Real-time raytracing is finally getting outside of Nvidia's castle, and while that has been making big waves, something else is brewing. Microsoft and Sony have outrageous dreams for the performance of their next-gen consoles, but as their AMD hardware doesn't seem to have Nvidia's DLSS, I see disappointment in their future.
Unless, of course, there was another way for them to process a low resolution image so that it looks respectable and increases performance? Nvidia's got their Tensor Cores, but what if an algorithm could be designed to run on AMD's stream processors with the same purpose as DLSS? Of course, this algorithm would need to be quite resource efficient so that the performance gained by the low rendering resolution isn't completely erased. Facebook's not going to be left out of the action, they've got a little thing called Neural SuperSampling in the works, which on the surface seems to be an alternative to DLSS, likely targeting Oculus. It has impressive results even on the daunting task of 16x upscaling. There are few... problems... to put it lightly. Neural SuperSampling requires an Nvidia Titan V to push 40 fps at Oculus Quest resolution, 1440 x 1600 per eye. Seems like there's still a bit of work to do, especially since the Titan V has the same Tensor cores and CUDA support that is in short supply. Back in the console field, Microsoft announced DirectML, a low-level machine learning API, which is what they will be using to compete with DLSS. Sony? Well, their PS5 is packing around 10-15% less GPU power than the Xbox Series X, but the PS5 has more dynamic frequencies for their CPU and GPU, so the 'agility' Sony's been harping on might hold some water. The Xbox Series S will only have 4 TFLOPs of shader power to output ray-traced 1440p, but maybe with a bit of magic from Microsoft the eight Zen 2 cores can pick up some slack for the GPU via machine learning? Or will they use the already limited GPU FLOPS? We shall see, but look out for an update this winter on the performance of the Series S.
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Most of know about Nvidia's new pet, RTX, even if we don't have a DirectX Raytracing-enabled card. Even for those of us lucky (or committed) enough to have a 20-series or 30-series card with RT cores, raytracing causes a massive hit to performance. Minecraft Bedrock Edition RTX is an excellent example of this. Of course, our tests will run on Firebolt, our trusty test rig packing a reference clock Nvidia 2080 Super, AMD Ryzen 7 3800X, and 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL16 driving a 1440p 144hz (unofficially) G-Sync compatible monitor. In Minecraft Bedrock we rock a stable 144fps with 32% GPU usage when raytracing is disabled, all the vanilla graphical fanciness, and a 64-chunk render distance. When we flip the DXR switch, we plummet to around 35-45fps, which is a stuttery nightmare on its own, without going in and out of FreeSync. Luckily, there is another switch in there that we should also flip, the one labelled 'Upscaling'. When you flip this, you enable DLSS 2.0, a proprietary Nvidia technology that is based on using deep learning in Nvidia's DLSS supercomputer to analyze games and determine some computationally efficient techniques that can be applied to a low resolution image to improve performance and/or visual quality without any perceptible sacrifice. Once Jensen's boys have determined what charms and enchantments will help with the game in question, DLSS is integrated into the game so that when enabled and the game is suffering from a GPU bottleneck (i.e. you aren't using an 8-year old Celeron at 1080p). When you enable this glorious countercurse to RTX's damage, Minecraft's framerate shoots up to a buttery 75-85fps and there is no perceptible change in visual quality. AMD, Sony, and Microsoft have to have something along these lines in the works for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Without some AI magic, 10-12 TFLOPS running 4K60, let alone 8K60 or 4K120, is a pipe dream at best, even with generous speculation on the performance of RDNA2. Stay tuned for updates on the game industry's upscaling wizardry, the secret weapon that makes raytracing practical.
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DanielI'm a software engineer, volunteer IT support, amateur blogger, casual gamer, and tech enthusiast. I also love cars and the great outdoors. Archives
May 2021
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