VSR/DSR Overview - Get More Out of Your 1080p Display

[MEC-777]

Not many people seem to be aware of this feature. It hasn’t been very strongly advertised or mentioned by reviewers, except tacked on to a list of other features which is usually when we tune out, eagerly waiting for them to get to the benchmark numbers. Tek Syndicate is the only reviewer I’ve seen actively mentioning and advocating this feature as something worthy of paying attention to. I would have to agree completely, it is an awesome feature that shouldn’t go ignored.  

 

If you’re running a 1080 panel, take note: You are NOT confined/restricted to running your games at 1080p, only!!! You have more options available to you and you can have better visuals by taking advantage of this feature.

 

What is it and why should you care?

Nvidia and AMD both have a feature called DSR/VSR (dynamic/virtual super resolution) compatible with most of their mid to high-end GPUs available today.

 

What it does, essentially, is it allows the GPU to render the game at a resolution higher than that of the panel/display being used. It then down-samples the image to the native resolution of the panel. The result is a sharper, cleaner, crisper image quality. This reduces the need to use heavy AA (anti-aliasing) filters to compensate for the block or “stairs” effects you often see on the edges of objects or distant objects in a game.  

 

Its primary use case scenario is intended for running older or less demanding games, or games that have little to no AA options (like Styx; Master of Shadows, for example). However, it actually has a much wider usage benefit beyond that.

 

The use of moderate to heavy AA filtering can be very demanding on a GPU. In some cases, more demanding than simply running the game at a higher resolution, without or with reduced AA filters. This is where the key benefit comes into play. Cards like the Fury X and 980Ti are actually not overkill for single 1080 panels at all, if you take advantage of this feature. As stated earlier; there is a visual difference/improvement. It is not a placebo effect.

 

When you use VSR/DSR, the GPU is actually rendering the game at a higher resolution and that is why you need that stronger card, if you want to take full advantage of this feature on your 1080 panel.

 

If you’ve got this feature and have a fairly beefy card on a 1080p display, give it a try and play with the settings a little. I’ve been using it with the majority of the games I play (probably 90%). I use VSR at 1440p on my 1080p monitor. At first, you probably won’t notice a MASSIVE difference (I noticed overall cleaner/sharper image quality), but the subtle differences/improvements become much more apparent when you use DSR/VSR for a longer period of time and then go back to 1080p native. Ew! Lol. Yeah, it makes THAT much difference (IMO). Going back to 1080p, I found I have to add heaps of AA filtering to clean up the image quality, which then often resulted in reduced performance and it never looks quite as good.   

 

So, which would you rather have?

 

-Lower quality image/visuals with the same or worse fps.

Or

-Higher quality image/visuals with the same or better fps.

 

 

Give it a shot, spread the word. Thanks for reading.

 

Note: I will be adding a detailed guide on how to enable DSR and VSR in the next day or two. 

 

 

 

@colonel_mortis - Is it possible to get this stickied? I think it's a substantial feature/topic people should know about. Thanks.

[UnbendingNose]

No support for 21:9 aspect ratios for VSR. Sucks.

[MEC-777]

No support for 21:9 aspect ratios for VSR. Sucks.

 

Good to know. Yeah it's not compatible with all resolutions/aspect ratios. 16:9 at 1920x1080 is the most common people have/use right now, which is why I focused on that resolution, primarily. 

[Najuno]

-snip-

 

In general a good approach to a topic that might interest some people, thank you for sitting down and doing some work here. But there are some hick ups in this topic I think. First of all not too many people can afford the Fury X or GTX980Ti. 90% Percent of all topics are people that look for something from GTX950 to GTX980 on nVidia´s side and from R9 380 to R9 390X on AMD´s side. If you recommend someone with a R9 390X to use VSR on their 1080p screen with the matching screen format, then that´s fine and they´ll probably enjoy this. But as soon as the people use much weaker GPUs such as a R9 380 the game changes completely and their performance will go down the drain. Now it´ll be the same with nVidia I just used AMD as example.

 

You could say now well 35FPS in Witcher3 is perfectly fine, and yeah it might be playable. But so many people play FirstPersonShooter... then 35FPS is not even close to be enough for a satisfying gaming experience.

 

Then also the level on downsampling, if you use it be aware it will make you game look nicer but it can not replace a true monitor with a native resolution by any meanings. That being said a 1080p monitor has 2 millions of pixels and a 1440p i.e. has 3.7 millions of pixels and the difference between them is quite a significante one. It gets even crazier between a 1080p and a native 2160p display. And what you do with DSR/VSR you lay besides rendering also filtering over you rendered picture. Now I have tested this with Maxwell GPUs from GTX970 up to GTX Titan X and I can´t see in benchmarks any performance hits compared to native resolutions. However I can´t speak for older GPUs or AMD GPUs, and so that situation might be completely different then.

It is always more important to have a detailed look why a person wants to buy specific hardware then try to set a common standard. That being said I like the idea that you try to put something like an overview together. I just wished you kept it more neutral.

 

 

Yeah I should try and run DSR on my 4K panel... WRONG!

 

He states clearly it is for 1080p aka FHD displays, he never stated that one that has native 4K should actually do that. So where´s your problem?

[Glenwing]

What it does, essentially, is it allows the GPU to render the game at a resolution higher than that of the panel/display being used. It then down-samples the image to the native resolution of the panel. The result is a sharper, cleaner, crisper image quality. This reduces the need to use heavy AA (anti-aliasing) filters to compensate for the block or “stairs” effects you often see on the edges of objects or distant objects in a game.  

 

I don't like that this seems to imply DSR is a less demanding alternative to AA. It isn't. It's a form of AA in itself, the oldest and least efficient one, called SSAA, or supersampling. You're better off using something like SMAA when available, the point of DSR is primarily for older games which do not support modern forms of AA, and are old enough that the performance hit of supersampling doesn't matter, as you mentioned in the following paragraph. But beyond that it doesn't really accomplish anything that modern forms of AA don't already do with less of a performance hit.

 

The best use I've found for DSR is changing to a higher resolution on the desktop so you get a feel for the scale of things at higher pixel densities, such as a 24" 1440p or 4K monitor, without having to actually buy one  You can simulate the performance at higher resolutions as well, which is good for benchmarking without having to buy a 4K monitor.

[MEC-777]

In general a good approach to a topic that might interest some people, thank you for sitting down and doing some work here. But there are some hick ups in this topic I think. First of all not too many people can afford the Fury X or GTX980Ti. 90% Percent of all topics are people that look for something from GTX950 to GTX980 on nVidia´s side and from R9 380 to R9 390X on AMD´s side. If you recommend someone with a R9 390X to use VSR on their 1080p screen with the matching screen format, then that´s fine and they´ll probably enjoy this. But as soon as the people use much weaker GPUs such as a R9 380 the game changes completely and their performance will go down the drain. Now it´ll be the same with nVidia I just used AMD as example.

 

You could say now well 35FPS in Witcher3 is perfectly fine, and yeah it might be playable. But so many people play FirstPersonShooter... then 35FPS is not even close to be enough for a satisfying gaming experience.

 

Then also the level on downsampling, if you use it be aware it will make you game look nicer but it can not replace a true monitor with a native resolution by any meanings. That being said a 1080p monitor has 2 millions of pixels and a 1440p i.e. has 3.7 millions of pixels and the difference between them is quite a significante one. It gets even crazier between a 1080p and a native 2160p display. And what you do with DSR/VSR you lay besides rendering also filtering over you rendered picture. Now I have tested this with Maxwell GPUs from GTX970 up to GTX Titan X and I can´t see in benchmarks any performance hits compared to native resolutions. However I can´t speak for older GPUs or AMD GPUs, and so that situation might be completely different then.

It is always more important to have a detailed look why a person wants to buy specific hardware then try to set a common standard. That being said I like the idea that you try to put something like an overview together. I just wished you kept it more neutral.

 

 

You bring up a lot of good points here. I'll try to address a few of them. 

 

I only mentioned the 980Ti and Fury X because when people post up threads asking which they should get and then we find out they're running on a 1080p display, people then start saying things like, "oh you don't need a card that powerful if you're only gaming at 1080" and things of that sort. This isn't true, or at least it doesn't have to be. If someone wants to buy a top end card like that and has a 1080 display, so what? Now, with the DSR/VSR feature, your native display resolution is not necessarily what you actually game at. You can game at 1440 or 4k or 3200x1800, or whatever - to get the visual enhancements that brings to a 1080 display. That was my main point on that. 

 

You totally right, that most people are looking for cards between 950/370 and 980/Fury. I would say anything 970/390 or above are capable of running 1440 VSR/DSR at fairly high settings. I know from personal experience that a single 290 can handle 1440 just fine. A 960 or 380 might struggle with some games, but will do fine in others like Dota 2 and LoL, that aren't very demanding. That's also why I said to give it a try and play with the settings. It may take turning a few things on/off to get that optimal balance between frame rates and visuals. Results will vary depending on the card and game in question, for sure.

 

The other thing I forgot to mention is you may encounter issues with menus, cursor size and text in-game. Everything will "shrink" to a degree and any text that was "small" at 1080 will now be "tiny". It hasn't bothered me yet in any games I play as everything was well-sized prior, so things didn't shrink too much. 

 

I also would not recommend using VSR/DSR for your windows desktop resolution, unless you have a larger display (28"+). Again, everything will shrink which can cause a problem with some people. You can compensate by increasing the size of icons, task bar items and text/fonts, but I found it tends to make things a little bit "fuzzy". So yeah, I recommend using this feature for games only.  

[App4that]

How do you know the resolution the GPU is rendering the game in. I've been running it and have seen a increase in image quality but haven't seen an impact in performance.

Other than the Crimson beta driver, total garbage. Game looks like shit and my fps crashed

[Najuno]

I don't like that this seems to imply DSR is a less demanding alternative to AA. It isn't. It's a form of AA in itself, the oldest and least efficient one, called SSAA, or supersampling. You're better off using something like SMAA when available, the point of DSR is primarily for older games which do not support modern forms of AA, and are old enough that the performance hit of supersampling doesn't matter, as you mentioned in the following paragraph. But beyond that it doesn't really accomplish anything that modern forms of AA don't already do with less of a performance hit.

 

The best use I've found for DSR is changing to a higher resolution on the desktop so you get a feel for the scale of things at higher pixel densities, such as a 24" 1440p or 4K monitor, without having to actually buy one  You can simulate the performance at higher resolutions as well, which is good for benchmarking without having to buy a 4K monitor.

True it is nice for benchmarking. By the end this is exactly what programs like 3D Mark do .

 

I wouldn´t necessary just go so far and say only older titles but also less demanding games, it is just an option to enhance something a bit more.

[MEC-777]

I don't like that this seems to imply DSR is a less demanding alternative to AA. It isn't. It's a form of AA in itself, the oldest and least efficient one, called SSAA, or supersampling. You're better off using something like SMAA when available, the point of DSR is primarily for older games which do not support modern forms of AA, and are old enough that the performance hit of supersampling doesn't matter, as you mentioned in the following paragraph. But beyond that it doesn't really accomplish anything that modern forms of AA don't already do with less of a performance hit.

 

The best use I've found for DSR is changing to a higher resolution on the desktop so you get a feel for the scale of things at higher pixel densities, such as a 24" 1440p or 4K monitor, without having to actually buy one  You can simulate the performance at higher resolutions as well, which is good for benchmarking without having to buy a 4K monitor.

 

It is less demanding than *some* forms of AA and more effective (gives better visuals) than *some* lesser forms of AA. I have tested this personally. So has Tek Syndicate (see their R9 380X review). Also some games (even fairly new ones) simply don't look as good at native 1080 even with full AA applied - and performance can tank as a result of having to use that much AA. I would argue DSR/VSR is one of the better, if not, the best AA solution, currently available. 

 

I worded what I said very carefully so as to not make blanket statements that cover all scenarios, because it doesn't. That's why at the end I said, "try it and play with the settings". 

 

Project Car is one of the best examples of where VSR resulted in both better visuals and better performance. I simply wasn't happy with the way it looked at 1080 and the more I turned up the AA settings, the more the frame rate tanked. For a racing sim junkie, I NEED 60fps+, but I also don't want to game to look like crap. Then I turned it up to 1440p with VSR, turned the AA down a few notches and boom. Much more crisp image with far less jaggies and smooth 60fps+ frame rates.

 

It's not the Holy Grail of game enhancement, but it can and does help (in many cases) to better balance out/optimize visuals and performance in many games, new and old. 

[MEC-777]

How do you know the resolution the GPU is rendering the game in. I've been running it and have seen a increase in image quality but haven't seen an impact in performance.

Other than the Crimson beta driver, total garbage. Game looks like shit and my fps crashed

 

Because after you enable VSR/DSR you go into your game and set the resolution you want it to run/render at (1440, 4k, whatever) and that's what the GPU renders the game at.

 

I know you have a 390 which is a pretty stout card. The difference in performance between 1080 and 1440 in some games is not that big of a hit for a 390. On a 970, you might see more of a hit.

 

What game were you testing and what do you mean by "looks like shit and my fps crashed"? You said you didn't see an impact in performance. Would mind clarifying that? You didn't see an increase or decrease in performance? 

 

Just as a side note: if you enable VSR/DSR, go into your game and increase the resolution but do not turn down any of the settings (including AA) you will see a hit (decrease in performance). That should be obvious.

[Glenwing]

It is less demanding than *some* forms of AA and more effective (gives better visuals) than *some* lesser forms of AA. I have tested this personally. So has Tek Syndicate (see their R9 380X review). Also some games (even fairly new ones) simply don't look as good at native 1080 even with full AA applied - and performance can tank as a result of having to use that much AA. I would argue DSR/VSR is one of the better, if not, the best AA solution, currently available. 

 

I worded what I said very carefully so as to not make blanket statements that cover all scenarios, because it doesn't. That's why at the end I said, "try it and play with the settings". 

 

Project Car is one of the best examples of where VSR resulted in both better visuals and better performance. I simply wasn't happy with the way it looked at 1080 and the more I turned up the AA settings, the more the frame rate tanked. For a racing sim junkie, I NEED 60fps+, but I also don't want to game to look like crap. Then I turned it up to 1440p with VSR, turned the AA down a few notches and boom. Much more crisp image with far less jaggies and smooth 60fps+ frame rates.

 

It's not the Holy Grail of game enhancement, but it can and does help (in many cases) to better balance out/optimize visuals and performance in many games, new and old. 

 

Fair enough. I just think this:

 

This reduces the need to use heavy AA (anti-aliasing) filters to compensate for the block or “stairs” effects you often see on the edges of objects or distant objects in a game.  

 

Can be taken as misleading, since it seems to imply DSR will let you have the effect of AA without the performance drawback, by comparing DSR as if it isn't a form of AA itself.

[App4that]

Fallout 4, worst fps drops I got were in the 40's and very rare. Downloaded the Crimson beta driver and was in the 20's at times. Going to go back to the regular driver later and make sure it's not the game. The Bethesda beta patch does the same thing so if they implemented that patch I'm done playing Fallout until it's fixed.

[Fetzie]

Because after you enable VSR/DSR you go into your game and set the resolution you want it to run/render at (1440, 4k, whatever) and that's what the GPU renders the game at.

 

I know you have a 390 which is a pretty stout card. The difference in performance between 1080 and 1440 in some games is not that big of a hit for a 390. On a 970, you might see more of a hit.

 

What game were you testing and what do you mean by "looks like shit and my fps crashed"? You said you didn't see an impact in performance. Would mind clarifying that? You didn't see an increase or decrease in performance? 

 

Just as a side note: if you enable VSR/DSR, go into your game and increase the resolution but do not turn down any of the settings (including AA) you will see a hit (decrease in performance). That should be obvious.

Also, you need to go into your display settings to tell the display to "render" at the desired resolution. Turning on DSR/VSR only gives you this option in display settings.

[App4that]

OK, I set the resolution to 1440 in Fallout 4, and it took up half of my secondary monitor :lol: . Had to set it back to 1080p.

[MEC-777]

 

Can be taken as misleading, since it seems to imply DSR will let you have the effect of AA without the performance drawback, by comparing DSR as if it isn't a form of AA itself.

 

It will let you have the effect of running heavier AA without the performance drawback of running heavy AA. There is an additional performance hit in running the game at a higher resolution, but that performance hit can often be less than that of running native with loads of AA. Make sense?

 

It can let you have better visuals with roughly the same performance +/-. 

 

 

Fallout 4, worst fps drops I got were in the 40's and very rare. Downloaded the Crimson beta driver and was in the 20's at times. Going to go back to the regular driver later and make sure it's not the game. The Bethesda beta patch does the same thing so if they implemented that patch I'm done playing Fallout until it's fixed.

 

Make sure shadows are on medium, but I think you know that. I'm also running Crimson and I can run the game at 1440p max (except shadows) 60fps most of the time on a single 290, with occasional dips into the 40's. 

 

Fallout 4 is a bit of a mess in terms of graphical performance right now, as I'm sure you know. It's not a very good candidate to show the performance benefits of using VSR as it's not very demanding (when it's running properly). But you should see an improvement in visual quality - especially in distant/fine object details etc. 

 

Also, you need to go into your display settings to tell the display to "render" at the desired resolution. Turning on DSR/VSR only gives you this option in display settings.

 

Yep. I'm going to add a tutorial to the OP showing how to enable DSR/VSR.

 

OK, I set the resolution to 1440 in Fallout 4, and it took up half of my secondary monitor :lol: . Had to set it back to 1080p.

 

Make sure it's set to full screen, not windowed. Try it again, it should work. You may have to temporarily set it to windowed WITH boarder and re-set the window (maximize it) on the correct monitor, then set it back to full screen. Make sure you also enable GPU scaling and have the scaling set to centered. Let me know if you have any more trouble getting it to work. Maybe try it out with some other games that are a little more stable and better optimized.  

[App4that]

snip

The medium shadow distance setting in Fallout 4 is the setting for consoles. It's completely shallow of me but I refuse to play console settings on a rig I have over 1500us invested in. What's got me in a foul mood is just two nights ago I was using my 290 and had everything maxed and had the fps drop into the 40's, once. Yesterday and today with the 390 I'm lucky to see 60fps and drop down into the 20's. And my 290 died yesterday... I flat out refuse to think that a dying 290 out performs a Nitro 390 OC.

 

I was in full screen, both check boxes unchecked in the options screen. I tried adjusting that though, no luck. No idea why it bled onto my side monitor in 1440, but I'm done with Fallout 4, for awhile. Not a happy customer. (of Bethesda)

[MEC-777]

The medium shadow distance setting in Fallout 4 is the setting for consoles. It's completely shallow of me but I refuse to play console settings on a rig I have over 1500us invested in. What's got me in a foul mood is just two nights ago I was using my 290 and had everything maxed and had the fps drop into the 40's, once. Yesterday and today with the 390 I'm lucky to see 60fps and drop down into the 20's. And my 290 died yesterday... I flat out refuse to think that a dying 290 out performs a Nitro 390 OC.

 

I was in full screen, both check boxes unchecked in the options screen. I tried adjusting that though, no luck. No idea why it bled onto my side monitor in 1440, but I'm done with Fallout 4, for awhile. Not a happy customer. (of Bethesda)

 

Your 290 died? I feel your pain. Had one die on me after 1 month due to a crap PSU. HIS came through though. RMA'd and they sent me a brand new one and this one came with a nice backplate. I'm assuming your 290 is out of warranty? If not, RMA it!

 

Fallout needs fixing. No doubt about that. I don't like turning any settings down, especially when I know the card is capable of more. I want eye candy as much as possible, but for me, it also has to play smooth. If it doesn't I will turn something down to get that 60fps + average. Guess it's a matter of preference. I know you don't want to run "console settings", but think about this; the consoles are stuck running this game at 1080p and 900p at a stop-motion 30fps. At least we can run it at well over 60, even if the shadow settings are the same.

[App4that]

Your 290 died? I feel your pain. Had one die on me after 1 month due to a crap PSU. HIS came through though. RMA'd and they sent me a brand new one and this one came with a nice backplate. I'm assuming your 290 is out of warranty? If not, RMA it!

 

Fallout needs fixing. No doubt about that. I don't like turning any settings down, especially when I know the card is capable of more. I want eye candy as much as possible, but for me, it also has to play smooth. If it doesn't I will turn something down to get that 60fps + average. Guess it's a matter of preference. I know you don't want to run "console settings", but think about this; the consoles are stuck running this game at 1080p and 900p at a stop-motion 30fps. At least we can run it at well over 60, even if the shadow settings are the same.

*off topic rant*

It died literally after the night of it's life. Ran Fallout 4 at max setting and max fps(60) without a single shutter. The game was beautiful, like Witcher 3 beautiful (I run mods). I won't lie, I was a little emotional when the next morning I turn on the computer to get screen tearing just by moving the mouse. I didn't turn it off hot, I watch all my temps and they were below 70(VRM in the 50's!). But the memory died(blue screen). I had given it(290) to the wife because she was building a rig for her graphic design portion of her job, but this was enough to have her quit the build. She's just going to use mine so that's why what ever comes back from Sapphire goes in the case. I had names her Frau Jones... She will be missed.

 

On topic I played around with setting the desktop to 1440p, the Icons did get smaller but the odd this was the text was less clear. So I put it back to 1080p. I'm going to try it in Mech Warrior and see if that works, I get way over 100fps in that game so I have fps to burn :lol:

[App4that]

Tried MechWarrior online. For some reason the VSR is not playing well with my set up. Whenever I enter the game it stays to the primary monitor but removes my monitoring software on the secondary screen. If I leave the game it comes back. It also moves my desktop icons, and not in the same way every time. I tried setting the secondary monitor to settings but that didn't help. Could it be Windows?

[MEC-777]

*off topic rant*

It died literally after the night of it's life. Ran Fallout 4 at max setting and max fps(60) without a single shutter. The game was beautiful, like Witcher 3 beautiful (I run mods). I won't lie, I was a little emotional when the next morning I turn on the computer to get screen tearing just by moving the mouse. I didn't turn it off hot, I watch all my temps and they were below 70(VRM in the 50's!). But the memory died(blue screen). I had given it(290) to the wife because she was building a rig for her graphic design portion of her job, but this was enough to have her quit the build. She's just going to use mine so that's why what ever comes back from Sapphire goes in the case. I had names her Frau Jones... She will be missed.

 

On topic I played around with setting the desktop to 1440p, the Icons did get smaller but the odd this was the text was less clear. So I put it back to 1080p. I'm going to try it in Mech Warrior and see if that works, I get way over 100fps in that game so I have fps to burn :lol:

 

That sucks. I hope they give you a better replacement card like HIS did with me. Could be for the better.

 

Tried MechWarrior online. For some reason the VSR is not playing well with my set up. Whenever I enter the game it stays to the primary monitor but removes my monitoring software on the secondary screen. If I leave the game it comes back. It also moves my desktop icons, and not in the same way every time. I tried setting the secondary monitor to settings but that didn't help. Could it be Windows?

 

Yeah, I don't recommend using VSR on your windows desktop, as mentioned in the OP. It makes some things (text) too small and more difficult to read. 

 

I have two displays (1080 and a 900p), the smaller one I use for monitoring - usually with just the MSI AB telemetry box showing temps, loads, etc. It always shows this and never makes it disappear when I load games like you described. Also, yes, it messes with my desktop icons as well. I don't keep much on my desktop, but what is there often gets moved out of order from the way I set it. I got tired of moving everything back in order every time so now I've just left things in the order it put them in and so far it hasn't moved them since. I never had this issue before on windows 8.1. This only started happening after upgrading to windows 10 and after installing the more recent graphics drivers (15.10.1 and newer). So not sure if those things have anything to do with it, but yeah, that is something I've encountered as well. Never bothered trying to research the issue, I just assumed it was windows being stupid.

[FruitBasketSilex]

Yeah I should try and run DSR on my 4K panel... WRONG!

Run some 8k games downscaled to 4k. You'll only need four titan X, giving your soul to satan, and making a pact with our Dark Lord Cthulhu.