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The Difference Between AMD FidelityFX & Nvidia Freestyle

AmazingAveryAmazingAvery Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
edited July 2019 in Hardware
So we've all heard of RTX ON and RTX OFF.... Time is upon us to start to look at FidelityFX ON / OFF

Recently at E3 AMD introduced a couple of new features and proposed them as selling points along with the new 5000 series of cards that come out on Sunday 7th July - Radeon Image Sharpening and FidelityFX.

During AMDs E3 presentation it was stated that AMD’s new Fidelity software was needed for Unity’s engine to render graphics at next-generation GPU resolutions while maintaining good performance and quality. FidelityFX is actually software that can be run on all current gen AMD cards including the new ones that are coming. The nice thing about it is that it is an open source software kit. That software is actually called "CAS" - Contrast Adaptive Sharpening and FidelityFX is just the toolkit that CAS comes in.

CAS, as defined by AMD, "is a sharpening tool used specifically for upscaling graphics". It sharpens images but it claims to be able to minimize aliasing and artifacts without affecting your hardware’s performance in a big way. So you know when you flip on AA or Post Processing in game and you see a hit in your FPS; AMD is claiming that CAS is a better implementation of exactly that.Devs will be able to build their games with the CAS feature to further improve anti-aliasing as it is already. Unity, as stated at E3 will be one of those devs.

Nvidia Freestyle on the other hand is a bunch of post-processing filters for gamers to use. For example, you could use it to take away blue light from games or increase sharpness. When the reviews of the 5000 cards drop over the next week or so we should see some mention of FidelityFX.

The big difference between the two technologies is that AMD’s FidelityFX is a software toolkit containing CAS. CAS is a feature that devs can build into their games to improve sharpness quality at higher resolutions, with minimal drawback on performance. 

Nvidia’s Freestyle is applied by a Nvidia’s GeForce software (propriety) to a game after the game is already running. It's just like applying filters to games graphics. So it can be useful but it different. 
Nvidia states -
"a way for you to personally customize a game’s appearance through the application of real-time post-processing filters. With Freestyle’s options you can be more creative with your games, adding a retro war-themed filter for your favorite FPS, for example, or enhancing color and contrast to make a game look more photorealistic. All of Freestyle’s functions are easily applied through an in-game overlay, accessed by pressing “Alt+F3” in supported titles. There are 15 available filters, 38 different settings, and many possible combinations, enabling you to create a truly unique look for your gameplay with just a few clicks"

Bethesda's Rage 2 recently offered the ability for FidelityFX as a toggle. The thing with FidelityFX is that in Rage 2 it is a feature effect offered to both users of AMD and Nvidia cards, so non exclusive. Early indications aren't that great unfortunately. It seems to be a pretty subtle effect.

Here is a video of a user comparing - 



And some of their screenshots -




So is this a gimmick? we'll have to wait and see from more games that come with it. One is supposed to be the new Borderlands which should be interesting. Personally I don't see much night and day differences but there is some there for sure.
I'd hope to see in forthcoming reviews some comparisons between Nvidia and 4K with DLSS and 1440p with post process AA and FidelityFX.



Comments

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    I'm very skeptical of the utility of rendering a game at a lower resolution and then using some fancy way to upsample it.  You can't reliably fill in details that aren't there, and rendering all of the pixels is always going to be better than computing some of them and trying to guess at the rest.  Algorithms that can do a respectable job of filling in details are going to be more expensive than just rendering it properly in the first place.

    That's not a difference between Nvidia and AMD.  I'm fine with post-processing effects that start by having all of the details available and just try to smooth out jagged edges or stuff like that.  You can do post-processing effects in drivers to systematically shift colors or something like that, which might make a game more to a particular user's liking even if it's not what the game designers intended their game to look like.  But don't try to fill in details that fundamentally aren't there, as too many things can go wrong.
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383
    I have to admit, I am not certain what any of those things do.
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