We leave this at the default 33% in Global Settings, but you can tweak it on a by-game basis - lower will roughen edges, higher will blur the image. The 'DSR - Smoothness' option affects how much blur is applied to the image, offsetting any artifacting that may occur as a result of the forcefully downsampled resolution. The performance hit in this case was considerable however, knocking down the framerate from 75 to 30. Everything in the image - from the painting of the gorilla to the flower in front - pops much more.
#NVIDIA ALTTAB RUNS SMOOTHER THAN FOCUS 1080P#
These two images above from Dishonored 2 show a clear difference in texture fidelity on a 1080p display between no DSR and 4x DSR (4k, in other words). By ticking the boxes in 'DSR - Factors', you unlock higher resolutions for your games (so 1.75x and 4x on a 1080p display will unlock 1440p and 4k resolutions respectively).Įnable DSR - Factors under 'Global Settings', then go to your in-game resolution menu and you’ll see the higher resolutions listed. DSRĭSR, or Dynamic Super Resolution, is one of the most ingenious tricks added to Nvidia’s Control Panel in recent years. So it’s best to compare the NVCP with in-game AF methods (if there are any), and decide for yourself which works best. NVCP’s anisotropic filtering can work better than in-game AF settings, but this isn’t guaranteed, and other times it’s of identical quality (The Witcher 3 and F.E.A.R being cases in point). Only use this if you believe that AF is having a negative impact on game performance. Looking at the list of NVCP’s 3D settings, you might also spot ‘Texture filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization’, which can improve performance when you have AF switched on at a small cost in filtering quality. With 16x AF, it retains its nice crunchy texture much further into the distance. With AF switched off, it’s just a few feet before the path’s textures become murky (marked by the red line). Look at the path in these two shots from The Witcher 3. This is ostensibly done to improve performance, but these days your average GPU should be able to handle 16x anisotropic filtering with little trade-off.
It’s a bit like being short-sighted, but specifically for surfaces at angles. The less texture filtering you have, the shorter the distance at which textures become blurred. In first- and third-person games, you spend a lot of time looking at walls and floors at oblique angles, with the given surface stretching off into the distance. So if we don’t mention a particular option, just stick with its default settings. Many of the 3D settings in NVCP just don’t work universally enough or have a tangible enough impact to recommend. ‘Optimal power’ is a good balance between performance and power. It’s overkill, and bad for the longevity of your card. You may also be tempted to crank ‘Power management mode’ up to ‘maximum performance’, but this will make your GPU run loud and hot at its max clock speeds when gaming.