NVIDIA RTX Video Super Resolution Tested: Image Quality Comparison & Performance
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Date: 2023-03-15
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Comments and reviews: 15
Adam949
I still dont like DLSS as it may look better now or not be broken (not sure about 3.0) but it still looks significantly different than the source material. And I buy games to play the games as they were imagined and designed not upscaled. Looking at the overhead alone of VSR tech using more bandwidth is definitely better for me, well 1 I use Firefox and 2 an AMD GPU but I watch multiple streams while gaming or 3D modeling or video editing or even watching YT so this tech is def a no go with that insane overhead. Just watching 1 stream or YT video while multi taking is already a no go but the GPU is already bottle necking at just 2-3 streams with out even multitasking. It cost significantly less performance to just use more bandwidth.
I noticed on the CPU scene in the video that VSR removed the scratches from the CPU's IHS. This is exactly why I dont like things like this. A lot of information can be gained from an object or videos imperfections like for example watching a tear down and noticing every object of this type you have seen has had the same scratch or damage in the exact same spot. Being able to verify that information from a random object that is in another part of the world in the hands of a person you have never met can be extremely valuable.
I also noticed VSR just blurs some things which I actually dont find more pleasing to look at like for example ur hands in motion and the rubbing alcohol text looked terrible for me to read. The text on the alcohol bottle was smoother but I wouldn't call it in any way easier to read. I have tested AI upscaling images in an attempt to read text before. Smoother does not mean easier to read it just smoother text. I have also tested AI upscaling video in the past and came to the same conclusion blurring or smoothing does not necessarily look better even with sharper edges at least not to me. I also did noticed some strange things happening on the streamers face and eyes in some scenes which looked terrible compared to the original stream.
But also does this feature effect local media like video being played in VLC? You made no mention as to if this VSR only works on streaming media or if VSR also works on local media.
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I still dont like DLSS as it may look better now or not be broken (not sure about 3.0) but it still looks significantly different than the source material. And I buy games to play the games as they were imagined and designed not upscaled. Looking at the overhead alone of VSR tech using more bandwidth is definitely better for me, well 1 I use Firefox and 2 an AMD GPU but I watch multiple streams while gaming or 3D modeling or video editing or even watching YT so this tech is def a no go with that insane overhead. Just watching 1 stream or YT video while multi taking is already a no go but the GPU is already bottle necking at just 2-3 streams with out even multitasking. It cost significantly less performance to just use more bandwidth.
I noticed on the CPU scene in the video that VSR removed the scratches from the CPU's IHS. This is exactly why I dont like things like this. A lot of information can be gained from an object or videos imperfections like for example watching a tear down and noticing every object of this type you have seen has had the same scratch or damage in the exact same spot. Being able to verify that information from a random object that is in another part of the world in the hands of a person you have never met can be extremely valuable.
I also noticed VSR just blurs some things which I actually dont find more pleasing to look at like for example ur hands in motion and the rubbing alcohol text looked terrible for me to read. The text on the alcohol bottle was smoother but I wouldn't call it in any way easier to read. I have tested AI upscaling images in an attempt to read text before. Smoother does not mean easier to read it just smoother text. I have also tested AI upscaling video in the past and came to the same conclusion blurring or smoothing does not necessarily look better even with sharper edges at least not to me. I also did noticed some strange things happening on the streamers face and eyes in some scenes which looked terrible compared to the original stream.
But also does this feature effect local media like video being played in VLC? You made no mention as to if this VSR only works on streaming media or if VSR also works on local media.
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Jax
Oh wow the pantheon gods of Nvidia have blessed us with a technology that solves a problem that nobody really cares about. this isn't actually anything new have people never heard of DSP's? like they work pretty well. I am not impressed with the bone NVidia are trying to chuck me and neither should anybody else, this is just them trying win people over as PR move. They had good image scaling on the ps3 for media playback if anybody can actually remember that far back and it was doing the the same stuff back them, I know this cause I use to stream almost everything to my ps3 from my pc because of the built-in upscaling used. this is just them reinventing the wheel and acting like they came up with a new thing all together, Just ridiculous.
People just buy a sub 20inch 4k screen if this kind of thing bothers you that much and you want a simple solution, Don't be like the meme people being like oh look at that! while pointing to the sky with a look of amazement. cause all this is a sloppy fast food version of something we have already have and have done better too and for years now. I don't get where everyone has been for the last 2 decades watching this cause you all sound like you have been living under a rock here.
EDIT: Also for the record not hating on GN, not in the slightest you are all cool. just stating my views on the topic at hand cause I have a broad enough perspective to see this in another light being why.
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Oh wow the pantheon gods of Nvidia have blessed us with a technology that solves a problem that nobody really cares about. this isn't actually anything new have people never heard of DSP's? like they work pretty well. I am not impressed with the bone NVidia are trying to chuck me and neither should anybody else, this is just them trying win people over as PR move. They had good image scaling on the ps3 for media playback if anybody can actually remember that far back and it was doing the the same stuff back them, I know this cause I use to stream almost everything to my ps3 from my pc because of the built-in upscaling used. this is just them reinventing the wheel and acting like they came up with a new thing all together, Just ridiculous.
People just buy a sub 20inch 4k screen if this kind of thing bothers you that much and you want a simple solution, Don't be like the meme people being like oh look at that! while pointing to the sky with a look of amazement. cause all this is a sloppy fast food version of something we have already have and have done better too and for years now. I don't get where everyone has been for the last 2 decades watching this cause you all sound like you have been living under a rock here.
EDIT: Also for the record not hating on GN, not in the slightest you are all cool. just stating my views on the topic at hand cause I have a broad enough perspective to see this in another light being why.
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msclrhd
For the pixel art games shown, the RTX VSR version has a darker band in the middle of the pixels compared to the solid blocks on the 4K version. To me, those look worse than just watching the lower resolution versions. -- This looks to be an effect of it including the compression artefacts in the upscaling, so it is picking up some of that darker noise in the image.
It may do better in vector graphics/line based games and animations where it has a better chance of smoothing out the lines. The current iteration will probably mess up the solid colours of the images, though, like it does in the pixel art games.
This makes me wonder if it will mess up anti-aliasing (including sub-pixel AA supported by fonts), dithering, motion blur, and other effects that are used in various games/applications to provide a better perceived quality. For example, sharpening the text in background objects that are blurrry due to being out of focus would produce a disconnect between the text and object.
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For the pixel art games shown, the RTX VSR version has a darker band in the middle of the pixels compared to the solid blocks on the 4K version. To me, those look worse than just watching the lower resolution versions. -- This looks to be an effect of it including the compression artefacts in the upscaling, so it is picking up some of that darker noise in the image.
It may do better in vector graphics/line based games and animations where it has a better chance of smoothing out the lines. The current iteration will probably mess up the solid colours of the images, though, like it does in the pixel art games.
This makes me wonder if it will mess up anti-aliasing (including sub-pixel AA supported by fonts), dithering, motion blur, and other effects that are used in various games/applications to provide a better perceived quality. For example, sharpening the text in background objects that are blurrry due to being out of focus would produce a disconnect between the text and object.
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JoeTuber
It almost as if they upscaled, then applied bilinear horizontal/vertical blur filter to image then did same with original but using skew filter substracted difference of two results and added to original frame. Then sharpen edges that might turn every line that is not horizontal/vertical to be more smooth while same time making all sharper. If you apply filtering from couple diferent angles than 45' like 30,60' get more soft curves. That might im guessing be way they achieved that. Iwould do that without fancy technology - obviously to have results would have to divide every pixel into smaller chunks / subpisels first then apply couple filters to it, then downscale. And do it 60 times / second :) Upscaling skew filtering downscaling - mine guess of simplest thing you could do then add some fancy marketing ont top of that technology . Nevertheless impressive.
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It almost as if they upscaled, then applied bilinear horizontal/vertical blur filter to image then did same with original but using skew filter substracted difference of two results and added to original frame. Then sharpen edges that might turn every line that is not horizontal/vertical to be more smooth while same time making all sharper. If you apply filtering from couple diferent angles than 45' like 30,60' get more soft curves. That might im guessing be way they achieved that. Iwould do that without fancy technology - obviously to have results would have to divide every pixel into smaller chunks / subpisels first then apply couple filters to it, then downscale. And do it 60 times / second :) Upscaling skew filtering downscaling - mine guess of simplest thing you could do then add some fancy marketing ont top of that technology . Nevertheless impressive.
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Axeia
I'll be honest in the blind tests I could have gone for either side up till it showing Azmodan, he looked liked he got a skin smoothing filter with it on (similar to what smartphones do to beautify or just clean up a crap quality camera).
Watching the rest of the video and the zoomed in views - seems like it mostly makes a difference for text and removing minor artifacting. I imagine it would quite well for really low source resolution/quality input with sharp contrasting edges like VSR-era anime. tbh I expected more knowing how well some video upscalers can work and DLSS doing some impressive work as well.
At least I don't feel like I'm missing out on something as I'm with team red at the moment.
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I'll be honest in the blind tests I could have gone for either side up till it showing Azmodan, he looked liked he got a skin smoothing filter with it on (similar to what smartphones do to beautify or just clean up a crap quality camera).
Watching the rest of the video and the zoomed in views - seems like it mostly makes a difference for text and removing minor artifacting. I imagine it would quite well for really low source resolution/quality input with sharp contrasting edges like VSR-era anime. tbh I expected more knowing how well some video upscalers can work and DLSS doing some impressive work as well.
At least I don't feel like I'm missing out on something as I'm with team red at the moment.
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Jamie
This is a really interesting bit of tech. There s an interesting accessibility angle to it too.
I have a mild vision impairment where there s a grainy sandpaper like texture over what I see. It breaks up the edges of text and details.
Essentially, the more image detail I start with, the more gets past the texture and more I can see.
I m excited to give this a go and see if it helps.
Another angle could be smart colour and contrast adjustment. If I could tell it about my vision, perhaps it could do something clever to adjust the upscaling to better meet my needs.
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This is a really interesting bit of tech. There s an interesting accessibility angle to it too.
I have a mild vision impairment where there s a grainy sandpaper like texture over what I see. It breaks up the edges of text and details.
Essentially, the more image detail I start with, the more gets past the texture and more I can see.
I m excited to give this a go and see if it helps.
Another angle could be smart colour and contrast adjustment. If I could tell it about my vision, perhaps it could do something clever to adjust the upscaling to better meet my needs.
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Graeme
Yes, I identified correctly but it took until one of the last clips until I was sure.
The VSR clip did seem sharper in some cases and there was some artefacts that looked like compression artefacts that seemed to be removed on the left feed. This removal of artefacts is what made me believe it was the left side with VSR.
Like some others, I'm impressed at the improvement on such an early release. I don't personally need this, I'm lucky to have a good internet service. However, I have friends who don't and they'll benefit from this tech.
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Yes, I identified correctly but it took until one of the last clips until I was sure.
The VSR clip did seem sharper in some cases and there was some artefacts that looked like compression artefacts that seemed to be removed on the left feed. This removal of artefacts is what made me believe it was the left side with VSR.
Like some others, I'm impressed at the improvement on such an early release. I don't personally need this, I'm lucky to have a good internet service. However, I have friends who don't and they'll benefit from this tech.
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qlum
Would be interesting to see a comparison against FSR1.
FSR1 may not be intended to deal with compression but can still specifically improve gameplay streams.
As for actually using it, you can when using linux. You basically need to run a browser window in Vavle's Gamescope at a lower resolution and upscale that using fsr. There may be other ways but that is what I used to try it out, it does actually seem to be an improvement over not using it on something like twitch
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Would be interesting to see a comparison against FSR1.
FSR1 may not be intended to deal with compression but can still specifically improve gameplay streams.
As for actually using it, you can when using linux. You basically need to run a browser window in Vavle's Gamescope at a lower resolution and upscale that using fsr. There may be other ways but that is what I used to try it out, it does actually seem to be an improvement over not using it on something like twitch
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Ano
I prefer VSR, at least from what I've seen so far. In games the biggest difference showed up for effects. In the Elden Ring video, the blue translucent-ish sword looked sharper. Same goes for the phoenix taking off, especially the fire particles around it.
I'm more interested in how good it's going to be when watching older anime, movies, etc. since those can be pretty bad. Looking forward to an AMD equivalent.
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I prefer VSR, at least from what I've seen so far. In games the biggest difference showed up for effects. In the Elden Ring video, the blue translucent-ish sword looked sharper. Same goes for the phoenix taking off, especially the fire particles around it.
I'm more interested in how good it's going to be when watching older anime, movies, etc. since those can be pretty bad. Looking forward to an AMD equivalent.
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flameshana9
We still need a comparison to how the Shield upscales. Is it better; is it worse?
The reason being that everyone says the Shield scaling IS very good, whereas this one is barely any better than basic bilinear. This would help prove if everyone who bought a Shield was simply desperate to justify their purchase. And of course if it is better then it begs the question why they didn't use that tech instead.
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We still need a comparison to how the Shield upscales. Is it better; is it worse?
The reason being that everyone says the Shield scaling IS very good, whereas this one is barely any better than basic bilinear. This would help prove if everyone who bought a Shield was simply desperate to justify their purchase. And of course if it is better then it begs the question why they didn't use that tech instead.
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owlmostdead
Kind if weird timing with AV1 taking off right know, I think this might be another DOA tech like fake frame generation. With AV1 in the picture I can only see very niche environments benefitting from this, if it even works that is.
Edit: Ok, after watching a bit more it might be a little useful for non resolution matched content, (720p video on 1080p monitor), I guess that's something
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Kind if weird timing with AV1 taking off right know, I think this might be another DOA tech like fake frame generation. With AV1 in the picture I can only see very niche environments benefitting from this, if it even works that is.
Edit: Ok, after watching a bit more it might be a little useful for non resolution matched content, (720p video on 1080p monitor), I guess that's something
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SWISS1337
I didn't get a chance to guess, shouldn't have watched whilst at work, but I did think left momentarily before you said it, because in dead space, the detail on his back is much sharper. Also I think it's noticeable zoomed out. I have always been a stickler for noise in images, and at full speed zoomed out, it definitely looked sharper to me.
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I didn't get a chance to guess, shouldn't have watched whilst at work, but I did think left momentarily before you said it, because in dead space, the detail on his back is much sharper. Also I think it's noticeable zoomed out. I have always been a stickler for noise in images, and at full speed zoomed out, it definitely looked sharper to me.
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Jacob
I was correct but only because I could tell where it was basically smoothing the blocking in the darkness in elden ring, e.g underneath the enemies shield in the elden ring footage, and a slight reduction in artefacts in motion in Stardew valley. I think the low bitrate colour blocking and artefacting is the most effective use of this IMO.
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I was correct but only because I could tell where it was basically smoothing the blocking in the darkness in elden ring, e.g underneath the enemies shield in the elden ring footage, and a slight reduction in artefacts in motion in Stardew valley. I think the low bitrate colour blocking and artefacting is the most effective use of this IMO.
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Tom
i did get the VSR on/off the right way round, but the difference is obvs nothing game changing - also the idea that youd clarify an image that couldnt be streamed at sufficient quality seems like an empty target market. You have a 30/40 series gpu but cant stream at 1080+? maybe im wrong. Seems like filling a spec sheet for marketing to me.
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i did get the VSR on/off the right way round, but the difference is obvs nothing game changing - also the idea that youd clarify an image that couldnt be streamed at sufficient quality seems like an empty target market. You have a 30/40 series gpu but cant stream at 1080+? maybe im wrong. Seems like filling a spec sheet for marketing to me.
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xybp942
Surprised not to see power usage data... that's the biggest change in my eyes considering the cost of electricity in Europe right now. I saw 100-150W on my 3090 with VSR enabled (setting 3 - 4 respectively).
BTW can you do a video about Honeywell PTM 7950 in laptops? It's actually a wonder TIM and more people need to know about it
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Surprised not to see power usage data... that's the biggest change in my eyes considering the cost of electricity in Europe right now. I saw 100-150W on my 3090 with VSR enabled (setting 3 - 4 respectively).
BTW can you do a video about Honeywell PTM 7950 in laptops? It's actually a wonder TIM and more people need to know about it
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