Low image quality on newer GPUs

[Cyreo]

Hey guys.I am from that hidden Nvidia thread.Going to post a Far Cry 3 video to show you the issues.My internet is slow though,it may take a while.

 

As Demiqas said, we notice this issue on videos too. So i am also going to post the exact seconds where i see these issues just to be clear.

 

And to wannabe tech experts: This issue is real. Believe it or not. We have not started to play games just yesterday, we can notice when image quality is bad. So thanks for your worthless tech expert inputs.

[MageTank]

Hey guys.I am from that hidden Nvidia thread.Going to post a Far Cry 3 video to show you the issues.My internet is slow though,it may take a while.

 

As Demiqas said, we notice this issue on videos too. So i am also going to post the exact seconds where i see these issues just to be clear.

 

And to wannabe tech experts: This issue is real. Believe it or not. We have not started to play games just yesterday, we can notice when image quality is bad. So thanks for your worthless tech expert inputs.

Hey friend, when wanting help, its best not to insult your target audience. Plenty of us have been dedicating our time to get to the bottom of this, so you do not have to preemptively attack anyone, even if they are at fault. Even as i spend my time trying to help, i remain skeptical that it is an Nvidia issue. As do others, because we have found and posted proof that AMD and Intel GPU's suffer the same fate. We have come to the conclusion that it is related to LOD bias, an option missing since 2011 as most D3D11 games handle it entirely themselves, or completely ignore the option altogether. We have also found that forcing it with Nvidia Inspector seems to help alleviate the problem for some people.

 

I would say progress is being made, and people believe that image quality is suffering some how. What we do not believe, is that its intentional from Nvidia/AMD/Intel. There is no evidence supporting that claim. Nvidia not responding does not mean they are intentionally doing it, and from what i've researched involving the removal of Negative LOD Bias, it still works in OpenGL (Which is funny, as i was told the problems still existed in Linux. Someone didn't test as thoroughly as they claimed they did).

 

I don't need more videos or people saying they have a problem. I need people reporting their configurations, and telling me what does and does not work. That is the only way to figure out what exactly is going on here. This thread is no better than that Nvidia thread. 12 pages of speculation, and blaming random things that may or may not be the problem.

[Cyreo]

I am sorry,i know i was harsh.Just so many people told us we were imagining things before,i am easily getting angry now.I read your posts, i can see you are trying to help.I'll make a detailed post about my part of the problems as soon as i can.

[MageTank]

I am sorry,i know i was harsh.Just so many people told us we were imagining things before,i am easily getting angry now.I read your posts, i can see you are trying to help.I'll make a detailed post about my part of the problems as soon as i can.

I know i can see the shimmering. I know that part is real. I saw it in heaven, i saw it in the videos previously posted, and i even see it in some of my games too now that i know what to look for. However, it is not something that has gotten progressively worse, and it does not care about which generation of GPU i use. I went from my brothers 970, all the way down to my 9800 GT, and the problem still exists, on several driver versions too (I use DDU every time i swap cards and reinstall drivers). My laptop with a mobile AMD card also has the same issues, as does my super old ATI Radeon 2400+ Pro. Toying around with the LOD bias does help. Using better AA methods also helps. To the point in which the problem is no longer a problem for me (This is subjective. What i can tolerate might be entirely different than what you would consider tolerable).

 

The problem i have, is that D3D11 claims to no longer need Negative LOD Bias options, saying it was a D3D9 issue. Clearly that is not true. Modern games with ini files that have the option to edit, clearly benefit when you change them. Using Nvidia Inspector clearly impacts this problem when forcing clamp on negative LOD bias. This is the "shady" thing to me, but its not Nvidia, its Microsoft and DX. I tested OpenGL, and Negative LOD Bias does in fact work on my Debian rig. It also does not have the same problem that i am seeing on my main rig, which means my assumption before, about it being API related, was spot on (If the issue truly is the one pertaining to the shimmering caused by LOD bias). The confusing part is, how not everyone is noticing it until its pointed out. I certainly did not see it until someone told me what to look for.

[MEC-777]

If only could use DSR when running game windowed fullscreen with no border, while maintaining desktop res.

There's is maybe 1 game that kinda supports this even downscaling res making it look like crap, if only all games supported this with fullscreen window no border.

 

Just curious, why do you need to run games in windowed mode?

 

I know i can see the shimmering. I know that part is real. I saw it in heaven, i saw it in the videos previously posted, and i even see it in some of my games too now that i know what to look for. However, it is not something that has gotten progressively worse, and it does not care about which generation of GPU i use. I went from my brothers 970, all the way down to my 9800 GT, and the problem still exists, on several driver versions too (I use DDU every time i swap cards and reinstall drivers). My laptop with a mobile AMD card also has the same issues, as does my super old ATI Radeon 2400+ Pro. Toying around with the LOD bias does help. Using better AA methods also helps. To the point in which the problem is no longer a problem for me (This is subjective. What i can tolerate might be entirely different than what you would consider tolerable).

 

The problem i have, is that D3D11 claims to no longer need Negative LOD Bias options, saying it was a D3D9 issue. Clearly that is not true. Modern games with ini files that have the option to edit, clearly benefit when you change them. Using Nvidia Inspector clearly impacts this problem when forcing clamp on negative LOD bias. This is the "shady" thing to me, but its not Nvidia, its Microsoft and DX. I tested OpenGL, and Negative LOD Bias does in fact work on my Debian rig. It also does not have the same problem that i am seeing on my main rig, which means my assumption before, about it being API related, was spot on (If the issue truly is the one pertaining to the shimmering caused by LOD bias). The confusing part is, how not everyone is noticing it until its pointed out. I certainly did not see it until someone told me what to look for.

 

My apologies, but I am still not even sure what the actual "problem" or "issue" is. As I've analyzed other people's image quality earlier, have been able to (somewhat) duplicate the graphical anomalies - none of such have I not found to be "normal" effects or poor AA and low antistropic settings and none  have I not been able to fix by such methods as DSR, increasing AA, increasing antistropic filtering, adjusting the sharpness setting within the game, etc. 

 

I'm sorry but it's still just not clear to me, at all, what the problem is. 

[MageTank]

Just curious, why do you need to run games in windowed mode?

 

 

My apologies, but I am still not even sure what the actual "problem" or "issue" is. As I've analyzed other people's image quality earlier, have been able to (somewhat) duplicate the graphical anomalies - none of such have I not found to be "normal" effects or poor AA and low antistropic settings and none  have I not been able to fix by such methods as DSR, increasing AA, increasing antistropic filtering, adjusting the sharpness setting within the game, etc. 

 

I'm sorry but it's still just not clear to me, at all, what the problem is. 

That IS the problem. I personally never noticed it, because i use a GTX 770 on a 1600x900 monitor. I ALWAYS run the highest AA's. I've been running OGSSAA since before DSR was a thing. When i started reinstalling things, and moving down to my lower end GPU's (9800 GT) i noticed without the AA and things, i started to see the anomalies. I also noticed the LOD bias bug people mentioned, and even fixed it with Nvidia inspector. That's the current problem i see, which is the LOD bias option not working in the control panel. Nvidia removed it as per the nature of D3D11, which supposedly did not need it. It does still have an effect on games though, and that much is apparent when forcing it through ini files, or forcing clamp with inspector. 

 

I think the "solution" to this "problem" would be for people to start using inspector or other 3rd party programs to alleviate these issues. I know its not ideal, but hey, its better than nothing. DSR/OGSSAA is a great solution for the people with the horsepower to pull it off, but most people can get by with a little AA, and setting negative LOD bias to clamp. 

[MEC-777]

That IS the problem. I personally never noticed it, because i use a GTX 770 on a 1600x900 monitor. I ALWAYS run the highest AA's. I've been running OGSSAA since before DSR was a thing. When i started reinstalling things, and moving down to my lower end GPU's (9800 GT) i noticed without the AA and things, i started to see the anomalies. I also noticed the LOD bias bug people mentioned, and even fixed it with Nvidia inspector. That's the current problem i see, which is the LOD bias option not working in the control panel. Nvidia removed it as per the nature of D3D11, which supposedly did not need it. It does still have an effect on games though, and that much is apparent when forcing it through ini files, or forcing clamp with inspector. 

 

I think the "solution" to this "problem" would be for people to start using inspector or other 3rd party programs to alleviate these issues. I know its not ideal, but hey, its better than nothing. DSR/OGSSAA is a great solution for the people with the horsepower to pull it off, but most people can get by with a little AA, and setting negative LOD bias to clamp. 

 

LOD bias, I see, is set to clamp by default in Nvidia control panel. But what you're saying is it's not actually clamped? I'm gonna have to look up what LOD bias is. Before this thread, I'd never even heard of it before.

 

I'm a multitask-o-holic

 

Alt-tab? (I know, not all games play nice when you alt-tab and will crash)

[vanished]

Alt-tab? (I know, not all games play nice when you alt-tab and will crash)

 

which (although totally unrelated to this topic) is another ridiculous and unnecessary thing that people continue to have to put up with.  Who is to blame (Microsoft, nvidia/AMD, game developers, etc.) I'm not sure, but I've had games where it works perfectly, and games where - as you mentioned - it is a disaster, so I'm inclined to think it's the latter.  At any rate, it's not 1995 anymore and this shouldn't be a problem.

[MageTank]

which (although totally unrelated to this topic) is another ridiculous and unnecessary thing that people continue to have to put up with.  Who is to blame (Microsoft, nvidia/AMD, game developers, etc.) I'm not sure, but I've had games where it works perfectly, and games where - as you mentioned - it is a disaster, so I'm inclined to think it's the latter.  At any rate, it's not 1995 anymore and this shouldn't be a problem.

I have the most trouble with Bethesda games when alt tabbing. Like, sometimes it works (but i end up with a mouse cursor stuck on screen) and sometimes, it just outright crashes. Skyrim is the biggest culprit when it comes to crashing. 

[vanished]

I have the most trouble with Bethesda games when alt tabbing. Like, sometimes it works (but i end up with a mouse cursor stuck on screen) and sometimes, it just outright crashes. Skyrim is the biggest culprit when it comes to crashing. 

Absolutely.  I didn't want to name names in case it was just me, but yes that is the worst one.  Every time I alt tab, when I come back to it, I end up with a window of a black screen, and although I can nearly always get back into the game, it requires some more alt-tab and clicking to get it to properly return.

[212th]

So nobody knows how to make GTA Online look better? Some tweaks in settings.xml maybe? 

[Zathel]

Yes!!! Someone took it to the Linus Tech tips Forums! Finally! i was preparing some videos to do so myself but it seems someone already did it! Do we have any progress? I m making a War Thunder video to demonstrate the problems that we got. I also made a Dark souls II video link: 

. Good luck, and hope someone from the linus team sees this!

[Zathel]

By the way, I found something!
 Playing the latest games "Star Wars Battlefront" and "Fallout 4" i noticed that when i enabled the TAA Antialiasing option the shimmering and the jagded lines were completely gone. When i switched back to FXAA, the games were like they had no AA at all! Anyone got any idea on that?
 
P.S: To the Guy asking configurations. My rig is the following. I used any possible combination with in game and nvidia control panel options to see the slightest difference but to no avail. 
 
Case: NZXT S340 Glossy Black 
Motherboard: MSI H87-G43 Gaming Edition
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 Twin Frozr 4G/OC Gaming Edition
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 @3.9 Ghz Stable
Liquid CPU Cooler: Corsair H75 Hydro Series
RAM: 4x Kingston HX316C10FR/4 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz HyperX Fury Red & Black Gaming Series (16 GB)
SSD: SanDisk SDSSDPO64G 64GB @6GB/s
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB @7200 RPM Sata 3
PSU: Corsair CS750M Gold Modular
Monitor: Samsung S24D390 PLS-IPS Led Monitor @1920x1080 Resolution
Sound: Edifier S330D 2.1 Speakers Black
Headphones: KOSS PRODJ100 Professional
Recording: Audio Technica AT2020 USB+
Keyboard: Cooler Master CMSTORM Devastator MB24 Blue Led Gaming Keyboard
Mouse: Logitech G300 Gaming Mouse / Cooler Master CMSTORM Devastator M52K Blue Led Gaming Mouse
Mousepad: Steelseries QcK Gaming Mousepad
Gamepad: Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad

[MarkFMB]

Hey. I'm another sufferer of this horrible disease of a problem. I can quote what Zathel just said. I noticed too that when playing games with TAA the shimmering/white jaggies/texture crawling diminishes a lot, nearly to the point of disappearing (even though it's still noticeable here and there in a less pronounced fashion). Was noticing this the most in Fallout 4 which looks 90% like any normal game should look thanks to this. I was nearly crying all my tears from joy.

On the other hand some other equally modern games, like Metal Gear Solid 5, look like a crampled mess of fuming shit if you don't use DSR and even while using it the shimmering/texture crawling is so pronounced in distance that the games basically looks like a PS2 port (even if it does make it better and playable without you willing to poke your eyes out). This probably means the game engine and how it handles and implent AA can mitigate this problem even to great lengths. So at least some games will be playable in the future without prying my eyes out after 5 minutes and ragequitting alt-f4 with a strong impulse of throwing my rig out of the window (happened). Also Witcher 3 with DSR and lowered sharpness looked solid and decent for example, was glad of that too.

I tried to rationalize this might be how newer cards (especially nvidia ones, i have a GTX 970 on my new rig i built 2 months ago) handle aa and lod. But it just doesn't add up, THERE is a problem. I've been gaming and building pcs for the best part of the last 15 years, i would have noticed it before and this is isn't normal. My 7 year old updated rig (r9 280x) handled these same games perfectly, without any jaggies, any shimmering, any texture crawling, nothing. The bright image of cleaness and pefection. Now after trying that card on my new rig and putting it back it has the same identical issues as my new rig and card. Everything has gone to shit on that rig too. Same goes to may 750 TI. No issues, switched it in this new rig, now it's shit that card too.

I don't know if this is a rootkit, an hardware virus, some defected cards fucking up your hardware, frequencies or power... i dunno. I'm not that much of an  hardware expert to know how those things work or if it is even possible to this level (even though some engineer friends told me it's theoretically possible, so i'm open to the possibility). All i know is that i spent 2500 dollars on a new rig and so trust me i'm not making this up. I'm not a fan of wasting tons of money, i have no reason to be lying. I tried anything, anything. I formatted, reinstalled cards, changed cards, flashed gpu bios, flashed mobo bios, tried both bios on dual bios on my mobo, changed psu, tweaked any tweakable setting on control panel, inspector and sweetfx, nothing, i repeat, nothing, makes this problem go away, only thing you can do is make it better/less noticeable through layers and layers and layers of tweaks that shouldn't be needed, to the point where i'm struggling to keep 30fps with a 970 on most games from all the extra crap i need to ovverride and force to make the problem decent looking. To be honest right now i'm more curious as to what is causing this than i am to actually know if it's fixable. At least if i know what's causing it i can buy a new rig in an year or two and avoid whatever caused it in the first place. Without knowing i'm too scared to spend 2k more dolallars in 1 or 2 years just to find out they're trashed money again.

Hope something comes up sooner or later...

 

[LokiFire]

OK now i am definitely just going to sit back and think you are all nuts, i saw no issues in any videos, though i did a test myself in BF4, where Fermi NVIDIA GPU's do have superior Z buffering to newer cards, but it's not a disaster.

 

Seriously people.... tin foil time?

[MarkFMB]

I think you can't see it in videos unless they're taken from an external source. If it's screen capture you won't see the issue if your card doesn't have it i guess. Not 100% sure of this, but many people mentioned this on other threads and i think it's accurate, since even my gf, friends and family memebers with 0 experience in computers could notice it when i showed them on my rig and said roughly all "That doesn't look right", so i find it hard to imagine people with actual long-term gaming experience won't notice it. I alas lack a powerful and high definition enough camera to take a decent video and upload it. If anyone with the problem can do that, please do. That might help a lot.

Me and a friend of mine with tiwn rigs (we basically bought and built them 2 months ago with the same components, gigabyte g1 gtx 970, hydroseries h105 corsair cooler, 750 rm corsair psu, 5820k i7, msi x99a sli plus mobo, nzxt H440 case, samsung ssd, windows10 home 64bit, the only thing we differ in is the ram i think, i have g.skill ripjaws 4x4gb he has 2x8 corsair ones if i remember correctly) have been comparing at my house and his house. Same setting, same drivers, same tweaks from panel, inspector, same games. Looks perfectly fine on his, looks issued on mine. Tried on several games, same results.

As much as it would have been interesting to connect my monitor, my pheripherals one at a time, my hardware components one at a time on his rig till the problem presented itself on his rig too to know what's causing it with certainty, i love my friends dearly and i wouldn't want to get him to suffer from this shit too and waste his money as well, so we didn't do that .

Or you could stop by at my place and i could show you if you wanna have a trip to Italy. But i doubt that's an option .

[Demiqas]

No, I tried uploading videos many times but it's often not visible after you're done recording and uploading it, the compression and loss of quality is too much, as you need to be able to see the fine detail to truly see this issue in motion. I can't see anything wrong with the dark souls 2 video but I know that in-game the grass and shadows flicker insanely on my gpu. DSR makes the flickering a lot less visible but I shouldn't have to enable DSR for that.

 

one thing I noticed is that on AMD gpus shadows almost never flicker in any game and textures shimmer a lot less, but at the same time the AMD cards I have owned had a lot of z-fighting issues.

[MarkFMB]

I can very well see the shimmering on grass and bricks on that Dark Souls 2 videos. Is that video with DSR on or native resolution? If not have you tried DSR? It's the first thing to try in every game. Makes the problem a lot less noticeable on almost any game. If after dsr it's still not decent enough you can start poking forced AAs like SGSSAA or override drivers to enforce positive LOD and/or clamping.

[LokiFire]

 

[MarkFMB]

I can see no issue in your screens Loki. But this issue presents itself almost only when the camera or the scene is moving. When it becomes stationary it subsides, so a video is the only way to know if we see it or not i think.

On the video you posted i can see marked white fickering textures on the crates in front of the guy and to a lesser degree some shimmering, z-fighting and texture crawling on the pilons and flag pole while he is in movement.

[ShiroArikawa]

No, this happens in every single game and application. It has nothing to do with age of the games. Yes nvidia has a bad rep, I've been in the gaming buisiness for a while aswell. But this is seriously an all new low to hide our thread and delete our posts.

 

 

Read what I've said above. This happens in every single game and application and even happens on OpenGL games. It has nothing to do with DX. I WISH it was only that, I'd be happily gaming now.

yeah... My 750ti gets 130 avg fps on payday 2 and only drops to 80 a few times, the 970 gets 80 avg on same settings, dropping to 21 at times, as well as looking slightly worse.

[LokiFire]

I can see no issue in your screens Loki. But this issue presents itself almost only when the camera or the scene is moving. When it becomes stationary it subsides, so a video is the only way to know if we see it or not i think.

On the video you posted i can see marked white fickering textures on the crates in front of the guy and to a lesser degree some shimmering and texture crawling on the pilons and flag pole while he is in movement.

It's from my GTX 580 at the same settings he is i assume using, it never happens on the Fermi based GPU, in my own thread referring to Z buffering a guy also mentioned this happens on his GTX 870m and R9 280, but not his 6870 and 5670.

[MarkFMB]

It's from my GTX 580 at the same settings he is i assume using, it never happens on the Fermi based GPU, in my own thread referring to Z buffering a guy also mentioned this happens on his GTX 870m and R9 280, but not his 6870 and 5670.

Yeah i'm aware that Fermi cards had less flickering/shimmering than Maxwell. Apparently LOD clamping in Maxwell doesn't work in dx applications, even if weirdly enough the option is still there on control panel.

That's also why i tried to rationalize this in the start as "that's how these cards handle lod". Than i saw friends with same configurations showing no issue or very small issue due to this, abyss less pronounced then what i'm getting at basic settings, without DSR and tweaking (and in almost every game). That's when i knew a problem was there. Could it be some Maxwell cards are defected and in some way screw over hardware/firmware and we were the lucky one to get them? To be honest i don't think so... i'm not one of the conspiracy theorists blaming nvidia or anything, also cause some older cards seem to show this issue and some ATI as well (even if i don't know if those owners who reported it previously had a Maxwell card and passed the issue on just as i did with testing on my 2 older cards, heck i don't even know if they reported the same issue or just were newbies who didn't tweak basic settings to get rid of it easily). But some sort of problem for some of us i'm pretty sure is there. It could be a rootkit/gpu virus maybe... I know it's a very very ver farfetched option and i'm very very very skeptical it's that... but it's been theorized in unis and in hacker circles they could be a new thing atm/near future as a way to hide viruses so i give it a 0.0001% it could be that . I did way too much testing/comparing/reading on the web from fellow sufferers who did testing/comparing as well to think it's just paranoia born from being exposed to the new cards and their ways to handle aa and lod. Just wish i'd know what it was even if it was not fixable... not knowing is the worst.

[Zathel]

OK now i am definitely just going to sit back and think you are all nuts, i saw no issues in any videos, though i did a test myself in BF4, where Fermi NVIDIA GPU's do have superior Z buffering to newer cards, but it's not a disaster.

 

Seriously people.... tin foil time?

You're trolling mate? go back to your console you're of no help here.

[MarkFMB]

You're trolling mate? go back to your console you're of no help here.

No use in heating up. This issue is so strange and the users having it so few it's normal people will be skeptical/think it's "us" who've gone mad or stuff like that.

Just reasonably explaining, saying what we tried and whatnot, tell of our comparisons etc.etc. can slowly convince even the more skeptical. Be patient. If we rage at ourselves we'll never get anything out of it still and we'll even be bad mooded after .