Fake Frame Image Quality: DLSS 4, MFG 4X, & NVIDIA Transformer Model Comparison
video description
Date: 2025-02-27
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 20
Snotnarok
This is so frustrating.
I prefer sharp images, even if it means turning off AA completely. I don't care about pixelation- I'm used to seeing that. What I never liked was N64's blurry bilinear filtering that is smeared over all textures and the AA solution as well. It just made games look way, way too soft.
So we push on and now we're back at square one, TAA bluring everything from textures to edges and smearing everything and DLSS/FSR/Etc not doing much better but being required because all these new rendering options look like butt without AA to mask the low-res/dithered shadows/reflections etc.
I also hate input lag, and frame gen becoming this focus that devs seem to like- to the point Monster Hunter Wilds has it in their recommended system requirements to get 60fps is infuriating.
I don't get why devs are overcomplicating all this stuff. Why are we simulating light in real time Why are we going ham with simulating hair to the point it needs AA to make it look normal
So many things from the PS4 days like Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World, Uncharted, etc all look great and don't lean on these new techniques that hurt the overall image quality. Games that looked great on the hardware they were made for but look and run even better on PC.
But nope, gotta simulate light in real time because that will somehow change how games look for the better vs an artist sculpting the scene they want and lighting it in a particular way.
reply
This is so frustrating.
I prefer sharp images, even if it means turning off AA completely. I don't care about pixelation- I'm used to seeing that. What I never liked was N64's blurry bilinear filtering that is smeared over all textures and the AA solution as well. It just made games look way, way too soft.
So we push on and now we're back at square one, TAA bluring everything from textures to edges and smearing everything and DLSS/FSR/Etc not doing much better but being required because all these new rendering options look like butt without AA to mask the low-res/dithered shadows/reflections etc.
I also hate input lag, and frame gen becoming this focus that devs seem to like- to the point Monster Hunter Wilds has it in their recommended system requirements to get 60fps is infuriating.
I don't get why devs are overcomplicating all this stuff. Why are we simulating light in real time Why are we going ham with simulating hair to the point it needs AA to make it look normal
So many things from the PS4 days like Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World, Uncharted, etc all look great and don't lean on these new techniques that hurt the overall image quality. Games that looked great on the hardware they were made for but look and run even better on PC.
But nope, gotta simulate light in real time because that will somehow change how games look for the better vs an artist sculpting the scene they want and lighting it in a particular way.
reply
TheOnlyHiro
Great stuff. Honestly don't hate the technology, it definitely has utility. But like most new technology these game devs are using it as a crutch in a lot of cases for shit optimization, shortcuts and misleading performance. That should not happen.
I have had no issues using frame Gen as more of a buffer for inconsistency. Especially in older games where performance may not have anything to do with raw power at all.
Like running a 2k mod Skyrim with distant 3d lods, full real time shadows and cascading shadows, a new physics engine... Basically shoe horning 10 years of game design into a brick.
It's cool, but there's no situation where that engine was designed for that. Lots of combinations of SR, fg, mfg can all be useful and practical tools with great outcomes. But it was like handing a monkey a knife, now devs use the knife for everything from picking their noses to shaving. Bad faith use of the technology. Nvidia doesn't care, they'll improve it, but ultimately they just want more money.
reply
Great stuff. Honestly don't hate the technology, it definitely has utility. But like most new technology these game devs are using it as a crutch in a lot of cases for shit optimization, shortcuts and misleading performance. That should not happen.
I have had no issues using frame Gen as more of a buffer for inconsistency. Especially in older games where performance may not have anything to do with raw power at all.
Like running a 2k mod Skyrim with distant 3d lods, full real time shadows and cascading shadows, a new physics engine... Basically shoe horning 10 years of game design into a brick.
It's cool, but there's no situation where that engine was designed for that. Lots of combinations of SR, fg, mfg can all be useful and practical tools with great outcomes. But it was like handing a monkey a knife, now devs use the knife for everything from picking their noses to shaving. Bad faith use of the technology. Nvidia doesn't care, they'll improve it, but ultimately they just want more money.
reply
Doomguy-777
I suspect the problem is not even comparing a given game DLSS ON/OFF, since those are built from the ground up with DLSS/Temporal, FG/MFG and RTX in mind to begin with and start breaking when these options are turned off. So that's not a fair comparison, especially with Cyberpunk 2077 which is completely optimized by Nvidia given how bad this game was made. Make the same game with SMAA and to look natively good and you'll have a better result but yes, it will also cost more performance in general (except TAA, temporal anything is atrociously bad on performance for basically no improvement). The trick Nvidia and devs are puling on us is not those native vs AI comparison images. It's rigged from the start, they expect you to compare it like this and then claim See, even native looks less detailed now. Use upscalign instead. No! The game is natively less detailed to begin with and again, made to work with these AI tools. That's the problem.
reply
I suspect the problem is not even comparing a given game DLSS ON/OFF, since those are built from the ground up with DLSS/Temporal, FG/MFG and RTX in mind to begin with and start breaking when these options are turned off. So that's not a fair comparison, especially with Cyberpunk 2077 which is completely optimized by Nvidia given how bad this game was made. Make the same game with SMAA and to look natively good and you'll have a better result but yes, it will also cost more performance in general (except TAA, temporal anything is atrociously bad on performance for basically no improvement). The trick Nvidia and devs are puling on us is not those native vs AI comparison images. It's rigged from the start, they expect you to compare it like this and then claim See, even native looks less detailed now. Use upscalign instead. No! The game is natively less detailed to begin with and again, made to work with these AI tools. That's the problem.
reply
TheGaluMoD
Regarding the TAA thing: I'm so sick of people who don't know the first thing about rendering complaining about TAA. (Not talking about GN, they don't seem to have a strong stance on this). Like it or not, TAA is vital to a lot of the rendering makeup of most games with deferred rendering, i.e. pretty much any modern big-studio game outside of Nintendo. Capcom is insane enough to let you toggle it off in some Resident Evil games, and you can see what it does. Hair looks god-awful without it and there are a bunch of other downsides as-well.
So yeah, everyone on that subreddit mentioned should maybe do some research. Bad TAA implementations suck, which is why image reconstruction is a godsend in those titles, but TAA=bad is not a particularly discerning take.
reply
Regarding the TAA thing: I'm so sick of people who don't know the first thing about rendering complaining about TAA. (Not talking about GN, they don't seem to have a strong stance on this). Like it or not, TAA is vital to a lot of the rendering makeup of most games with deferred rendering, i.e. pretty much any modern big-studio game outside of Nintendo. Capcom is insane enough to let you toggle it off in some Resident Evil games, and you can see what it does. Hair looks god-awful without it and there are a bunch of other downsides as-well.
So yeah, everyone on that subreddit mentioned should maybe do some research. Bad TAA implementations suck, which is why image reconstruction is a godsend in those titles, but TAA=bad is not a particularly discerning take.
reply
ailithtwinning6806
presently got an AMD and won't be buying for 3-5 years judging from past history so I have no investment here - but I'm gonna say I can't tell the difference in moving scenes. During the highlights very easy to tell, reinforcing the differences and focusing on smaller areas makes them really really pop - but I personally don't end up actually seeing that much in the running scenes in practice, or at all if only looking at one clip at a time instead of the side by side.
Granted my eyesight is kinda bad even with glasses, it's a yt video, and also I prolly have lower standards than someone who generally buys top end GPUs. So, I can imagine there are quite a few people who do notice in practice even if I do not.
reply
presently got an AMD and won't be buying for 3-5 years judging from past history so I have no investment here - but I'm gonna say I can't tell the difference in moving scenes. During the highlights very easy to tell, reinforcing the differences and focusing on smaller areas makes them really really pop - but I personally don't end up actually seeing that much in the running scenes in practice, or at all if only looking at one clip at a time instead of the side by side.
Granted my eyesight is kinda bad even with glasses, it's a yt video, and also I prolly have lower standards than someone who generally buys top end GPUs. So, I can imagine there are quite a few people who do notice in practice even if I do not.
reply
gamersnexus
Very good technical review. By other hand, I see that the PC Gaming is becoming a very complex platform and after people say that Linux is difficult.
I think that is time to stop buying discrete GPUs, triple A games and big double A games. My next computer will have only a Ryzen 7 APU from AMD. Thanks to digital platforms, you have tons of old and very good games and you have emulation and some very good libre software games. If you mount it well, you have thousands of hours of fun with just an AMD APU. You don't need to spend thousands of euros/dollars to get a good PC for gaming if you are looking for a good level of gameplay instead of graphics.
reply
Very good technical review. By other hand, I see that the PC Gaming is becoming a very complex platform and after people say that Linux is difficult.
I think that is time to stop buying discrete GPUs, triple A games and big double A games. My next computer will have only a Ryzen 7 APU from AMD. Thanks to digital platforms, you have tons of old and very good games and you have emulation and some very good libre software games. If you mount it well, you have thousands of hours of fun with just an AMD APU. You don't need to spend thousands of euros/dollars to get a good PC for gaming if you are looking for a good level of gameplay instead of graphics.
reply
pbkillstrike
Haven't finished watching the video yet, but I feel like comparing frame generation at such a low framerate isn't the best use case scenario. Latency aside, the artifacts would be reduced with a higher base framerate (though highly dynamic scenes might still be an issue.) a base of 30 seems okay with slower scenes like in Walk and Talk sections.
It would also be good if the UI was decoupled from frame generation in the future, just like how DLSS / in engine CAS is. Not sure why it currently applies to the full output image other than engines not being able to render different elements are different framerates right now.
reply
Haven't finished watching the video yet, but I feel like comparing frame generation at such a low framerate isn't the best use case scenario. Latency aside, the artifacts would be reduced with a higher base framerate (though highly dynamic scenes might still be an issue.) a base of 30 seems okay with slower scenes like in Walk and Talk sections.
It would also be good if the UI was decoupled from frame generation in the future, just like how DLSS / in engine CAS is. Not sure why it currently applies to the full output image other than engines not being able to render different elements are different framerates right now.
reply
Zerod-rn3ye
Forced TAA in Cyberpunk 2077 and the dev team refusing to fix it is pretty much par for the course for them. If you so much as mention first person or NG features in their Steam discussion forum it is an instant thread lock and often leads to a ban as they have zero tolerance for many types of suggestions/improvements. Yes, this is their dev team not Steam mods doing this and they're quite open about the matter on there. They do the same on their own site's forum, too. They're highly intolerant to many fixes/ideas, too. It is a weird situation I've not seen to this degree from a developer before.
reply
Forced TAA in Cyberpunk 2077 and the dev team refusing to fix it is pretty much par for the course for them. If you so much as mention first person or NG features in their Steam discussion forum it is an instant thread lock and often leads to a ban as they have zero tolerance for many types of suggestions/improvements. Yes, this is their dev team not Steam mods doing this and they're quite open about the matter on there. They do the same on their own site's forum, too. They're highly intolerant to many fixes/ideas, too. It is a weird situation I've not seen to this degree from a developer before.
reply
djicode5146
Finally able to finish watching this excellent video. The UI issue is interesting because it generally runs on a separate thread or layer. I think the issues are with the UI opacity as you could exclude the UI layer from DLSS, Frame Generation etc, but you would not get the effect of objects moving behind the UI like in native. They could give the option of ignoring Frame Generation on UI layers but that also kills some of the immersion as the UI layer would become static, but there would be no more ghosting on the UI.
reply
Finally able to finish watching this excellent video. The UI issue is interesting because it generally runs on a separate thread or layer. I think the issues are with the UI opacity as you could exclude the UI layer from DLSS, Frame Generation etc, but you would not get the effect of objects moving behind the UI like in native. They could give the option of ignoring Frame Generation on UI layers but that also kills some of the immersion as the UI layer would become static, but there would be no more ghosting on the UI.
reply
Carstuff111
Personally, I think we need to do away with the image smearing upscalling garbage, and go back to proper performance, and WITHOUT the insane power draw. If they would stop focusing on Ai gimmicks, and they still want to stick to 600 watt power draw, we could have insanely smoking fast graphics cards in raw rasterization, and could have taken a better route with ray tracing as well. But no, instead, we get a focus on image ruining garbage to fake performance while still pulling 600 watts.
reply
Personally, I think we need to do away with the image smearing upscalling garbage, and go back to proper performance, and WITHOUT the insane power draw. If they would stop focusing on Ai gimmicks, and they still want to stick to 600 watt power draw, we could have insanely smoking fast graphics cards in raw rasterization, and could have taken a better route with ray tracing as well. But no, instead, we get a focus on image ruining garbage to fake performance while still pulling 600 watts.
reply
WillbanksHeight
The materials used are top notch. The leather feels soft and luxurious, exactly like the real thing. The stitching is impeccable, with no loose or uneven lines. The hardware (including the iconic CC twist lock clasp) is durable, well made, and adds to the overall elegance of the bag kislux . I thought everyone who owned an LV monogram bag knew that it was obviously coated canvas When people spend a fortune on an expensive bag, they might as well buy a replica
reply
The materials used are top notch. The leather feels soft and luxurious, exactly like the real thing. The stitching is impeccable, with no loose or uneven lines. The hardware (including the iconic CC twist lock clasp) is durable, well made, and adds to the overall elegance of the bag kislux . I thought everyone who owned an LV monogram bag knew that it was obviously coated canvas When people spend a fortune on an expensive bag, they might as well buy a replica
reply
marksherman6584
Your conclusion discussion makes me wonder what the VRAM impact of these models is. As the models get bigger and more sophisticated they must be demanding more memory, which Nvidia has been notoriously stingy with. The 30 series is still powerful and does great with AI workloads until you overstretch their modest VRAM. I don't know the details of the models, but I do know transformer architecture is much more memory-intensive than most others
reply
Your conclusion discussion makes me wonder what the VRAM impact of these models is. As the models get bigger and more sophisticated they must be demanding more memory, which Nvidia has been notoriously stingy with. The 30 series is still powerful and does great with AI workloads until you overstretch their modest VRAM. I don't know the details of the models, but I do know transformer architecture is much more memory-intensive than most others
reply
RauliKarlmats
I bought a canvas LV bag with my first bonus and within 2 years the purse was cracked/broken in multiple places and the store refused to repair or replace it. I don't know what resale value this crap has. I ended up donating it... well maybe I could buy a fake LV from kislux but these designers/robber barons don't even think about taking a dime from me. This one satisfies my fantasy of many authentic products and I can afford to buy them.
reply
I bought a canvas LV bag with my first bonus and within 2 years the purse was cracked/broken in multiple places and the store refused to repair or replace it. I don't know what resale value this crap has. I ended up donating it... well maybe I could buy a fake LV from kislux but these designers/robber barons don't even think about taking a dime from me. This one satisfies my fantasy of many authentic products and I can afford to buy them.
reply
johnanon6938
I don't use old DLSS and seeing this I will never use the new DLSS, shows how badly cornered Nvidia is to figure out how to make better GPUs. No one wants an update that adds more ghosting, smudging, creates more artifacts and makes thin lines blink in/out of existence. But then I don't have nvidia app (or old geforce) installed just use gameready driver and optimized global settings in nvidia control panel for best appearance and FPS.
reply
I don't use old DLSS and seeing this I will never use the new DLSS, shows how badly cornered Nvidia is to figure out how to make better GPUs. No one wants an update that adds more ghosting, smudging, creates more artifacts and makes thin lines blink in/out of existence. But then I don't have nvidia app (or old geforce) installed just use gameready driver and optimized global settings in nvidia control panel for best appearance and FPS.
reply
Diacena
hi, would you be willing to make a video compairing 5090 4x fake frames image quality and framerate at high ingame quality vs 4090 native, framerate and image quality at medium ingame quality i feel this aproach wasn't considered and would be a big point to make , would also be curious how a 5090 4x fake frames hight quality 4k compares to 4090 native medium quality upscaled from 2k or 1k , thank you
reply
hi, would you be willing to make a video compairing 5090 4x fake frames image quality and framerate at high ingame quality vs 4090 native, framerate and image quality at medium ingame quality i feel this aproach wasn't considered and would be a big point to make , would also be curious how a 5090 4x fake frames hight quality 4k compares to 4090 native medium quality upscaled from 2k or 1k , thank you
reply
shibbe1
12VHP Cables: Abused by out of spec amps / bad load distribution.
Frames: Made up.
Prices: Fan fiction.
Supply: Does not exist.
Generational Advantage: Only for Nvidias Cashflow.
Frames per $ and Power Draw per Frame: Very little improvement.
Scalpers: Alive and well.
Power connector / Shunt design: Worse than 2 Generations ago.
Nvidia, please do better.
reply
12VHP Cables: Abused by out of spec amps / bad load distribution.
Frames: Made up.
Prices: Fan fiction.
Supply: Does not exist.
Generational Advantage: Only for Nvidias Cashflow.
Frames per $ and Power Draw per Frame: Very little improvement.
Scalpers: Alive and well.
Power connector / Shunt design: Worse than 2 Generations ago.
Nvidia, please do better.
reply
wykydytron
Fake it till you make it...
Moment NV said dlss4 can work on 40xx series but we are not going to turn it on for 40xx says all.
They will try to force people into buying 50xx series and game devs are complicit making horrible garbage games that run in passable speed only when 4 frames are fake.
Affordable gaming is dead, NV and incompetent/bought devs are to blame.
reply
Fake it till you make it...
Moment NV said dlss4 can work on 40xx series but we are not going to turn it on for 40xx says all.
They will try to force people into buying 50xx series and game devs are complicit making horrible garbage games that run in passable speed only when 4 frames are fake.
Affordable gaming is dead, NV and incompetent/bought devs are to blame.
reply
Vape-Smurfen
I bought a frame generator on steam, lossless scaling, i use it With my 1080ti and it work just as good or just as bad as The x4 50series depending on how you look at it. Maybe you should test Thatcher to compare options to use instead of buying a new 50 series card. Could be fun to campare old card vs new card With same frame generation technology.
reply
I bought a frame generator on steam, lossless scaling, i use it With my 1080ti and it work just as good or just as bad as The x4 50series depending on how you look at it. Maybe you should test Thatcher to compare options to use instead of buying a new 50 series card. Could be fun to campare old card vs new card With same frame generation technology.
reply
Gunnberg85
I remember when we were rendering at resolutions higher-than-native (>1080p & 1440p) there by removing the need for tricks like AA. Now we can't even render native at any decent frame rate, and need tricks to upscale a lower-than-native resolution just to have a smoother experience at the cost of quality. All of this within a couple generations.
reply
I remember when we were rendering at resolutions higher-than-native (>1080p & 1440p) there by removing the need for tricks like AA. Now we can't even render native at any decent frame rate, and need tricks to upscale a lower-than-native resolution just to have a smoother experience at the cost of quality. All of this within a couple generations.
reply
napowolf
26:09 This.THIS. Such an important caveat for DLSS 4 that was sorely missed in the glaze piece from Hardware Unboxed.
Sure the new model is better, but the important context is that the new transformer model is a improvement ONLY when compared to the old model and garbage tier TAA. Nvidia is selling a solution to a problem they create.
reply
26:09 This.THIS. Such an important caveat for DLSS 4 that was sorely missed in the glaze piece from Hardware Unboxed.
Sure the new model is better, but the important context is that the new transformer model is a improvement ONLY when compared to the old model and garbage tier TAA. Nvidia is selling a solution to a problem they create.
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
