Nvidia DLSS 3 Only Works With GeForce RTX 40-Series GPUs

#6053511 Posted on: 09/22/2022 08:27 PM

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I'm 100% sure they just blocking backwards compatibility just to pump up sales of 4000 series
Typical NGreedia
Several YT Tech tubers stated that the 3000 series cards do indeed have the required hardware to run DLSS 3, however Nvidia has stated that the 3000 series hardware is just slower at the task by some amount versus the 4000 series it seems (there's a hardware engine of some kind that it uses for the specific task iirc).

I'm speculating of course, what do I know, but yeah -- it seems to me that Nvidia probably "could" get DLSS 3 running at least the 3000 series cards then (albeit at a slight to moderately higher runtime cost), but they have a very bad/anticonsumer habit of just screwing over the last gen cards. For example, even though there's no real reason Smart Acces Memory (Rebar) couldn't work on the 2000 series GPUs they just didn't bother.

That kind of thing is a real blow imo and this sort of thing will definitely push a lot of consumers to AMD I'd argue as they aren't burning their consumers like this in recent times (you can also get a reasonable amount of VRAM on the AMD side without spending ludicrous amounts of cash -- VRAM skimping has been Nvidia's GPU flaw for awhile now imo). Obviously DLSS3 sounds amazing on paper, but imo they should support it on the 3000 series at least if at all possible then just give the caveat that you may gain slightly less performance from it than the 4000 series if it's at all possible.

Digital Foundry/Alex actually talked about this sort of thing sometime back in terms of giving people the option to run reconstruction tech on shader cores when possible even if the gained perf is lower iirc (i'm butchering what he said and obviously he was referring to other reconstruction techniques and all, but it seems like they "could" run DLSS 3 on the 3k series with slightly worse performance gains it would just take effort for them and they're using it as marketing for their new overpriced cards).

I could be wrong though *shrug*

#6053518 Posted on: 09/22/2022 08:35 PM

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I was under the impression most people on this forum were working adults -- this forum seems to skew higher in terms of age than, say, reddit or some such for example.

From a business point of view I understand why Nvidia does what they do -- they're the market leader in terms of performance so like Intel with CPUs when they were on top Nvidia can get away with a lot. But if they push too hard they will lose more customers to AMD -- they're probably fine with that and I expect Nvidia will sell out of these cards anyway.

Personally if Nvidia keeps pulling these kinds of stunts where they introduce new tech every generation that is not compatible with literally 1 gen back I will move to AMD where their focus has been on technologies that everyone can use. It's just more cost efficient for most people.

I don't think there's anything at all wrong with criticizing a company for doing something anti-consumer or for not enabling a given feature when they technically could. It's a kick in the teeth for existing customers and if you do it too much they will not buy your GPUs anymore, they'll move to a manufacturer that doesn't bite in the rear so much.

I don't think it reasonable to say people want something for nothing in this case -- people obviously paid for their new 3000 series GPU with the last year most likely and a GPU purchase like that comes, reasonably so I'd argue, with certain expectations from Nvidia for feature support (these GPUs are not cheap -- they cost more typically than an entire console). This is something of a unique case too I'd argue as several YT PC outlets have stated that technically the required hardware engine for DLSS 3 is present in the 3000 series cards, it's just somewhat slower than the one present in the 4000 series GPUs. I'm speculating of course and could be wrong, but my bet is that they probably "could" get the feature to work on those cards (albeit without as much of a perf uplift as the 4k series) but won't bother with the effort as it would take some portion of resources and they want the advertising bullet for the 4k series as you say. Still sucks if you own a 3k card though, nothing wrong with stating that imo.

#6053527 Posted on: 09/22/2022 08:46 PM

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DLSS, FSR and all other upscaling techniques are very favorable for marketers and Youtubers. Because if you stand still and take a screenshot ofcourse image looks perfect (TechPowerUp likes doing these comparisons, IMO they are nearly useless), alternatively if you make a video for Youtube it will also look great because video compression punishes native resolution image and benefits DLSS/FSR image.

I remember DF singing praises about DLSS since their 2080Ti coverage, and it was hard to see any negatives in their videos, it did look nearly perfect. It's only when I got Nvidia GPU myself and started playing on a big 4K TV that I started seeing deficiencies of DLSS/FSR. It's been really hit and miss so far. It's really hard to take serious those who proclaim that DLSS is always better than native rendering, they either have no attention to detail at all or are just marketing victims.
In my experience playing at 1440p, FSR (even 2.0) has noticeable quality loss compared to native resolution + TAA (though of course that tech is fairly new and I appreciate that it's hardware agnostic).

Early DLSS looked weird and painterly in games like BFV and it looked really "soft" til it was patched imo. The "hand tuned" 1.9 version of DLSS in Control was very interesting, but broke down a ton in motion and I didn't care for it very much. Lots of noticeable artifacts around hair and when moving the camera and in fan blades (etc).

DLSS 2.0 was when it really started to get good to my perception and the Quality mode with 1440p output looked pretty solid in games like Cyberpunk to my eye (though there were still some issues like ghosting trails and weird softness from time to time). DOOM Eternal though I preferred native + TAA as there was just something weird about how the DLSS handled detailed surfaces in motion and the game came out looking sort of "soft" to my eye -- not bad mind you, but I thought it looked noticeably worse than native.

The latest iteration of DLSS (2.3 or 2.4? can't recall) looks amazing with the right sharpen settings to my eye, it even holds up pretty well in motion the few games I've tested it on. This is all assuming Quality mode however -- turn it lower and native + TAA starts looking better again to me. I wouldn't say DLSS 2.4 is "better" than native + TAA, but considering the performance uplift for me it's now "worth it" assuming I'm GPU bound that is (some games like Spiderman I'm more CPU bound).

#6053542 Posted on: 09/22/2022 09:45 PM

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In my experience playing at 1440p, FSR (even 2.0) has noticeable quality loss compared to native resolution + TAA (though of course that tech is fairly new and I appreciate that it's hardware agnostic).

FSR 2.1 mod looks better than native TAA in e.g. Doom Eternal or Dying Light 2 and also native 2.0 looks better than old UE TAA in Wonderlands.
But yes, there is still room for improvements with ghosting in some situations, particle effects or disocclusion.

#6053716 Posted on: 09/23/2022 12:11 PM

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