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The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux

472 points · 97 comments · speckx

  1. throwawayffffas · · focus · HN ↗
    I got a r9 285 in 2020 something while the crypto frenzy was still eating up all the gpus. It was 6 years old, got it for like 60 bucks if I remember correctly, best purchase ever, I got to play gta V at 60fps again.

    Try to remember back to 2015 the graphics were not that bad. 4k performance was poor but for 1080p 60fps on pretty much anything.

    1. ahartmetz · · focus · HN ↗
      4K is kind of pointless for gaming anyway, IMO. I've got a 32" 4K 165 Hz OLED screen and I much prefer 1080p at 165 Hz over 4K at <= 60 Hz and a pegged GPU. I don't really see pixels either way. 4K is nice for text, though!
      1. kadoban · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah, IMO more people should do 1440p or 1080p, it's _way_ easier to drive and cheaper and it looks great for gaming.
      2. LaurensBER · · focus · HN ↗
        4k works great when combined with FSR. On a 9070 GPU the frametime cost of FSR 4 is around 2 msec so you can just render the game at 1080P, upscale to 4k.

        I usually play like this, it gives a very sharp image at 120-180W with a barely audible fan.

        1. ahartmetz · · focus · HN ↗
          Frankly it looks fine already and I have no appetite for dealing with that stuff on Linux. I do not like 720p on 1080p screens FWIW, so it's not like I don't care about image quality at all. I guess a 2x scaling has no ugly, irregular scaling artifacts and it helps that OLED pixels aren't perfect rectangles. Plus, of course, 1080 is more than 720.
          1. LaurensBER · · focus · HN ↗
            FSR 4/DLSS/Xess is something else than a simple spatial image based scaler though.

            If you haven't tried machine learning based upscalers do give it a try! The newest generation (DLSS 4.5/FSR 4.1) are in general preferred by users over a native image since they provide a far superior way of native AA.

            AI based frame-gen is also very good. 4k/120 Hz (1080p/60 FPS rendered) is very doable on mid-range cards these days.

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