Look at the breakdown from Steam surveys, it’s almost always ~75% Nvidia. They know they have the gamer market down on lock and they know gamers aren’t going to buy something else as long as their competitor can’t fake as many frames as them and they know they have a lock on developers in a Ouroboros of vendor lock of more fake frames and AI slop filters that leads to more gamers who clamor for more fake frames and bad AI instagram filters.
Meanwhile they’re making money hand over fist with stupid AI and that money is money without relying directly on being AI for the most part so if the bubble bursts it’s not like they’re going to be overly hurt and then they know they can pivot right back to fake frames and slop filters and gamers will come running right back.
It could change relatively quickly though. Consider that Valve’s devices are all ultimately AMD devices. If Valve’s bet pays off, then those numbers should change (to what extent, I don’t know).
The Linux gaming community in general (which small as it is, is growing) is definitely shifting AMD. On the nvidia side are a bunch of driver woes and poor support. Meanwhile AMD’s drivers are literally baked into the kernel. No contest for ease.
This could all be wrong. Definitely. But the optimist in me sees a glimmer of hope depending on where the enthusiast community goes, how successful Valve is with their coming machines, etc.
Orrrrr… The whole PC enthusiast community dies because AI keeps driving prices into the sky and it never recovers in any meaningful way.
The steam machine is DOA. It’s less powerful than the base PS5 and series S. It doesn’t have DLSS because it’s AMD. It is woefully underpowered and is going to be expensive as hell for the lackluster performance to boot. Oh and it can’t play most of the most played MP games, or the upcoming GTA6.
I mean, I’d read the post you’re commenting on a bit more carefully before thinking DLSS is a good thing…
And it really isn’t as bad as all that. I suspect you’ve never tried Linux gaming.
In any event, Steam Machine is only one device. Steam Deck is already quite successful, so it stands to reason that the next gen one will be as well. (And less relevant, but Steam Frame is also looking like it could be a knockout hit for VR)
Similar situation here, my late 2010s Nvidia card is still good so no need to get an AMD one to replace it yet. Would be interested in FPS benchmarks between my card and current cards but there isn’t much I can find. Mostly just ambiguous numerical scores.
I heard steam was trying to approximate performance from specs and would love to see something like that if it can work.
If I could get like +200% performance for a cheap more power efficient card I probably would but I don’t think they are that much better yet.
Tbh the issue is price, newer cards are both quite a bit more powerful and power efficient. Went from 1080 to 3070 ti and now 5070 ti and each upgrade was a significant step up. Going straight from 1080 to my current card would be an insane jump. BTW this is based on performance I’ve seen in games, not benchmarks.
I know there’s so much hate for it, but I’m such a whore for lighting. People can’t tell the difference or don’t care, but a properly ray traced and globally illuminated scene sends me to the moon. Maybe I’m just weird but show me a light entering a room, bouncing off the floor and carrying a touch of the floor color with the light as it splashes on a nearby object/wall and I’m stunned. Properly ray traced reflections are amazing too, but it’s really the proper lighting that gets me.
That may be. I have never been someone to expect the best performance with the highest graphics settings, but I will say that my AMD card does very well with insanely great visuals. Some of the games I’ve played recently look better than cgi movies from years ago. The lighting is so beautiful I assume it must be raytraced.
DLSS Frame Generation uses “AI” to interpolate frames in games that support it. It’s basically free framerate if your card supports it. They’re not really “fake,” they’re interpolated.
Edit: For what it’s worth, AMD also does this with FSR in games that support it.
“in games that support it” mostly kills my internet in features like this. I play a lot of small and sometimes older indie games that probably don’t support it.
Interesting. Crazy that ai could run fast enough to provide such intense calculations… in just a couple ms, apparently! If it looks good I don’t see an issue other than maybe that’s power intensive? Anyhow, thank you for the response.
It’s really pretty incredible. As I understand it (though I’m far from an expert and could be wrong) it’s using tensor cores that wouldn’t be engaged otherwise during gaming, so it’s essentially free performance at the cost of power consumption. Means I can run at half the framerate I want and use DLSS to fill in the gaps.
For example, with Forza Horizon 6 if I turn on Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA) and frame generation I can easily keep a steady 144fps and it looks MUCH better than with the default settings hovering around 100fps. Not just smoother (not sure I can personally tell the difference between 100 and 144) but much better anti-aliasing, too.
Fuck nVidia for a bunch of reasons, but I have to admit I love my 4070 Ti super. And it’s not even a top end card.
It should be noted that the real reason gamers want better framerates is so you get a faster response between you making an input and the game doing something.
Frame generation turning 30 fps into 120 fps may well make things look smooth to an observer, but they’ll still play like a PS4 game in treacle.
Maybe. In my use case it’s bumping from 72fps to 144fps (I have a 40 series card so I can only do 2x frame generation). In that case, the delay to allow for interpolation is likely around 14 milliseconds, potentially slightly longer (although nVidia claims there is a predictive element to DLSS frame generation, so it might not require the next true frame to be generated yet, I’m not sure). I can’t react to anything in that time anyway. Human reaction time is much slower than 14 milliseconds (or, indeed, than the 33ms that 30fps to 120fps with 4x would cause).
I think the benefits to smoother framerate is about more than just latency. I suspect our brains process better when the visual input is smoother. Makes it easier to track movement and such. Even professional F1 drivers and esports players have reaction times at around 150ms minimum, so the latency is something we’re always compensating for (indeed, there is a processing delay in our brains from when visual input is received, latency is literally something our brains compensate for all the time in our daily lives).
But obviously if people are more worried about that latency they can disable frame generation and lower their graphical fidelity to achieve the same framerates. Stuff like frame generation and super resolution is very much about eking every bit of graphical performance out of the silicon as possible, and isn’t strictly necessary.
They’re making a solid bet here.
Look at the breakdown from Steam surveys, it’s almost always ~75% Nvidia. They know they have the gamer market down on lock and they know gamers aren’t going to buy something else as long as their competitor can’t fake as many frames as them and they know they have a lock on developers in a Ouroboros of vendor lock of more fake frames and AI slop filters that leads to more gamers who clamor for more fake frames and bad AI instagram filters.
Meanwhile they’re making money hand over fist with stupid AI and that money is money without relying directly on being AI for the most part so if the bubble bursts it’s not like they’re going to be overly hurt and then they know they can pivot right back to fake frames and slop filters and gamers will come running right back.
It could change relatively quickly though. Consider that Valve’s devices are all ultimately AMD devices. If Valve’s bet pays off, then those numbers should change (to what extent, I don’t know).
The Linux gaming community in general (which small as it is, is growing) is definitely shifting AMD. On the nvidia side are a bunch of driver woes and poor support. Meanwhile AMD’s drivers are literally baked into the kernel. No contest for ease.
This could all be wrong. Definitely. But the optimist in me sees a glimmer of hope depending on where the enthusiast community goes, how successful Valve is with their coming machines, etc.
Orrrrr… The whole PC enthusiast community dies because AI keeps driving prices into the sky and it never recovers in any meaningful way.
The steam machine is DOA. It’s less powerful than the base PS5 and series S. It doesn’t have DLSS because it’s AMD. It is woefully underpowered and is going to be expensive as hell for the lackluster performance to boot. Oh and it can’t play most of the most played MP games, or the upcoming GTA6.
D. O. A.
I mean, I’d read the post you’re commenting on a bit more carefully before thinking DLSS is a good thing…
And it really isn’t as bad as all that. I suspect you’ve never tried Linux gaming.
In any event, Steam Machine is only one device. Steam Deck is already quite successful, so it stands to reason that the next gen one will be as well. (And less relevant, but Steam Frame is also looking like it could be a knockout hit for VR)
Similar situation here, my late 2010s Nvidia card is still good so no need to get an AMD one to replace it yet. Would be interested in FPS benchmarks between my card and current cards but there isn’t much I can find. Mostly just ambiguous numerical scores.
I heard steam was trying to approximate performance from specs and would love to see something like that if it can work.
If I could get like +200% performance for a cheap more power efficient card I probably would but I don’t think they are that much better yet.
Tbh the issue is price, newer cards are both quite a bit more powerful and power efficient. Went from 1080 to 3070 ti and now 5070 ti and each upgrade was a significant step up. Going straight from 1080 to my current card would be an insane jump. BTW this is based on performance I’ve seen in games, not benchmarks.
I am on RTX2070 and would be looking at xx60 or cheaper. Not sure if performance gains would be that significant yet.
In a gold rush, the smart businessman doesn’t prospect, he sells shovels.
I’m stuck with Nvidia because of ray tracing…
I know there’s so much hate for it, but I’m such a whore for lighting. People can’t tell the difference or don’t care, but a properly ray traced and globally illuminated scene sends me to the moon. Maybe I’m just weird but show me a light entering a room, bouncing off the floor and carrying a touch of the floor color with the light as it splashes on a nearby object/wall and I’m stunned. Properly ray traced reflections are amazing too, but it’s really the proper lighting that gets me.
Are you saying AMD doesn’t do ray tracing? Because I’m pretty sure it does and looks great in the games I’ve played recently.
I think AMD just consistently trails Nvidia in performance in this area unfortunately.
That may be. I have never been someone to expect the best performance with the highest graphics settings, but I will say that my AMD card does very well with insanely great visuals. Some of the games I’ve played recently look better than cgi movies from years ago. The lighting is so beautiful I assume it must be raytraced.
Fake frames?
DLSS Frame Generation uses “AI” to interpolate frames in games that support it. It’s basically free framerate if your card supports it. They’re not really “fake,” they’re interpolated.
Edit: For what it’s worth, AMD also does this with FSR in games that support it.
“in games that support it” mostly kills my internet in features like this. I play a lot of small and sometimes older indie games that probably don’t support it.
Small and older indie games don’t need frame gen.
Some have higher graphics settings that may benefit from more powerful hardware still.
Interesting. Crazy that ai could run fast enough to provide such intense calculations… in just a couple ms, apparently! If it looks good I don’t see an issue other than maybe that’s power intensive? Anyhow, thank you for the response.
It’s really pretty incredible. As I understand it (though I’m far from an expert and could be wrong) it’s using tensor cores that wouldn’t be engaged otherwise during gaming, so it’s essentially free performance at the cost of power consumption. Means I can run at half the framerate I want and use DLSS to fill in the gaps.
For example, with Forza Horizon 6 if I turn on Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA) and frame generation I can easily keep a steady 144fps and it looks MUCH better than with the default settings hovering around 100fps. Not just smoother (not sure I can personally tell the difference between 100 and 144) but much better anti-aliasing, too.
Fuck nVidia for a bunch of reasons, but I have to admit I love my 4070 Ti super. And it’s not even a top end card.
It should be noted that the real reason gamers want better framerates is so you get a faster response between you making an input and the game doing something.
Frame generation turning 30 fps into 120 fps may well make things look smooth to an observer, but they’ll still play like a PS4 game in treacle.
Maybe. In my use case it’s bumping from 72fps to 144fps (I have a 40 series card so I can only do 2x frame generation). In that case, the delay to allow for interpolation is likely around 14 milliseconds, potentially slightly longer (although nVidia claims there is a predictive element to DLSS frame generation, so it might not require the next true frame to be generated yet, I’m not sure). I can’t react to anything in that time anyway. Human reaction time is much slower than 14 milliseconds (or, indeed, than the 33ms that 30fps to 120fps with 4x would cause).
I think the benefits to smoother framerate is about more than just latency. I suspect our brains process better when the visual input is smoother. Makes it easier to track movement and such. Even professional F1 drivers and esports players have reaction times at around 150ms minimum, so the latency is something we’re always compensating for (indeed, there is a processing delay in our brains from when visual input is received, latency is literally something our brains compensate for all the time in our daily lives).
But obviously if people are more worried about that latency they can disable frame generation and lower their graphical fidelity to achieve the same framerates. Stuff like frame generation and super resolution is very much about eking every bit of graphical performance out of the silicon as possible, and isn’t strictly necessary.
Streamed games over 100ms+ latency before and it’s felt fine though, that part depends a lot on the game. Flight/space sim isn’t going to care much.
I suspect it doesn’t matter too much on joypad controlled games either.
Mouse aiming and especially VR are more likely to feel the difference between real and fake frames.
That’s a good point which I’d not considered. Yeah, generated frames can’t really respond to you in real time.