Buy a video card with NVIDIA DLSS Or not?

Tactician

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DLSS has been so-so quality so far, in this one review on Shadow of the Tomb Raider it was great I Battlefield it was not good: https://www.tomshardware.fr/test-comparatif-visuel-radeon-sharpening-nvidia-dlss/

If I'm buying a video card the last hopefully for 5 6 years, should I get one with DLSS or not?

Or just get a AMD Radeon with its RIS, Radeon Image Sharpening and AMD FidelityFX which actually works on any type of video card.
So for example if I got a Nvidia 2070 it would have both dlss and RIS compatibility unlike an AMD card which would only have RIS

What are your thoughts you think dlss will become popular and start to work better?
 
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I used to switch back and forth between Nvidia and ATI, but I haven't owned an ATI card in almost a decade now. Imo, they're just not on the same level as Nvidia when it comes to drivers and game compatibility.

That said, I'm not a big fan of the 20xx series Geforce. I think they're overpriced for now. What GPU do you currently have?
 
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I don’t know too much about DLSS, but, since it comes with cards that support RTX pathtracing, I can give an opinion on that one – I wouldn’t now buy a card that doesn’t support that tech.

The thing to bear in mind is that it’s not just a fancy effect that can be switched on or off – once it’s embraced, it changes the way devs think about doing lighting in games. At the moment, game lighting is done with a lot of tedious, laborious fakery, where you have to work quite hard to make everything look natural in each scene, and having things like dynamic time of day are a real pain. Once we can switch to proper global illumination it’ll make a huge difference, saving a lot of time and opening up new possibilities. They’ve announced that the new consoles will have RTX hardware, so that transition might start to happen a bit quicker than expected. I could imagine a situation where non-RTX support is just tacked on to support part of the PC market, rather than the other way round. If I were buying a card to last 5 - 6 years, I'd definitely be thinking about that.
 
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@Ripper; do you think the RTX in those cards are powerful enough to do global illumination though? from what I have seen it is not very powerful yet.
 
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@Ripper; do you think the RTX in those cards are powerful enough to do global illumination though? from what I have seen it is not very powerful yet.

Yes, because RTX is just an approximation of full raytracing, smoothed out using AI. You can see an example and some discussion here: https://devblogs.nvidia.com/rtx-global-illumination-part-i/

It's already used in production - Metro Exodus lets you enable RTX global illumination, though the game obviously isn't designed around it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms7d-3Dprio&feature=youtu.be
 
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Ahh, it looks like it has scale-ability also depending on the hardware aswell, in that case I understand and it is a must have.

Still one might want to wait a bit as these kind of new technology usually develops quickly.
 
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Still one might want to wait a bit as these kind of new technology usually develops quickly.

Yes, I agree. I'm very curious to see what AMD produces when they release their next flagship GPU. Since they are producing the silicon for the consoles, I suspect they might have some interesting RTX tech up their sleeve. Their CPUs are definitely back in the game.
 
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Not sure I agree with this - i think by the time the standard is a requirement for a game you want to play you will upgrade your video card a couple of times….

I don’t know too much about DLSS, but, since it comes with cards that support RTX pathtracing, I can give an opinion on that one – I wouldn’t now buy a card that doesn’t support that tech.

The thing to bear in mind is that it’s not just a fancy effect that can be switched on or off – once it’s embraced, it changes the way devs think about doing lighting in games. At the moment, game lighting is done with a lot of tedious, laborious fakery, where you have to work quite hard to make everything look natural in each scene, and having things like dynamic time of day are a real pain. Once we can switch to proper global illumination it’ll make a huge difference, saving a lot of time and opening up new possibilities. They’ve announced that the new consoles will have RTX hardware, so that transition might start to happen a bit quicker than expected. I could imagine a situation where non-RTX support is just tacked on to support part of the PC market, rather than the other way round. If I were buying a card to last 5 - 6 years, I'd definitely be thinking about that.
 
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I didn't say it would be a requirement, though. I just think it could become quite standard within the 5 - 6 year timeframe mentioned by the OP, and one might be glad to have it. I suspect it will be longer before it becomes a hard requirement, as there will be an incentive to reach a large part of the PC market with weaker hardware for a good while yet. But I do think, driven by things being designed primarily for console platforms, it could become a lot more desirable quite quickly, rather than just being a fancy topping for the luxury market.
 
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I agree with Ripper, I wouldn’t buy a card without raytracing. Next consoles will support it so I believe it will become a standard option sooner rather than later.

Problem is if you want a raytracing card now it probably wont last you 5-6 years unless your willing to turn off ray tracing and play at lower settings in a few years and then what’s the point? And that’s only if you stay at 1080p, if you want to go up to 4K in a couple years then forget about it.

I currently have a 2080ti and don't plan on keeping it more than a couple years. I play at 4K max settings though.

Long story short, if you want to play at max setting with raytracing then I don't believe there’s a card you can buy right now that will get you 5-6 years. If your willing to make compromises in years 4,5 and 6 then a 2080ti might do.

I’d wait for Nvidia’s next offering as it will undoubtedly do better in raytracing and maybe last. I’d love to recommend AMD but I just can’t. Maybe they’ll make strides in their graphics department like that have their processors but until then they clearly lag behind Nvidia.
 
If you're not in a hurry to buy a new card, my suggestion is to wait a year or so to see what AMD will offer with their next generation of GPUs.
My next GPU will definitely be an RTX one (or AMD equivalent) but that will next year or the year after that. Currently, RTX is not quite there, both in terms of performance and games supporting it, and my 1060 is more than enough for 1080p gaming.
 
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On the performance side, I've heard that there's a lot of gains to be had through software optimisation. I saw a talk by the Unreal team, and they said that between the current version of the engine and the next one in beta, they've made an order of magnitude performance improvement with RTX. I get the impression that the first implementation was barely optimised at all.
 
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On the performance side, I've heard that there's a lot of gains to be had through software optimisation. I saw a talk by the Unreal team, and they said that between the current version of the engine and the next one in beta, they've made an order of magnitude performance improvement with RTX. I get the impression that the first implementation was barely optimised at all.

Yeah, and there was that Crytek demo a few months back that ran on last gen AMD GPU (Vega 56). If that turns into something viable and industry decides to go that way, RTX might not be necessary.
 
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Possibly. I'm pretty skeptical, though. They've just released Cryengine 5.6 with great fanfare, and no signs of this remarkable tech, which they say is coming next year. What the other engines often do is include new features early, disabled by default and marked "experimental". I'd be a bit more convinced if they had something to show. I'll be most surprised if it offers what RTX can, at similar performance.
 
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