Can someone technically competent please explain to all of us why doesn’t AMD attack the “elephant in the room”, give it priority and close the gap vs. Nvidia?
By this, I specifically mean the quality of its upscaling technology. Let’s make a quick list of the competitive landscape:
Rasterization performance per dollar: Pricing is within AMD’s control, and due its lower market share and slower inventory rotation, there are usually better offers at retail level too. Across the board, AMD cards tend to offer 10-15% better rasterization performance compared to their direct Nvidia equivalent. However, should it choose to, Nvidia can easily close the gap with refreshes on its 4060/4070/4080 lines. AMD could release a hypothetical 7750/7850/7950 refresh, but their higher power consumption may cripple their headroom. This is a dangerous game to play for AMD and continuously selling their latest cards at a discount is not sustainable.
VRAM: AMD cards offer higher VRAM than their Nvidia equivalents. This has a largely psychological effect of buyers feeling that higher VRAM will offer superior “future proofing”. Whether or not this will be true depends on how fast will games demand higher requirements and the timing of the users’ next GPU upgrade. However, this “AMD advantage” is fleeting - all Nvidia needs to do is release a refreshed line with higher VRAM. Imagine a 16GB “4070 Ti Super” with less than 5% rasterization gap from a 7900XT but with DLSS3.5 and a 20% uplift on RT/PT.
Ray tracing: Nvidia is ahead by at least one generation in hardware accelerated ray tracing and there is nothing AMD can do to improve RT rendering with its current generation of hardware. But it has one thing to its advantage: time. Current consoles are in their early years and game developers will not go “all in” with RT tech. For the next years, heavy hardware-based RT will be a niche market for a small number of games for PC gamers. This gives AMD some time to catch up - rasterization is most definitely not dead, and will not be so for at least the next 3 to 5 years. Nvidia fans are disappointed that developers (most using UE5) are relying on software-based Lumen and other features instead of pushing on the hardware side. There is a reason for this - developers are rational people - they want their games to run well on consoles and most mid-range PCs, and they don’t want their buyers to feel they are “missing out” - which is exactly what will happen if they go “all in” like AW2 and CB2077 did - both bankrolled by Nvidia cash. Ray Reconstruction is intrinsically linked to the adoption of ray tracing so no further comment there.
Frame generation: Let’s make a clear separation between upscaling and frame generation. They are different things. The frame generation component of FSR3 has one big issue and that is VRR support. This will undoubtedly be fixed as already announced by AMD. Aside from this, the FG component of FSR3 seems to be a robust technology that is remarkably close to Nvidia’s Frame Generation tech, with the extra bonus of being hardware agnostic. I’m also assuming Anti Lag + will be fixed and re-released by the end of the year. The main issue is that games need to be running at 60-70fps before enabling FG, which may be hard without also enabling upscaling. And you cannot use FSR3 without also using FSR upscaling. Which brings us to the final and most pivotal point.
Upscaling tech: Here we are, to the elephant in the room. FSR2.2 upscaling quality is objectively and undeniably worse than DLSS2 and XeSS 1.2. The performance uplift is similar to Nvidia’s and better than Intel’s, but this does not matter. The Image Quality (IQ) downside is too big, particularly with in-motion shimmering and other types of artefacts. I can live with different sharpening levels and I am glad that Native AA in FSR3 can compete with DLAA. But I cannot live with the motion artefacts…there are too many games and too many examples and this is not some “Nvidia evil plan”. I am a big fan of AMD and I’ve been sporting Radeons in my systems since my Radeon 9800 Pro in 2004. But the IQ penalty has become unacceptable. I did not buy an $800 card to play like this.
AMD’s FSR upscaling tech needs improvements - and fast. This is their Achilles’ heel. Running games natively at higher than 60fps is already difficult, and will become more so as additional UE5 games are released.
Want to hit 60fps with a low-to-mid range card? Enable upscaling.
Want to hit 100+fps reliable? Enable upscaling.
Want to hit 100+fps with a low-to-mid range card? Enable upscaling to hit 60fps and then FG on top.
Want to enjoy mid to high quality RT features? Enable upscaling, with FG on top depending on your GPU.
Upscaling is already ubiquitous, and underpins all the other technologies: Frame Generation, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing.
…and FSR2.2 is just poor. You can’t blame it on hardware, as XeSS offers objectively better quality on AMD cards. So AMD can and must improve it with urgency.
Does it needs to completely re-work FSR tech? Does it need to scrap it and copy XeSS? Does it need to offer less of a performance uplift and more quality? Does it need an Ultra Quality setting? I doubt it, as Native AA (i.e. sharpening without upscaling) does not remove the shimmering. Does it need to de-couple FSR from frame generation, so that we can use XeSS + FSR FG? I don’t know, this is why we need some expert insight.
What I know is that USPCALING QUALITY has become -the- critical factor, and Nvidia’s DLSS is its MAIN advantage nowadays - not raytracing.
Hi guys
Can someone technically competent please explain to all of us why doesn’t AMD attack the “elephant in the room”, give it priority and close the gap vs. Nvidia?
By this, I specifically mean the quality of its upscaling technology. Let’s make a quick list of the competitive landscape:
AMD’s FSR upscaling tech needs improvements - and fast. This is their Achilles’ heel. Running games natively at higher than 60fps is already difficult, and will become more so as additional UE5 games are released.
Want to hit 60fps with a low-to-mid range card? Enable upscaling.
Want to hit 100+fps reliable? Enable upscaling.
Want to hit 100+fps with a low-to-mid range card? Enable upscaling to hit 60fps and then FG on top.
Want to enjoy mid to high quality RT features? Enable upscaling, with FG on top depending on your GPU.
Upscaling is already ubiquitous, and underpins all the other technologies: Frame Generation, Ray Tracing and Path Tracing.
…and FSR2.2 is just poor. You can’t blame it on hardware, as XeSS offers objectively better quality on AMD cards. So AMD can and must improve it with urgency.
Does it needs to completely re-work FSR tech? Does it need to scrap it and copy XeSS? Does it need to offer less of a performance uplift and more quality? Does it need an Ultra Quality setting? I doubt it, as Native AA (i.e. sharpening without upscaling) does not remove the shimmering. Does it need to de-couple FSR from frame generation, so that we can use XeSS + FSR FG? I don’t know, this is why we need some expert insight.
What I know is that USPCALING QUALITY has become -the- critical factor, and Nvidia’s DLSS is its MAIN advantage nowadays - not raytracing.