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First Radeon RX 5700 Content Aware Sharpening impressions are in [1440k>4K upscale with sharpening]

DieH@rd

DieH@rd

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,567
TZrlPgS.jpg




CAS talk starts at the 15min mark.

Radeon Navi GPUs can upscale games from 1440p [which is a sweetspot for RX5700/5700XT] to 4K, and sharpen the image to remove some of its blurryness. According to first impressions from Level1Tech crew, it visually looks very good, performance impact is minimal [which is not the case for DLSS], it is not as blurry as DLSS, and it allows 4K gaming with vastly increased framerates. Of course, while the in-game content [especially in fast-paced games] will look best with this tech, static content such as HUD and text will not be able to have its "pristine 4K native" look, but that's also the case with DLSS. CAS works for all games.

I hope that Digital Foundry and NXGamer crews will soon take a closer look at this tech, and provide detailed breakdowns.

In the same video, there is also talk about Radeon Anti-Lag, a feature that reduces the gpu driver lag, and also forces CPU to slow down and keep the pace with the refresh rate of the display [to be in sync with the GPU], which leads to up to ~30ms reduction in lag. For this I eagerly await the detailed breakdown from Battle(non)sense.
 
derFeef

derFeef

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,357
Austria
Can this theoretically also upscale games that are restricted to 1080p? This would probably look even better since it's exactly half of 4k.
 
OP
OP
DieH@rd

DieH@rd

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,567
It will presumably work with any resolution, but who knows what will be results of such larger upscale. They cannot iron out every image problem with just content-aware sharpening.

[it's not a global sharpening, they analyse the image and apply different level of sharpness on various areas with different contrast elements].
 

Deleted member 30077

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
2,275
Can someone explain to me how this is different from a sharpening filter? I recently saw some screenshots of this in action and saw the same artifacts I would get by using Reshade's sharpening filter.
 
derFeef

derFeef

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Oct 26, 2017
16,357
Austria
mutantmagnet

mutantmagnet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,401
Since I expect someone else to be confused like I was sharpening means to increase the contrast at the edges to reduce if not completely remove blur.
 
1-D_FE

1-D_FE

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,259
Would be interesting to hear VR impressions on this. Does it improve things or are the flaws magnified and terrible? Screens are impossible to tell with these things.
 
derFeef

derFeef

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,357
Austria
PCGH writes in some cases it's almost like a texture mod. While that sounds a bit hyperbolic I can see it a bit on the grass in FH4 shots.
 
tuxfool

tuxfool

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,858
I rather like it. It does create noise, but as long as it looks like uniform greyscale noise, it doesn't bother me too much.
 

Deleted member 20831

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
1,951
So they took contrast edge detection and replaced Anti Aliasing with Sharpening? and/or doing both to save another pass of edge detection computational costs.

I wonder why wasn't this brought up earlier in Post Processing tools, like ReShade.

Edit: So this also means that this technique cannot be bundled with TAA or Checker-board rendering!?
 
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DieH@rd

DieH@rd

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,567
Hardware Unboxed has released their impressions of Radeon Image Sharpening
 
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ScribeofGeadhain

ScribeofGeadhain

Member
Oct 30, 2017
636
Canada
AMD are becoming the comeback kid. I remember people thinking they were a dying brand back in 2014 and that their console initiatives were a last gasp. I don't build PCs anymore, but if I do get back into it, I'm making an AMD rig for sure.
 

-COOLIO-

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,125
Are there any major graphics card releases to watch out for between now and cyberpunk 2077? Otherwise i think this feature just sold me on a 5700 xt.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
27,544
Cape Cod, MA
Glad it holds up in motion and not just screenshots. Upscaling tech needs to be judged in motion and its too common that people draw conclusions based on screenshots.
 
jett

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,657
It's just a sharpening filter. For Tomb Raider it basically looks like it's undoing the post-AA in the game.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
27,544
Cape Cod, MA
RvinP said:
So they took contrast edge detection and replaced Anti Aliasing with Sharpening? and/or doing both to save another pass of edge detection computational costs.

I wonder why wasn't this brought up earlier in Post Processing tools, like ReShade.

Edit: So this also means that this technique cannot be bundled with TAA or Checker-board rendering!?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If this doesn't work with TAA we'll have the weird situation where DLSS and content aware sharpening aren't available on the same games. Hopefully it does indeed work with TAA, but DLSS only works on games with TAA.
 
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DieH@rd

DieH@rd

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,567
DieH@rd said:
Hardware Unboxed has released their impressions of Radeon Image Sharpening
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In short:
Works only in DX12/Vulkan and DX9.
Selective sharpening, leaves high-contrast elements untouched.
It's best when it's upscaling 1700p/1800p games to 4K. Minimal visual loss vs native 4K, but with ~30% better rendering performance.
It can also be used to sharpen native 4K image, which can help some games that are nativley very soft [RE2Remake].
Looks better than DLSS.
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,949
I really wish we could have something like this followed by a DSR-like downscale to 1080p.

I want options to supersample on my 1080p monitor that don't look like complete garbage unless I'm running at native 4K.

PC's have a long way to go before they catch up to consoles when it comes to non-native resolution scaling.
 
Echo

Echo

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
6,482
Mt. Whatever
But you're not actually getting the increased level of details and distant objects that you get from true 4K, so as far as eye-candy goes, it's pointless.

I mean, I guess it's ok if you want frames... but personally I'll never accept upscaling, even as someone who uses their PC hooked up to a TV instead of monitor. Like yeah, the TV can handle upscaling pretty well but I still don't want it.
 
Reinhard

Reinhard

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,603
Interesting, I remember when people were trying to peddle DLSS (to help justify spending $ on overpriced launch RTX cards) and it ended up looking like crap, so hopefully this fares better.

In any case, using 4k resolution with 80-85% rendering always seems to give much better results for clarity.
 
BreakAtmo

BreakAtmo

Member
Nov 12, 2017
12,838
Australia
DieH@rd said:
In short:
Works only in DX12/Vulkan and DX9.
Selective sharpening, leaves high-contrast elements untouched.
It's best when it's upscaling 1700p/1800p games to 4K. Minimal visual loss vs native 4K, but with ~30% better rendering performance.
It can also be used to sharpen native 4K image, which can help some games that are nativley very soft [RE2Remake].
Looks better than DLSS.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

To clarify, DLSS (using a base resolution of 1440p) actually looks better when compared to Sharpened 1440p, but the comparatively huge performance cost means it performs more like Sharpened 1800p, which looks better.
 
Drakhoran

Drakhoran

Member
Jun 7, 2018
185
Scandinavia
plagiarize said:
If this doesn't work with TAA we'll have the weird situation where DLSS and content aware sharpening aren't available on the same games. Hopefully it does indeed work with TAA, but DLSS only works on games with TAA.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It works with TAA. The Hardware Unboxed video specifically points out that it's really good at sharpening up images softened by TAA or similar post process effects.
 

KCroxtonJr

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,495
Echo said:
But you're not actually getting the increased level of details and distant objects that you get from true 4K, so as far as eye-candy goes, it's pointless.

I mean, I guess it's ok if you want frames... but personally I'll never accept upscaling, even as someone who uses their PC hooked up to a TV instead of monitor. Like yeah, the TV can handle upscaling pretty well but I still don't want it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't see how it's pointless, sharpening filters can greatly improved picture quality even without bringing in detail gained from higher resolutions.

I apply reshade sharpening to every game I play, the difference is immediately noticeable and it actually does reveal details in things such as textures blurred out by effects like FXAA and most TA.

I wish every game had sharpening options built in.
 
Veliladon

Veliladon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,558
Nvidia: "Here's raytracing, AI powered super AA, and a ridiculously powerful card"
AMD: "Have a resharpen filter"

JFC my next card is going to cost $1500 if this shit keeps up.
 
Inugami

Inugami

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,995
This is one of those things that I'd have to actually experience before I could know if the sharpening filter would bother me enough to not use it. If I can bump my resolution down a couple notches to get an additional 10-20fps in games on average without it standing out, it'd probably be well worth it for me.
 
MrKlaw

MrKlaw

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,056
Couldn't they support multiple layers? So eg the game renders the world at 1440p which gets CAS to 4k, then the game overlays 4k native HUD elements?
 
Inugami

Inugami

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,995
MrKlaw said:
Couldn't they support multiple layers? So eg the game renders the world at 1440p which gets CAS to 4k, then the game overlays 4k native HUD elements?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I do wonder if games will be able to support it natively instead of it just being a driver option, because yeah this would be ideal. A game with resolution scaler and an option to both turn on AMD's CAS as well adjust it's intensity.
 

Gitaroo

Member
Nov 3, 2017
7,996
Can't nvidia implement the same thing to their card. AI powered super AA seems to still have an advantage on dealing with alpha texture like hair in ff15.
 
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