Ultra Performance

Digital Foundry is proudly sponsored by Omen's new wireless range of mice, keyboards and headsets. With the release of new and pure cards from NVIDIA, DLSS has also been updated to version 2. 1, w T So where should we start? First I can say with great conviction that we at DF often find native 4K resolution a bit of a waste for grap We would rather utilize that GPU performance used to render a native 4K image instead for higher graphical effects and things Then you can take that image and make it higher resolution looking with good reconstruction techniques That is quadruply the case for 8K resolution. Really, no one in their right mind should actively target native 8K resolution, excluding those games with older or much more simplistic performance requirements. A real native 8K is incredibly performance intensive, so even the d For example, in control with the That same scene running with DLSS in ultra performance mode reconstructed up to 8K is 50 FPS, so an increase of 450% over native 8K. T In the usual performance mode in DLSS 2. 0, it had a 4x multiplier for resolution, so internally 1080p could be brought up to 4K and 4K up to 8K. Altered performance mode below t 1, has a 9x resolution multiplier. 4K would be a 720p internal resolution, and for 8K, that is a 1440p internal resolution. Now before I get into the nitty gritty of the analysis here, I have to mention how t As it's different than usual, none of my capture card devices support 8K recording in a native fas Try as I might, it just wouldn't work. So for t So the B-roll I the performance capture that I use in this video, And that way it doesn't affect the performance w So performance recordings Performance on the RTX 3090 is very different between these two games. Control is one of the heaviest games out there for the GPU with ray tracing enabled, hence how it is 9fps at a real native 8K. In general though, when playing with DLSS and ultra performance mode on the RTX 3090, controls calmer moments of wandering around the oldest house will be in the 50s usually. It's been pretty great for the VRR window on an 8K or 4K display, but it's obviously not enough for a 60Hz v-sync lock or anything Getting into combat in the heavier scenes in the game brings the frame rate down into the 40s, where it generally hangs for the duration of combat. And I saw that across a n And that corridor of doom by the way, yeah, that's also in the 40s when you walk through it. Not playable enough performance, but not up to my standards that I have usually at lower resolutions looking for 60. In control w T We're right here on t We're starting the game though and having the desired output resolution being fixed already at the game start fixes t With that in place, I saw the GPU utilization go up So that is somet Desk Dranning is completely different to control as it does not have next generation graphical techniques So at its core, the game is just not as heavy on the GPU. In fact, at native 8K, it manages to be above 30fps on the RTX 3090. With ultra performance mode DLSS, the RTX 3090 has its FPS in excess of 60fps at all times, often in the 70s or 80s depending upon what you're looking at and what is happening on screen. Even the game's more expensive cutscenes, w Basically this lessen increase in performance though makes sense as the cost of ray tracing per pixel in a game So Control's performance is more sensitive to resolution. Moving into image quality here, let's first see what that ultra performance mode at 4K looks As expected based upon previous analyses, DLSS looks a lot better than its real internal resolution with it completing lines of aliasing and many areas of the screen just looking so much better If we zoom in on this vending machine here as well, we can see Interesting though is what DLSS does inside surfaces with ray traced reflections at If you compare DLSS in stills versus the simple upscale, you can see how it cleans up noise and completes lines wit So it's a positive outcome, but if you set that image in motion So on most of all the edges in t On average though, I'd say But what does t In comparison to the normal upscale with TAA, DLSS's run time runs 18% worse. T For example, the cost difference between using DLSS when outputting at 4K is decidedly less. You only lose around 6% performance when turning on DLSS at 4K. When changing the output resolution between 4K and 8K at the same internal resolution, we can see that there's a 3GB increase in VRAM allocation as well. So Imagine the comparison to native 8K though is why we are here, and that's where t For one, native 8K as I see it destroys the GPU so much in control that it makes recording actually erratic. For example, every time I capture t So that's what I have to deal with. Secondly, native 8K is allocating nearly 2x as much VRAM, so it's just DLSS'savings in VRAM and performance are very apparent as I've talked about, but image-quality-wise is where t When you zoom in on details, you can see how native 8K has absolutely perfect, untroubled image quality here. DLSS in Ultra Performance Mode in comparison looks much, much less refined, where tiny details cannot resolve. Or look at the vending mac This is where the differences with heavy ray tracing details see the largest difference in my opinion, Native 8K is essentially sending out 9x more rays here and feeding that into the denoiser. With 1 9th the amount of rays being shot out, Ultra Performance Mode with DLSS lacks all that precision in the reflection that you see with the native image. Such large scale differences that I'm showing here with zooms can be seen of course at normal distances on the screen between these two versions. That is not to say that Ultra Performance Mode looks bad or somet So that got me wondering, how much better is DLSS actually working here? I still t So I compared DLSS Ultra Performance Mode at 8K to DLSS in quality mode at 4K. Both are using the same internal resolution, but with different output resolutions. And looking at those side by side, it's possible to see how Ultra Performance Mode at 8K does actually yield better image quality features than the same internal res output at 4K. You can see how lines complete better or how detail is preserved, So I the reconstruction just needs much more information and internal resolution to be comparable, w That looked much more comparable to the real 8K, with the same behaviors I've mentioned before in my previous video on DLSS in t But how about Death Stranding? When comparing to native 4K at first, it shows how much more detail, anti-aliasing, and fidelity that DLSS Ultra Performance Mode is actually adding to the image. So DLSS is indeed working When I compared a native 8K, it shows how, in this game at least, it is a much closer approximation to native 8K than we saw in control, where opaque texture detail But other screen elements are not as well done. Let's take a look at t Moving vegetation is another area where DLSS's 1 9th internal resolution cannot keep up, and vegetation comes out a bit dithered, blurred, and darkened even slightly in comparison to the real native 8K. In general, side by side, I think that this Ultra Performance Mode in desk stranding does better than it does in control, but there are still a n It is s This happens with all post-processing as I have found out, which now aliases more and does not look that great, so while opaque detail is much better looking than control, in this mode in desk stranding, other blemishes Now when going down to lower output resolutions on the RTX 2060, there's really only one expectation here. DLSS or any other reconstruction out there works better the Running at 4K in control on the RTX 2060 at max settings, ultra performance DLSS is running 10 times faster than native resolution. The RTX 2060 here with its 6GB of VRAM is definitely choking at native 4K on top of all that shading load, so an even greater win than the 390 at 8K, but desk stranding here is less of a win on the RTX 2060. Ultra performance mode is running here with an additional 120% more performance, so less of a win there. Image quality and control at this resolution is much DLSS is much less effective here at t If you focus on any area of the screen with your eyes, you can see that native 4K looks light years beyond the ultra performance mode for its presentation of edges, how anti-aliasing looks and how detail is presented. The inner surface of My opinion here is that t Desk Stranding though has more intriguing results. If you focus on areas of the image Considering the left image here is really 720p internally, these are just amazing results. Moving vegetation though is once again the weak spot where it can look darker, blurrier and stippled on ultra performance mode where 4K native with TAA is crisp, yet a little bit aliased I would say. Post processing shows very similar issues that I saw at 8K where depth of field at ultra performance mode in 4K has more s Even though both are utilizing the exact same internal resolution, there's just something about the scaling integer that this game's post processing does not Just for curiosity'sake, I did look at what ultra performance mode does at 1080p and this year would be 640x360 internally, so a lower resolution than a n And it looks shockingly okay given how incredibly low resolution t If you look at the static elements of the screen, they sure look quite similar to native 1080p actually, but anything moving looks Sam here for example who almost looks It's neat, but not really recommendable given how amazing t Looking at all the results, I would conclude that ultra performance mode at 8K is still not there. It looks better than 4K native in many aspects as I found out, but its output and control and its post process aliasing and de-stranding make it less than compelling. I honestly just think that 9x multiplier is asking too much of DLSS and it does not align properly with the internal pixel grid ass 8K is also light years away from being more common and I t At below 8K But it has its practical limits given the games we have right now. Perhaps it makes sense for those looking for 4K 120 in certain experiences as long as the games post processing does not have problems But still, I t But And if you did enjoy this video, please hit that If you are already a subscriber then Oh, hey look at that, 1 million subscribers! So thanks for that! And if you want to help us out, support us on Patreon to get years worth of Digital Foundry content available in And if you want to talk to me about DLSS, write a comment below and follow me and Digital Foundry on Twitter. And as always, t Featuring its new Wart wireless technology, Ohman's PC peripherals allow for lag free gaming. 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