Testing AMD's new Radeon Image Sharpening: Is It Better than Nvidia's DLSS?

Today we're taking a deeper expect into one of the new features that shipped with AMD's latest Navi GPUs, the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT. You have probably read our review by now and that primarily dealt with performance and overall value, only we didn't go into particular into some of the additional features AMD is providing.

One of those features is Radeon Paradigm Sharpening and there's too have Radeon Anti-Lag -- that will exist bailiwick to investigation in a future article. Both are interesting technologies, they weren't marketed equally must-haves or key selling points for these new GPUs, simply just a dainty bonus for buyers and we believe anti-lag actually supports older GPUs, likewise.

So, what is Radeon Image Sharpening? In basic terms, it's a post-processing sharpening feature for games that AMD says carries nearly no performance penalty. In theory you plow information technology on, overall sharpness is improved in game's visuals and everyone walks away happy. Merely equally we observed with GeForce'due south DLSS, manufacturer'southward claims do not ever reverberate reality.

Our take is that there are two key apply cases for Paradigm Sharpening: the first is for games that are 'soft' to brainstorm with. Lots of titles these days are using temporal anti-aliasing or TAA, and that can frequently lead to a blurry presentation. Radeon Paradigm Sharpening (RIS) is a mode to sharpen those games and become a crisper image.

The second use example is for resolution downsampling. For instance, if yous have a 4K display but desire better functioning, y'all tin can run games at 1800p or an 80% resolution scale. This will inevitably make the image softer every bit it'south not being rendered at the native resolution. Radeon Paradigm Sharpening could post process that epitome, add a bit of sharpness back and go close to the native prototype for near no performance loss. In a sense it's similar to what Nvidia is attempting with DLSS, and we'll compare the two later on.

Radeon Paradigm Sharpening isn't simply a sharpening filter, information technology uses a contrast adaptive sharpening or CAS algorithm that AMD recently introduced in their FidelityFX suite. While game developers can accept FidelityFX and implement that in their games every bit they run across fit, Radeon Image Sharpening is a broad event that doesn't require per-game implementation. Information technology'southward a simple switch in Radeon Settings.

To dive deeper into what CAS does, we'll quote AMD directly: "because RIS is based on an algorithm that modulates the degree of sharpening depending on dissimilarity, information technology clarifies interior object details while leaving high-contrast edges largely untouched." They go on to say this prevents a number of artifacts you get with traditional sharpening.

There is a pretty large catch, though. While Radeon Image Sharpening doesn't require per-game implementation or any developer intervention, information technology currently only supports DirectX 12, Vulkan and DirectX 9 games. Crucially, this means DirectX 11 titles are not supported.

AMD told united states of america they decided to focus on newer APIs, while DirectX nine was included because information technology was easy to do. AMD recognizes that DX11 is the next step and they'll consider adding that in a time to come software update if there'south "demand from the community for that feature." Hopefully they do, because even today in that location are tons of games that either only support DX11, or perform better on DX11 while supporting DX12.

Enabling Radeon Paradigm Sharpening is straightforward. Install the latest drivers, head over to the Display section, and enable both GPU scaling and Radeon Image Sharpening. The feature is just bachelor on new Navi GPUs (5700 and 5700 XT), there is no support for Vega or previous generations equally RIS relies on the hardware to deliver CAS with adjacent to no functioning loss.

We should too mention RIS is being treated as a global setting correct now. You lot cannot set RIS to be enabled in certain games merely using the game profile section of Radeon Settings. That's something AMD should look into, because gamers might non want the characteristic enabled in every game they play. You too need to restart the game betwixt turning RIS on and off, if you alt-tab out for a quick modify it won't work. Just something to keep in heed.

Image Quality

For visual quality comparisons we're going to spend most of our time looking at Metro Exodus. It'southward a DX12 title that also offers DLSS support for Nvidia cards (DLSS does require games to support the feature), plus it offers highly detailed environments. In improver to the image quality shots offered hither you tin can bank check out Hardware Unboxed's video (embedded below) using YouTube'southward 4K quality for the best possible representation of the game'due south graphics. For all screenshots, you can click on them to encounter a larger 4K version of the same image.

RIS vs native 4K

Starting by comparing the divergence betwixt RIS on and off at native 4K. Metro isn't the sharpest game going around at native resolutions, it's a tad soft and there are no anti-aliasing in the game, but there's certainly notwithstanding a lot of item in the native 4K presentation.

The sharpened image is indeed noticeably sharper and cleans up that little bit of softness in the original image. It's especially effective on leafage, it cleans up the grass and copse in this run which are the softest chemical element of the native image. On shut textures it has a minor effect and slightly improves what is already a well-baked texture. The CAS algorithm also seems to do a good chore of ignoring things that you wouldn't want sharpened, like move blur or depth of field effects, and while it's non perfect at ignoring those elements in motion, it'south difficult to spot any bug.

With that said, there are some flaws that shouldn't be ignored. Overall, the sharpened image is brighter; in this scene if I zoom in on the sparse foliage, it'southward quite brighter when sharpened. Same goes for the train tracks and some other areas. It's probably not something you'd notice if it weren't for this side-by-side, but it does seem to be an antiquity of the filter.

There are also some elements that the CAS algorithm simply doesn't know to ignore; it doesn't truly know which elements should be sharp and which shouldn't. For case when virtually the water here, Metro Exodus does take some screen space reflection artifacts. They are more noticeable with RIS enabled, as the artifacts are getting sharpened to be more visible. A minor effect, but something nosotros spotted.

Overall though it would appear RIS does a proficient chore here and more often than not looks 'amend' than the original presentation fifty-fifty if it's faked. When y'all cease and examine the flaws at times we felt it was besides sharp, perhaps unrealistically precipitous, but during actual gameplay in move we didn't meet this as an effect.

RIS on downsampled 1440p and 1800p output

Fourth dimension to look at some results when downsampling. We'll kickoff with 1440p vs 4K and right away the 1440p native paradigm is much softer and looks blurry when upscaled to 4K. Non an ideal way to play on a loftier-resolution display.

The sharpened 1440p paradigm is a large improvement over native 1440p, but ultimately just doesn't take the same level of detail as the native 4K prototype. Nearby textures become pretty close, just with some of the fine foliage item and other pocket-sized elements, there but aren't enough pixels and native detail in the 1440p prototype to simulate a 4K presentation through a post-processing filter.

Nonetheless nosotros come across different results when downsampling in the 1800p range. In Metro Exodus nosotros set a 0.7x shader scale which is roughly equivalent to 1800p. Without sharpening the 1800p image is obviously softer than native 4K. It'due south not as bad every bit 1440p, but you're notwithstanding getting a loss of clarity and fine detail compared to running at a native resolution.

We turned on sharpening for the 1800p epitome and… wow. We were seriously impressed with the results here. Information technology'due south non a perfect recreation of 4K and still suffers from some of the general issues with post process sharpening, simply in many scenes it's incredibly shut and virtually indistinguishable from the native image. True 4K has finer detail in leaf and other small elements, but you lot'd be difficult pressed to spot a departure, especially without a side by side comparison.

RIS vs DLSS

Before we movement on to look at performance, permit's throw up some DLSS footage captured using an RTX 2070. At 4K with DLSS enabled, the image is existence upscaled from 1440p through Nvidia'due south deep learning algorithms. DLSS in Metro is the all-time implementation we've seen and it'due south much ameliorate than using Radeon Image Sharpening on a 1440p image, but it's not every bit good as AMD's sharpened 1800p.

In the best cases, DLSS is as good equally sharpened 1800p for large elements and shut textures. But DLSS notwithstanding suffers from the 'oil painting' result we mentioned in our initial investigation, which looks bad in some environments, and suffers from detail loss peculiarly for rocks and foliage. The mode it 'thickens' really fine details like tree branches or wires also degrades the DLSS image in our opinion. Overall, sharpened 1800p gets a lot closer to native 4K than DLSS, at least in Metro.

Performance

Across the three conditions we tested within Metro, we saw performance driblet by a mere 1 to ii percentage with Radeon Prototype Sharpening enabled. That's a negligible one-ii fps deviation which means y'all can utilise the feature at no real performance toll if it improves visuals on your game of choice.

For those targeting sharpened 1800p as a higher performance replacement for 4K, you're looking at effectually a 27 per centum uplift to boilerplate framerates in Metro for almost no quality loss.

We'll also throw in DLSS numbers here, evidently from a different GPU so information technology won't match exactly to the RX 5700 XT's results. In the latest version of Metro Exodus, 4K DLSS even so performs around the aforementioned mark as the 1800p paradigm. One time once again, this reinforces our opinion that a unproblematic sharpening filter can be equally good equally, or in this instance noticeably amend than DLSS, for a similar functioning uplift. We think proverb this when testing DLSS (see our first take and take ii) and despite there being hope that Nvidia would 'train' DLSS to be improve over fourth dimension, that hasn't eventuated.

We also checked out Battlefield V and the observations are nearly the same on this game. Sharpening a native image does look amend, BFV is sharper in general than Metro Exodus but however a scrap soft from TAA. Much to our surprise, despite keeping flick grain enabled for this test, the sharpening filter didn't brand the grain more noticeable which can oft be a side effect of grain.

For resolution downsampling we focused on a 78% resolution scale which is around 1700p, because this matches the performance uplift of DLSS in this title. Battlefield V handles upscaling really well and actually looks just slightly worse at a 78% scale versus native 4K in this scene; it's a scrap softer, a chip less detailed just overall, non bad. This makes information technology a perfect candidate for sharpening, and indeed using RIS the prototype is, in fact, sharper than native 4K despite coming from a lower resolution base. Impressive.

Throw DLSS into the mix and it looks significantly worse than the sharpened 1700p image. Battlefield V notwithstanding has a weak DLSS implementation and can't hold up to the bones sharpening filter. In fact, fifty-fifty the native 1700p image is better in our opinion, so this title shows the weakness of DLSS.

Sharpening isn't quite as constructive with this foliage dense scene from Battleground Five but it does a decent chore of getting close enough to the native 4K image. Of course, that minor visual quality loss comes with upwards of thirty percent performance uplift.

Across all the games we tested Radeon Image Sharpening resulted in a i-two% performance driblet, no demand to chart every game.

Another game we tested that doesn't support DLSS but can be used with Radeon Image Sharpening is the Partitioning 2. This title plays nicely with resolution downsampling, its post-processing is phenomenal and you tin frequently run the game at a 75% resolution scale with little loss of quality at 4K.

This game is a skillful candidate for Radeon Image Sharpening. At a 75% scale with sharpening, the prototype was often crisper than native 4K, although there were times where jagged edges were more than present in the downsampled epitome, or for afar foliage, you get a few branches with the native 4K paradigm that you don't get with a 75% scale. Still, considering the 75% sharpened output was often 35% faster than native 4K, that'due south a huge win in general.

Testing Resident Evil ii, nosotros knew this game has notoriously bad temporal anti-aliasing which leads to a soft, often blurry presentation. Using RIS on the native 4K presentation basically fixed the soft image quality without introducing the jagged edges or shimmering you go with the game's SMAA implementation. This is another great, low toll employ instance for RIS that is worth considering.

Bottom Line

Radeon Image Sharpening is genuinely impressive. It doesn't require any programmer implementation and it works well by sharpening the image which tin can exist useful in a variety of situations.

Later spending more time with the feature, we feel the best use case is for image downsampling with high resolution displays. A sharpened 1800p image was typically as skilful as a native 4K epitome in our testing, which means yous tin can happily use this configuration with Navi GPUs to gain ~30% more performance for a minimal quality loss. Downsampling all the way to 1440p didn't deliver as adept results, so the sweet spot is around that 70 to 80 pct resolution calibration.

RIS is also expert for sharpening up games that can are left a little soft later on mail service-process anti-aliasing techniques similar TAA. Given basically all games these days use this sort of AA as opposed to more intensive techniques like MSAA or SSAA, combining that with sharpening can deliver an improved image.

It'southward too articulate that Radeon Image Sharpening is a superior equivalent to Nvidia'southward DLSS, often by a considerable margin. With both techniques performing at the same frame rate, RIS delivered a clearer, sharper paradigm with fewer artifacts. In our previous DLSS analysis we had stated a simple paradigm sharpening filter would probably work better than DLSS with a lower performance cost, and it turns out AMD has proven us right by implementing exactly that.

To be fair to Nvidia, when comparison images from the same base resolution – 1440p – the DLSS upscaled version is superior to AMD's sharpened version. But the key hither is the operation toll when enabling DLSS: if that performance price was aught, DLSS would exist awesome; but instead it'southward a significant drop, and that makes it kinda worthless up against this simpler sharpening implementation.

Plus, Radeon Image Sharpening is vastly more compatible with today's games fifty-fifty with DX11 support missing, the library of supported games is much larger than the small collection for DLSS. It too works at all resolutions, whereas DLSS is restricted to certain resolutions, GPUs, and often quality levels.

Radeon Image Sharpening isn't perfect though. In situations where the image is already sharp at a native resolution, sharpening can lead to an 'artificial' sharpened look, and so in those cases information technology's non worth turning on the feature. It besides doesn't become everything right and in some edge cases can acuminate things it shouldn't. Simply because this is but faking it for next to no operation cost, information technology's hard to complain near a few minor inconsistencies.

Our have is RIS delivers what DLSS couldn't: a uncomplicated, low performance price technique that makes resolution downsampling viable. Equally more gamers get their hands on Navi GPUs, information technology will be interesting to see how broadly Radeon Image Sharpening is adopted and recommended based on practiced results.