PC Pc Gaming/building thread

[dwwaino]

I promised myself off Asus this gen but man the Astral looks so good

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

My correct graphics cards is EVGA who don't even make graphics cards anymore

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

I had the opportunity to spend some time testing out the brand new DLSS 4 upscaling and frame generation technology on a PC kitted out with the new GeForce RTX 5080, running an updated build of Cyberpunk 2077 - and it's impressive. Nvidia has upgraded its super resolution upscaling and ray reconstruction technology with a new 'vision transformer' model, offering some dramatic quality upgrades, while frame generation is boosted from one interpolated frame to two - or even three. The end result is a better-looking Cyberpunk 2077 capable of running the full path-traced experience at frame-rates well, well north of 120fps.

My concern with the new frame generation technique was latency. When DLSS 3 launched, frame generation was achieved by buffering an extra frame then calculating the intermediate one. Both of these factors add latency, which was offset to a degree by the mandatory inclusion of Nvidia Reflex to claw back precious milliseconds. In the video, you'll see that I've included PC latency results - again measured by FrameView. The averages across a circa two and a half minute run through the black market work out like this: a 50.97ms average latency with a single generated frame, rising to 55.5ms with two generated frames, and 57.3ms with the full, three-frame option.


Based on this sample then, we're looking at a 6.4ms average addition to latency with maxed out frame generation in exchange for a 71 percent increase in frame-rate - it's an equitable trade overall. Looking at these results, it seems to me that the majority of the extra latency still comes from buffering that extra frame, but adding further intermediate frames comes with a relatively minimal increase in latency. That means that the gameplay is still responsive in Cyberpunk and unless you're super-attuned to input lag, you're unlikely to tell the difference with the existing DLSS frame generation solution.

Hands-on with DLSS 4 on Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 5080

Digital Foundry has the first look at Nvidia's new DLSS 4, as tested on Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive running on a GeForce RTX 5080.

www.eurogamer.net

I trust Digital Foundry and that's sealed it for me. I'm going with a 5080 and a 4k monitor. Only sticking point is if a Ti model or something will be available when I'm ready to buy.

Starting to get rather excited now. I played Cyberpunk at launch on my 980Ti, but I haven't touched it since all the big patches or the expansion. Will be the first game I play with the new PC. I reckon it's still the benchmark for PC graphics like Crysis before it.

 

[dwwaino]

Oh boy, can't wait for HUB to call Digital Foundry shills again and for DF to not even reply again because they're actually professional.

I think the multi frame generation just smooths things out. Currently frame gen holds two frames and AI generates one in between. My understanding of the new multi frame generation is it will now interpolate extra frames. Upscaling also uses AI to predict the surrounding pixels. So this is what they mean when 15 in 16 pixels are generated. Some people just want raw rasterisation which is fair but it's also true that computing in general has hit a wall and AI compute is taking over more than just graphics processing.

Upscaling is known to create artefacts or an unclear image which is true but it's getting better. As Jensen said every new DLSS version has been trained by the previous version. Go back to DLSS 1 and it was prone to ghosting in fast paced scenes like racing games. It has much improved but I even noticed just playing Horizon Forbidden West lately with DLSS Quality + FG that detail towards the edge of the screen can flicker or lose detail. During the latest keynote when they demonstrated DLSS 4 and compared it to 3.5 it looks like it currently starts in the middle of the image which is why the edges can be less accurate. Where as the new "transformer model" looks like it scans more of the image.

An argument against all this processing is the latency it should add but Reflex does a really good job of balancing it out. Reflex 2 is looking wild but I think it will be confined to a handful of competitive shooters for this generation.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Who/what is this HUB?

 

[dwwaino]

Who/what is this HUB?

Hardware Unboxed. One of the biggest hardware reviewers but has a history discarding any technology that isn't raw compute and behaving petulant on twitter.

 

[dwwaino]

Just digging through the DF DLSS 4 hands on with the 5080. Richard said he was running the full Path Tracing experience in Cyberpunk. That's enough for me too because turning on PT on the 4080 my Cyberpunk with hardly playable without aggressive upscaling. As a rule I don't like to drop DLSS below Quality.

 

[dav3]

Hardware Unboxed. One of the biggest hardware reviewers but has a history discarding any technology that isn't raw compute and behaving petulant on twitter.

**** I hate these creator types, I assume that's where every second pleb on /r/pcmasterrace and /r/pcgaming is getting their idiotic opinion from.

 

[dwwaino]

**** I hate these creator types, I assume that's where every second pleb on /r/pcmasterrace and /r/pcgaming is getting their idiotic opinion from.

They say something and everyone treats it as gospel and regurgitates it ad nauseam. They've already started with the text under NVIDIA's charts because apparently we can't read and we require these creators to tell us what it means and also that it's bad.

 

[dwwaino]

Just digging back through the Digital Foundry stuff (because it's probably all we're going to do for the next 3 weeks) and I noticed they're actually comparing performance modes so the improvements will be even more pronounced with Balanced or Quality settings. This is why DF get these hands on. They're objective presenters.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Hardware Unboxed. One of the biggest hardware reviewers but has a history discarding any technology that isn't raw compute and behaving petulant on twitter.

Gotcha

Between big hardware purchases I don't follow things closely but then research like a mofo in the build up.

Good to know who to ignore this research period.

 

[dwwaino]

Gotcha

Between big hardware purchases I don't follow things closely but then research like a mofo in the build up.

Good to know who to ignore this research period.

Their benchmark results will be still worthwhile but just scrub the timelines so you don't have to listen to their opinions.

 

[gaskin]

The only HUB videos worth watching are the benchmark videos.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Good to know, although I expect benchmarks would be broadly similar across all sources?

 

[dwwaino]

Going through the MSI deep dive and noticed every card is OC. I'll need to check other brands but it's now OC and SOC (Super Overclock). Most non-OC cards in the past could have an OC BIOS installed and still comfortably perform like an OC model anyway so I guess it was about time to make this change. It also looks like the Vanguard is replacing the Gaming Trio. My shopping list has any of the MSI Suprim, Vanguard or Gaming X, or the Asus Astral at this point.

 

[dwwaino]

Good to know, although I expect benchmarks would be broadly similar across all sources?

Pretty much. They'll likely test some different games and no two tests are equal so there'll be a margin of error. This time around some reviewers will choose to include different technologies but they'll be pretty transparent about it. I think the importance of reviews has lessened though, especially if you're already committed to purchasing. Reviews are better for entirely new products or if you're on the fence about an upgrade. We already know these will be better than the 4000 series and all reviews are going to show is by how much so we know what to expect when we plug them into our own machines.

 

[Cooldude]

**** this I'm buying the Switch 2 in 3 months

 

[dwwaino]

ASRock chucking the 12v-2x6 on their 9070xt cards.