Is frame gen (DLSS, XeSS, FSR) really that bad?

[WannabeSaint]

Wagwan guys,

It's been a minute since I checked out the forums, but I had a thought cross my mind earlier today, and it got me racking my brain.

IS FRAME GEN REALLY THAT BAD?

I can't speak on that topic since I haven't used a card that has the feature (I know, but let me get my paper right,) but I wanted to know. I mean, a few extra frames on a game I want to play "smoothly" and rather "seamlessly" doesn't sound like a bad idea, maybe some input lag, but won't that be covered up by reflex (on NVIDIA cards). I have been planning on build building a new PC for a while but I don't have much doh to spend on the latest and most powerful parts in the market rn and I just want a decent PC allowing me to play most of the games I want (which aren't new titles) and allow me to emulate most of my games without stutters and performance issues.

Personally, it doesn't seem like a bad deal if you were to ask me, or am I severely uninformed and lacking knowledge in this field?

 

[algoreathor]

I happened to pick up lossless scaling on Steam about an hour ago and so far I've only played Way of the Samurai 3 and 4 but damn it's good. I came here to grab Monster Hunter 2 PS2 and I'm pretty excited to try it out.

 

[Phizar]

It depends on what you mean by bad. Some games it works pretty well; I was playing Space Marine 2 earlier today and it seemed pretty good. The possible downsides are input latency and blurry image when moving, these things seem to depend on the game though in my experience. I'd say if you can run a game without it you're better off, but having the extra frames can have a positive impact on your experience if there isn't a lot of input lag (or if input lag doesn't bother you). I'd look into it on a game by game basis.

 

[Boscobilly]

It has it's place. It really makes sense on something like Switch 2 in my opinion.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

It's AI Frame generation, as in the game engine isn't optimised and thus what you're seeing it's not competent programming. You're console is just creating fake frames in-between the actual frames the game is outputting.
Same with upscaling, it's all a subroutine. The game isn't running at 4k (2160p) it's 1080p or 1440p AI Upscaled.

Personally I dislike it, but if the Unreal Engine 5's questionable performance proves anything is that modern game dev's are lazy. They just use default settings and rely on AI Frame Gen to pick up the slack.

But if you're not the type of person who's into taking screenshots then you won't notice it, it just improves gameplay. More frames, smoother experience.

 

[Lweo4]

It depends on the game, Oblivion Remastered was the only game which I felt that frame gen was implemented correctly, it made my game go from like 28 fps to 40fps~, on a rx580, which is great when I think about it, even with the input delay, but upscaling/framegen seems to be making companies more comfortable about putting games that are unoptimized, seeing the requirements for MH Wilds and seeing that they are to run on 1080p60fps WITH framegen is jawdropping, framegen should be only usable for things like 120fps+ on 4k or something like that, I'd rather have real 60fps than fake 300fps.

I used Lossless Scaling while playing Twilight Princess. While the image felt more fluid, the input delay and artifacts when moving made it pretty jarring for me, after a while I just stopped using, if you can get past that, then it should be good for games that are locked at 30fps and can't have mods to increase fps because it's tied to things like physics.

 

[Rozekail]

It's AI Frame generation, as in the game engine isn't optimised and thus what you're seeing it's not competent programming. You're console is just creating fake frames in-between the actual frames the game is outputting.
Same with upscaling, it's all a subroutine. The game isn't running at 4k (2160p) it's 1080p or 1440p AI Upscaled.

Personally I dislike it, but if the Unreal Engine 5's questionable performance proves anything is that modern game dev's are lazy. They just use default settings and rely on AI Frame Gen to pick up the slack.

But if you're not the type of person who's into taking screenshots then you won't notice it, it just improves gameplay. More frames, smoother experience.

It definitely ISN'T the devs. It's the publishers. It's ALWAYS the publishers. Devs want you to have good, fun games that run well. They don't want to resort to shortcuts. But publishers are laying off studio after studio, then hiring tons of fresh meat and telling them they have X amount of time to get X title out the door or they get shut down. And then, to please the shareholders and executives, they lay off the devs even if they do everything the publisher wants.

Stop blaming developers, they're the ones fighting to give you something good.

 

[moonbits]

No, it's not bad. If your machine can output more than 60~70 frames per second, the frame generation actually feels really nice and smooth but if you are below that or it fluctuates severely then you will find it janky, sometimes even creating visual artifacts. The technology is in its infancy, there's more research to be done but it isn't bad, nor an indication of incompetence as some might suggest.

 

[nobitakun]

Anything that is not natively rendered by your graphic card is bad, and it will always be. It does not matter how many versions they will release of it, upscaling means you're seeing artifacts on screen, like upscaling a picture.

I don't want to use that shit because what I want is to have a crystal clear pixels on screen, does not matter the resolution. If I am playing 1080p I want the pixels to be unaltered in any way, to be as solid as a rock, I don't want any stupid hardware to wash and reorganize them "for my sake", because that's not what I want. Maybe for some people eager to play high resolutions and high framerates that could work, I prefer to see everything absolutely unaltered and the resolution to be burned on screen if I select it.

 

[Rorisu]

Wagwan guys,

It's been a minute since I checked out the forums, but I had a thought cross my mind earlier today, and it got me racking my brain.

IS FRAME GEN REALLY THAT BAD?

I can't speak on that topic since I haven't used a card that has the feature (I know, but let me get my paper right,) but I wanted to know. I mean, a few extra frames on a game I want to play "smoothly" and rather "seamlessly" doesn't sound like a bad idea, maybe some input lag, but won't that be covered up by reflex (on NVIDIA cards). I have been planning on build building a new PC for a while but I don't have much doh to spend on the latest and most powerful parts in the market rn and I just want a decent PC allowing me to play most of the games I want (which aren't new titles) and allow me to emulate most of my games without stutters and performance issues.

Personally, it doesn't seem like a bad deal if you were to ask me, or am I severely uninformed and lacking knowledge in this field?

go with a nvidia 4000 series as a gpu and you are probably ok for todays game, if you bundle it with a good cpu and a good ammount of ram, stay away from 5000 cards if you want to play retrò because last time i checked they removed a feature need for some old games (Physx for 32 bit i think it was), making some games run really bad from what i heard, aside from that, dlss is GREAT for performance when supported by the game in a good way, but framegen is another thing completely for the use i saw to it, i think it makes more frame to allow you to play smoothly at highter fps WHEN your hardware can handle it, but if you activate framegen and before activating it you got like, 50fps? it gets WORSE because the game runs well, yeah, but you get artifacts from what i saw and that ruins your game experience, so my personal advice is that you have to evaluate what you want, do you want more frame, or a bigger screen resolution? and basing yourself on that, you choose, if you want more frame to play, get a 1080p display with high refresh rate, put dlss on and framegen on and you probably get a good experience ad 120 frame if your game could handle 60 stable without framegen, if you want resolution, go for a 2k display, 4k are overrated, put dlss on, and you probably get the best performace+visual experience you can get, of course setting the dlss on balanced or quality mode

 

[Tortuga]

Yes, this garbage exist so developers could cut corners

 

[sneakyguts]

alot of artifacts

 

[NOTthatHARD]

DLSS XeSS, FSR are just a fake solution to a problem the developers themselves created, the problem being that optimizing ultra realistic graphics is very slow and expensive so they let AI do it for them.