LSFG 2.1 massive overhead requirement

[Vv-HEISENBERG-vV]

Thought I'd take another look at Lossless Scaling after I'd heard good things about its update. The image quality and fluidity of the generated frames are indeed an excellent upgrade over the previous iteration I tried (and disregarded) some weeks ago. However, enabling it (including using performance mode) cost my son's PC a whopping 50% of his frame rate! This was tested using Helldivers 2's spaceship hanger environment.

He's on a 1070 ti. So, before enabling frame gen, RTSS reported 82fps using Quality mode upscaling @1440p. Lossless Scaling's own render scaling solutions were completely disabled, so as not to conflict. As soon as FG is enabled though, performance dropped all the way down to 54 fps (so 108 with FG). To get around the awful uneven frame pacing (and input lag) I had to lower the game's own resolution scaling all the way down to Performance setting, which at least then saw frames lock to 60 ie. 120fps and it was buttery smooth and it admittedly felt very nice to pan the camera using a controller.

But that substantial cost to image quality is simply not worth the trade off.

So am I missing something, or am I just wrong to wonder why anyone is actually using this?

[Gizzmoe]

The option would be to keep Quality mode (plus maybe one or two other lowered graphics settings) and set your monitor to 100hz instead, then use framecap 50 with x2 framegen. Should look way smoother with nice frame pacing compared to your current 82fps without LS.

[carl]

Originally posted by Vv-HEISENBERG-vV:

Thought I'd take another look at Lossless Scaling after I'd heard good things about its update. The image quality and fluidity of the generated frames are indeed an excellent upgrade over the previous iteration I tried (and disregarded) some weeks ago. However, enabling it (including using performance mode) cost my son's PC a whopping 50% of his frame rate! This was tested using Helldivers 2's spaceship hanger environment.

He's on a 1070 ti. So, before enabling frame gen, RTSS reported 82fps using Quality mode upscaling @1440p. Lossless Scaling's own render scaling solutions were completely disabled, so as not to conflict. As soon as FG is enabled though, performance dropped all the way down to 54 fps (so 108 with FG). To get around the awful uneven frame pacing (and input lag) I had to lower the game's own resolution scaling all the way down to Performance setting, which at least then saw frames lock to 60 ie. 120fps and it was buttery smooth and it admittedly felt very nice to pan the camera using a controller.

But that substantial cost to image quality is simply not worth the trade off.

So am I missing something, or am I just wrong to wonder why anyone is actually using this?

welcome to the 2024 where 99% of positive reviews are bots

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by carl:

welcome to the 2024 where 99% of positive reviews are bots

Whatever the real percentage is, it doesn't change the fact that LSFG is awesome af, but to be happy with LS requires you to have a basic understanding of the concept of LS and FG, and a halfway decent GPU.

[Vv-HEISENBERG-vV]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

The option would be to keep Quality mode (plus maybe one or two other lowered graphics settings) and set your monitor to 100hz instead, then use framecap 50 with x2 framegen. Should look way smoother with nice frame pacing compared to your current 82fps without LS.

Nah, native 82fps with VRR looks and feels far superior to FG 100 (50fps).

I'm more surprised that a FIFTY PERCENT hit to performance is apparently deemed acceptable by people using this app.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Vv-HEISENBERG-vV:

I'm more surprised that a FIFTY PERCENT hit to performance is apparently deemed acceptable by people using this app.

Are you sure? 50% hit at 1440p with x2 framegen performance mode from 60 to 120 and no scaling? I get a around 10 percentage point hit on my 1080ti, and my card isn't that much more powerful than yours. And a 30% hit at x3 40/120 without performance mode, but with LS1 scaling.

[Palewing]

The weaker the GPU, the larger the relative cost of running LS. It also various from game to game.

LS works best in the cases where you are CPU bound, the game has a low fps cap, or the native rendering is very demanding, making LS much less demanding for a somewhat smoother experience at the cost of some extra input lag.

[S6ThE]

no its helldivers 2 games own issue, i checked it with other games its totally different and only happens with unoptimized helldivers 2.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Palewing:

LS works best in the cases where you are CPU bound, the game has a low fps cap, or the native rendering is very demanding, making LS much less demanding for a somewhat smoother experience at the cost of some extra input lag.

"somewhat smoother experience" is quite an understatement :) I went from 65fps in CP2077 (was CPU-limited because of high crowd density) to 120... I couldn't be happier.

[Vv-HEISENBERG-vV]

Originally posted by Gizzmoe:

Originally posted by Vv-HEISENBERG-vV:

I'm more surprised that a FIFTY PERCENT hit to performance is apparently deemed acceptable by people using this app.

Are you sure? 50% hit at 1440p with x2 framegen performance mode from 60 to 120 and no scaling? I get a around 10 percentage point hit on my 1080ti, and my card isn't that much more powerful than yours. And a 30% hit at x3 40/120 without performance mode, but with LS1 scaling.

Yeah it was very easy to observe and calculate the percentage. It was actually a touch more than 50%. I found this shocking tbh. That is an absolutely massive overhead requirement, just to make LSFG work well.

Lowering settings is obviously a workaround and once it hit 60fps base I was genuinely impressed with the fluidity, but surely this is defeating the object? A higher quality visual profile with true 60hz frames is arguably much more preferable than a flaky looking FG 120fps version. Individual graphics settings are one thing, but there's only so low we're prepared to go with render resolution.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by Vv-HEISENBERG-vV:

Yeah it was very easy to observe and calculate the percentage. It was actually a touch more than 50%. I found this shocking tbh.. That is an absolutely massive overhead requirement, just to make LSFG work well.

In your OP you mentioned a drop from 82fps max to 54 when you tried x2FG 60/120, that's only a 34% hit, and is to be expected. If your son had a GPU that's just 15% faster than his 1070ti it would work fine with 60/120 and your Quality settings, and you would be raving about how great LS is.

[Bagel Bob]

I would first suggest turning off the upscaling in-game. Its based off an old iteration of FSR 1, so if you're applying frame generation on top of that, you'd be getting generated frames using blurry images to base them from. I would set it to Native, using the same graphics settings you have now, and play the game for a bit to see how the game is supposed to look. After that, you can tweak settings to get to 60+ FPS, and once you achieve that and want to use Frame Generation, use X2 mode (with performance mode turned OFF). That should get you around ~100fps. You can also try using Low Latency mode in Nvidia Control Panel for some games to help compensate for the latency hit. Setting it to Ultra can almost remove the latency penalty entirely, but for some games (like Helldivers 2) it causes a big hit in FPS, but try it for yourself.

Also there is a bug, at least when I use LSFG and Helldivers 2. If you apply frame generation while game is running, and then turn it off, and then turn it back on, you might notice degraded performance, and it gets worse each time you turn it on and off (as if resources aren't being given back). If that does apply to you as well, just make sure to apply frame generation only once, and if you do need to turn it off, then restart the game.

[caiovale2011]

Originally posted by Vv-HEISENBERG-vV:

Thought I'd take another look at Lossless Scaling after I'd heard good things about its update. The image quality and fluidity of the generated frames are indeed an excellent upgrade over the previous iteration I tried (and disregarded) some weeks ago. However, enabling it (including using performance mode) cost my son's PC a whopping 50% of his frame rate! This was tested using Helldivers 2's spaceship hanger environment.

He's on a 1070 ti. So, before enabling frame gen, RTSS reported 82fps using Quality mode upscaling @1440p. Lossless Scaling's own render scaling solutions were completely disabled, so as not to conflict. As soon as FG is enabled though, performance dropped all the way down to 54 fps (so 108 with FG). To get around the awful uneven frame pacing (and input lag) I had to lower the game's own resolution scaling all the way down to Performance setting, which at least then saw frames lock to 60 ie. 120fps and it was buttery smooth and it admittedly felt very nice to pan the camera using a controller.

But that substantial cost to image quality is simply not worth the trade off.

So am I missing something, or am I just wrong to wonder why anyone is actually using this?

It's so good to know someone is having the same experience, As an example, in various games, playing on medium settings on an RTX 3060Ti with 4K DLSS PERFORMANCE, I can get 60-80 fps, but when I try to use lossless to go up to “120fps”, it tanks the fps to 40Fps, and then it goes up to “80Fps”, worse than it was before, haha.
I tried toggling on and off almost all settings and the only thing that partially alleviates the problem is performance mode, but by a very small margin and some extra graphical glitches.

Also, I don't believe this is VRAM limited, as I tried with the same results on indie games with low textures (5 out of 8 gb). Also tried HDR on and off, almost the same results.

Also, just to clarify, the GPU usage goes from 50-60% to 100%, as "expected".

[Gizzmoe]

Originally posted by caiovale2011:

It's so good to know someone is having the same experience, As an example, in various games, playing on medium settings on an RTX 3060Ti with 4K DLSS PERFORMANCE, I can get 60-80 fps, but when I try to use lossless to go up to “120fps”, it tanks the fps to 40Fps, and then it goes up to “80Fps”, worse than it was before, haha.
I tried toggling on and off almost all settings and the only thing that partially alleviates the problem is performance mode, but by a very small margin and some extra graphical glitches.

Also, I don't believe this is VRAM limited, as I tried with the same results on indie games with low textures (5 out of 8 gb). Also tried HDR on and off, almost the same results.

Also, just to clarify, the GPU usage goes from 50-60% to 100%, as "expected".

You have wrong expectations, you run at 4k which uses lots of GPU power for framegen (you noticed that), you have lows of 60fps to begin with even without framegen and a mediocre GPU. That cannot work, you need a higher base framerate. You could try lowering the screenres to 1440p or even 1080p, at lower res the framegen is much faster.