Image Quality Enhanced: DLSS 3.7 vs XeSS 1.3 vs FSR 2 - ML Upscaling Just Got Better

Time Marches On and thankfully technology is not standing still two big players in the GPU game Nvidia and Intel have released updates to their image reconstruction technology the dlss SDK has been updated to version 3.7 with a new reconstruction model called Model E and xss has been updated to version 1.3 promising greater quality and stability so so in today's video I will detail the updates with my own findings and generally showcase the current state-of-the-art as to how the big three upscaler compare in a modern title and first here I want to start with xss as the last time I looked at it in Greater depth was nearly 1 and A2 years ago when examining its integration into shadow of the Tomb Raider which was a debut title for the technology back then my conclusions were that xcss when running on a Intel GPU produced quality similar to dlss with only a few shortcomings it did not suffer from the greater issues that we've typically seen with FSR 2 for example so I thought it had a great debut in that title and it proved how important machine learning was to good reconstruction technology xcss is use of machine learning is interesting as it has multiple versions it occupies a middle Place between what AMD and Nvidia are doing on one one side you have what AMD has done FSR 2 plus runs on all modern gpus that support compute shaders pretty much but it can have quality issues on the other side dlss only runs on RTX gpus using their tensor cores and has generally been crowned among gaming press and otherwise as the quality leader for Intel in the middle there it has two paths that are relevant to the user both using machine learning there's the dp4 a version of xss which can run on pretty much any modern GPU from the last four years at least and then there's the xmx version which runs exclusively on Intel gpus with xmx units the xmx version has better quality than the dp4 a version so there's kind of a hierarchy of quality that I'm showing here with FSR 2 on the bottom and xss dp4 a above that then XS on Arc above that and then dlss usually at the top this is curious as not many people have probably actually seen that xmx version of xes as Intel is a relatively new player in the market not many people have an Intel GPU like I am showing off here on screen right now so let me just show you what that looks like first of all here is an older version of XS 1.2 running in Horizon forbidden West on the left hand side is the dp4 a version which you can run on any AMD or Nvidia card really and on the on the right is the xmx version running on an Intel Arc a770 as you can see the xmx version here wins for quality on a number of levels but the biggest visible one is that the little floating particles in the air do not have incessant Trails behind them in the same way that they do in the dp4 a version there's a lot less trails and ghosting there on the xmx side so that should give you a sense of what I mean better quality there with xmx on this is the 1.2 version how does one .3 that Intel just released improve upon this before I get into that I need to describe a little bit about how I'm injecting xes into games like dlss xss uses a dll system where you can look in a game directory as you see here and you'll see a dll file for xss that the game uses you can change that or override it by just plugging in the new dll from the SDK this is not officially supported by Intel as far as I know but it does work that is something you'll have to keep in mind for the testing I'm showing on screen here it's completely unofficial and official implementations of 1.3 could perhaps produce different results okay enough said there let's look first at the 1.3 dp4 a path left and right here are both using balanced mode at 1440p the first big thing I want you to notice is how the particles floating through the air in version 1.3 no longer have the longer Trails behind them as seen in the 1.2 version of the game so so a core visual artifact has been cleaned up by just plugging in the 1.3 DL here into this game if we look at the water we can also see some light artifacting there which was causing pixelization has been cleaned up to a good degree here in the 1.3 version one less positive difference you can see here is that the inner surface detail kind of has a fizzle in the 1.3 version you can see that well on the Moss here for example where the inner surface now has a fizzle in it it's less stable you can also see that a bit in the wet rocks for example near the water's edge it's not so visible when you take the image as a whole but on a macro level it can convey the look that the game has some sub pixel detail that is less stable now part of this may be down to what the 1.3 model is doing with the image but another thing it might be down to is the resolution of the images I'm showing here actually being different see according to Intel's blog on the matter xss 1.3 has changed the internal resolution from various modes and it's added new ones as we can see in the chart here from Intel the balanced mode I'm showing off in 1.3 is actually the equivalent of the performance mode in version 1.2 regarding its internal resolution so quality mode for example in version 1.2 is now Ultra quality mode in version 1.3 in terms of internal resolution that is being reconstructed from this Bears out in performance data when comparing Ultra quality mode xss dp4 a path running at 4K Max settings on an RTX 490 in Horizon forbidden West we can see a significant 8% performance lead of the same settings with version 1.3 the name is the same alra quality mode here but the performance is different and that is because the internal resolution is now different I saw the same behavior across multiple games I tested in including shadow of the Tomb Raider where Ultra quality mode ran nearly 70% faster better there with maxed out rate tracing in version 1.3 on that RTX 490 this behavior is not limited to the dp4 a path of XS it'll happen on an arc card as well if you switch out these DLS and I saw improved performance there on the Arc a770 in Horizon forbidden West at 1440p balance mode in version 1.3 indeed having done some pixel counting on camera Cuts I found it to be the case that balance mode in 1.2 was around 864p and it counts to around 720p in version 1.3 if you run the quality mode in version 1.3 it'll perform the exact same as the balance mode in version 1.2 okay so the internal resolution is different in version 1.3 is this a good or a bad thing well it's good that Intel are adding more granularity to the modes that they have there will now be a native resolution mode and a whole bunch of more in between modes in total this is good for the user I would say so they have more options to suit their particular desires it is bad though in the aspect of that it upsets an established Norm that other reconstruction techniques have also established performance mode in xss will now have a different internal resolution than performance mode in FSR 2 and dlss and that could confuse users confuse comparisons and lead people to falsely attribute differences in image quality and performance when they might not otherwise have done it personally I wish Intel kept the same scaling levels and names but they added in new names for example for the other levels that they're adding in so as to prevent such confusion either way this is the way things are and I'm going to have to account for it and so will you and let's see what's going on there when looking at the dp4 a version again here but the resolution differences are accounted for so version 1.3 is now set to Quality mode we can see more or less the same image quality differences as before it's just slightly more stable now on the right hand side when properly adjusted to use the same internal resolution so I would say that the inner surface detail fizzle is being added here by version 1.3 when I add in the dll to this game in total based upon this comparison of these two images I would say that the dp4 a version of xss is largely greatly improved because there's less ghosting and less pixelization on most of the image features like the water and the particles but it can be a little bit less stable how about the xmx version of xss running on an Intel GPU with this I see similar differences as I saw in the DP 4A version if you look at inner surface detail it can look slightly less stable there in version 1.3 and there's a slight difference in sharpness in version 1.3 you can see that particularly if I look at the ground Moss texture there in the distance that I'm highlighting here whether or not this difference in sharpness is a good or bad thing is hard to say for positives the water detail is even less pixelated in version 1.3 and if you pay attention the little particles in the air have even less Trails behind them in version 1 .3 so there are some key upgrades here alongside some slight negative differences looking at other views I saw some other distinct differences in version 1.2 of the xmx version of XS any depth of field on screen would have somewhat distracting Jitter in it as you can see here where any area of the screen affected by depth of field would be jittering by injecting version 1.3 this will completely go away actually which is nice to see same with the cloud rendering in version 1.2 Cloud render would have some Jitter in it which I found distracting actually in version 1.3 it completely cleans up that Jitter and I actually think it looks quite a good deal better though now there's a knock on effect where particles flying in front of the clouds can leave trails behind them on the surface of the clouds which looks a little weird so once again there are some great positives and some slight negatives here to injecting this 1.3 version dll into this game in movement the version 1.3 of Xs tends to deliver results that have less aliasing in them and offering smoother visuals with the xmx version the difference looks like this as you can see in the still here you'll see better anti-aliasing on the edges better internal detail and a general look that shows less fizzle in it in motion it just means that there's going to be less visible aliasing there and a smooth over appearance over multiple frames for the dp4 a path of xss you can perhaps see an even greater Improvement where edges are completed better in the version 1.3 and there are far less jaggies overall and when the character is moving in motion things look just more stable with less fizzle and pop as the character moves if you compare the two Paths of xmx and dp4 a in version 1.3 you'll see that the xmx model looks better as it is designed to as it's Hardware accelerated you'll see less aliasing smoother detail and more detail with less smearing as we can see on aloy's hands here it's all really cool based on Horizon forbidden West even when injected unofficially xcss 1.3 can provide some visible benefits to A Game's presentation whether you are on an Intel GPU or not that does not mean it will fix all issues though that one can encounter when using xss for example I tried it in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the issues that I found on that game's water rendering in my initial review while they still there in version 1. .3 same in Ratchet and Clank there the version 1.3 still has some flicker occurring with the game's vignette filter on the sides of the screen when looking at grass so it can help this version 1.3 dll but there are still room for improvement regarding official implementations of 1.3 in the future one more to go getting over to dlss 3.7 there is a lot less to cover here as dlss is generally in a good place I would say and it has been detailed more than enough on this channel over the last 5 years since version 2 came out still dlss has room for improvement that I've talked about in the recent past a good example can be found in Avatar frontiers of Pandora as I'm showing on the screen right now as I covered at launch for the game the default Model D or preset D that shipped with the version of dlss has issues when the camera sits still when the camera is still character limbs particles and more can smear to incredible levels almost like the previous frames information is not at all being called like it should I found it super distracting and Avatar is not the first time I saw this issue popping up in a game with this preset D for dlss it's been a general issue I've seen with this Model D since post version 2.5.1 back at the launch of Avatar I recommended people to try and mod the game to use prese set c as we're seeing here preset C is used for motion Clarity in general and it fixes the issue though it has worse anti-aliasing and reconstruction as you can see on the floor here where preset C is not smearing of course but the floor texture detail is blurrier here's where the new preset e comes in to inject that into this game or any game what I have done is replac the dlss dll you see on screen here in the game directory then I've used Envy profile inspector along with an XML Edition you can find in the video description below to force the game to use the new preset e instead of the previous default of preset D when that is done you can go in game and see some interesting results essentially preset e as introduced in 37 gets rid of the poor smearing that can occur in preset D in the previous dlss versions so in that sense it fixes it like preset C used to but unlike preset C it does not have a lower reconstruction and anti-aliasing quality take a look at the floor here notice how the texture quality there is higher in preset e than it is in preset C so we're getting a kind of Best of Both Worlds here scenario with preset e that is nice to see other titles where I saw this Behavior are likewise fixed for example in the path Trace version of halflife 1 that showcases smearing with older versions of dlss that use that D preset but with preset e that is completely cleaned up and looking great beyond that though I haven't found many other great advances of above the previous dlss state-ofthe-art when looking for other issues I found that preset e still had them clouds and avatar for example still Jitter with dlss in the new version like they did in the old so I didn't really see a big Improvement there also in Hitman 3 agent 47's clothing can still potentially show off a mo pattern in preset e with 3.7 like it can in older versions of dlss Dragon Dogma 2 yeah fast moving grass there still kind of looks M so from my perspective the main thing this new version of dlss does in 3.7 is that it fixes up the potential for those large smear errors to occur and not too much else with that being said let us go over to how the three reconstruction techniques compare briefly let us take a look at the movement in Horizon forbidden West here at 1440p while using xss is dp4 a version with version 1.3 and dlss using that e preset version 3.7 here I think we can see the prototypical differences between the upscaler in motion let us pause to highlight on the far left with Evar 2 the moving objects lack good anti-aliasing and kind of have a generic fizzle around them and in the object importantly if you look at the plants and the grass surrounding aloy here you can kind of see that crunchy oversharpened blown out pixel look that is the background behind her which has been discluded and disclusion fizzle is happening there with the xss view in the middle running the dp4 a version we can see a cleaner presentation than FSR 2 without that pixelated look though if you look at the quiver and the staff being swung you can see a slight blurriness is there as a light bit of smearing is occurring if you look over on the far right with the LSS you can see like xss is dp4 a version there's no pixelization and no fizzle but you'll notice that the Reconstruction of moving objects is cleaner with lines being completed and detail sticking out better while there's no blurriness or smearing occurring on the staff or quiver like we see with XC SS's dp4 a version if I swap in and show the xmx version of xss we can see how xss in the xmx version further distances itself from FSR 2 getting rid of most of the blurriness and smearing on the quiver and staff but still falling slightly short of the quality and clarity as offered by dlss in its 3.7 version once again a clear hierarchy here when going from left to right going over to Ratchet and Clank we see a similar story there with me this time focusing on the xmx version of xess as ratchet moves forward we can see all techniques suffer from a mo pattern on the carpet beneath ratchet yet the look of the objects like ratchet in movement offers Stark differences that fizzled and pixelated look we see in FSR 2 in Horizon is present here in ratcheting Clank it's the way FSR 2 Works compared arely dlss and xss look quite a bit better with better anti-aliasing though you can see on the distant platform here that I'm highlighting that xcss is producing a less clear image advancing forward the differences become most Stark again when effects come on the screen if we watch it play out I think you can see what I mean it almost looks like FSR 2 is having a fullcreen pixelization occurring if I pause it you can see why that is happening in FSR 2 typical behavior is that translucent particles and effects tend to turn into large scale aliases while xss and dlss reconstruct them more smoothly into rounded higher resolution shapes from left to right here once again I think you can see that hierarchy that I mentioned at the beginning of this video side by side I think we can see here that xss and dlss for the most part at the moment look pretty great we can also see with these side by sides that FSR 2 still has great room for improve Improvement like how I'm covering dlss and xss in this video I will be covering an update to FSR 2 soon enough with its version 3.1 which according to AMD should be launching in the near future and is looking to resolve some of the issues that I talked about in this video specifically the moving objects having a pixelated look to them and as such I will be using the footage I gathered for this video to show differences from FSR 3.1 when that comes out getting to end of this video I'm happy to see X and dlss advancing in quality instead of just stagnating can FSR 2 close the large gap that exists at the moment even though it doesn't have machine learning time will tell and I think we'll have some answers soon enough but in the meantime I hope you enjoyed this video if you did enjoy it hit that like button and subscribe to the channel if you are already a subscriber hit that little bell in the corner to be informed as soon as digital Foundry posts a video support us on patreon comment below follow on Twitter as always this is Alex sping you farewell

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 148,740

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Id: PneArHayDv4

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024