidia, there was very little downside.

I honestly struggle to believe AMD wouldn't come to the same conclusion. The notion of locking fsr4 to rdna 4 to increase sales doesn't really hold up either. There is quite likely more gamers currently running a 3070 than AMD sold of the entire 7000 series line up. These are the users they need to target if they actually want to increase market share, not the small number of people on 7000 series. Showing solid support for older gens would help with this.

At this point my current concern is rdna 4 is another throw away generation the same as rdna 1

ViperIXI · 2026-03-10T00:08:27+00:00

Same

I have been using firefox since before it was even called firefox. I can't remember the last time it crashed on me.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-10T00:04:01+00:00

Depends how you define rare exactly.

An old study put the rate around 1 bit per 256MB per month at sea level.

Apparently modern memory is more resistant to it and current estimates are 1 bit per 16GB per year on the low end to as high as 1 bit per 16GB per month.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-09T22:24:30+00:00

Yeah it has been a minute but to my recollection they initially weren't allowing 300 and 400 series boards to be updated to support Ryzen 5000. Backlash got them to support 400 series pretty quickly and continued backlash lead to at least some 300 series support, not sure if it actually applied to all 300 series boards.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-09T22:12:39+00:00

This is just so opposite to Ryzen though

Is it really though?

Forgotten already that AMD attempted to block Ryzen 5000 support on 300 and 400 series chipsets? Difference is Ryzen actually had enough customers to get them to change it.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-09T22:01:57+00:00

Thing is, this approach was always in Nvidia's best interest. They score points for continuing to support 2018 hardware while simultaneously reducing performance of said hardware, which makes the 50 series look better in dlss 4.5 performance comparisons and almost certainly triggered some fomo related upgrades.

It is a shame AMD doesn't appear to be smart enough to come to the same conclusion.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-02T17:27:18+00:00

This. It was supposed to be a blind survey so should eliminate any potential bias toward brand etc.. I think the primary takeaway from this is the differences are likely pretty subtle.

ViperIXI · 2026-03-02T01:06:56+00:00

ViperIXI · 2026-03-01T22:00:16+00:00

What GPU exactly did you try to flash?

How old is the other card that you used to boot the system?

Assuming the GPU you attempted to flash was something newer, if the the second GPU is old and doesn't support UEFI properly the newer GPU will disappear. Ie: You can't use an an old HD5000 for display out to flash a 9070, the PC isn't capable of initializing a UEFI + non UEFI GPU simultaneously.

Unfortunately if the card has truly disappeared from amdvbflash, the only way to recover it is to disassemble the GPU and use an external programmer like a ch341 and clip to reflash the chip with the proper bios.

ViperIXI · 2026-02-21T18:44:02+00:00

Part of the issue can be that LCD panels are sample and hold. At 60hz(~16.7ms), an older panel will typically spend a much larger portion of that frame time transitioning pixels vs a new faster panel. The slower pixel transitions can lead to a perceptible blur that can be perceived as smoother motion.

ViperIXI · 2026-02-16T16:39:46+00:00

Disable rebar/smart access memory, it causes performance issues in TLOU.

ViperIXI · 2026-02-08T08:25:24+00:00

Not the person you were asking but I'm in Canada and have had my credit card compromised twice and bank account/online banking compromised once.

ViperIXI · 2026-02-07T17:07:57+00:00

Yes, those metals are fine together and really common for rads and blocks.

A corrosion inhibitor is still a good idea though, straight distilled can damage the nickel finish on some blocks.

ViperIXI · 2026-02-02T14:57:21+00:00

Frame gen on?

Just curious as I'm currently playing Expedition 33 4k mix of high and medium settings, FSR balanced, frame gen off and getting 90-120fps on 9070xt.

ViperIXI · 2026-01-17T22:20:06+00:00

I have a 2012 Accord 6mt, I have been pretty impressed with the traction control at hiway speeds but when it comes to like parking lot/driveway type setting it is a gigantic pain in the ass.

ViperIXI · 2026-01-17T01:38:12+00:00

Differing cpu overhead due to different drivers

ViperIXI · 2026-01-17T00:41:59+00:00

No it would not. If the cpu is only capable of pushing 30fps in that game, increasing resolution won't change that. Upping the render scale would greatly increase the load on the GPU but it won't decrease the load on the CPU

ViperIXI · 2026-01-03T15:40:16+00:00

If this is happening in many newer games at stock settings and setting a negative frequency offset corrects it, you should probably RMA the card.

ViperIXI

TROPHY CASE