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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #198 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-01-23 16:24:24
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Apologies for the lateness of the post - lots of fun and games getting the RTX 5090 review done. As I write this, YouTube is still refusing to clear the upload for monetisation - hilarious.

Still, Rich (ie me), Alex and Oliver are plotting to collude and collaborate tomorrow for DF Direct Weekly #198, where the topics shall inevitably include Microsoft's new Developer (underscore) Direct, the collapse of Sony's games-as-a-service plans and perhaps some RTX 5090 reaction. FF7 Rebirth on PC? Maybe we'll do some impressions there as - unlike other reviewers - we only received code from Square-Enix today.

But is there anything more you'd like to see discussed? Alternatively, do you have any questions to post about the team on the topics mentioned or basically anything else? The stage - or rather the comments box below - is yours.

Files

Comments

Fernando Collazo

Hey DF team! Love your content. Was wondering if you guys think reflex 2 could work great with Frame generation since its main goal is to lower latency even more. Would it introduce more artefacting? Would love to hear your response

Peter Karadimas

Hello Gents! How should NVIDIA 20, 30, and 40 users treat DLSS 4? Should we always be using the new transformer model for upscaling, as well as the old optical flow method for frame generation, or are the new versions strictly better?

Auro

Do you think we could see 1440p output while docked on the switch 2? It isn't a common TV resolution but it would help compared to a 1080p output!

BespokeEP

G’day professional gentleman. Sorry this question is late, but I just rewatched the GTA6 trailer analysis you did and given what we now know about issues with PSSR, especially early iterations, do you think the trailer was actually our first look of a game running on a PS5Pro? At one point John made a comment about “the Blue sky” and during the the recent Cerny TED talks he mentions a “perfect blue sky” early in PSSR’s training… was he talking about GTA6? I’ll let you decide! Rich!! Don’t worry you’re safe. Red rover, red rover, I call Oliver over

Auro

As a 4K DLSS Balanced user I'm hoping the transformer model may allow me to have similar quality to 4K DLSS Performance with greater performance than CNN model DLSS Balanced. What do you guys think about this scenario?

gartenriese

MFG requires 40 fps to work good. This means you're playing games either at sub 40 fps or far above 100 fps. Nothing in between. What do you think about that? In a couple of years, will there be only two classes of people, the ones that play games at 30 fps and the ones that play games at 1000 fps?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

AMD just quietly announced that RDNA4 will be releasing in March. That's despite the fact that warehouses and retail stock rooms in stores around the world have RX 9000 cards right now, and a lot of them. I feel like AMD and their AIBs would not have sent these out now unless they were originally planning on releasing them in January or February, since retailers don't like holding onto stock that they can't sell. My question is - it seems like AMD originally wanted these out around the time Blackwell launched, but something made them change their mind. Would Radeon as a brand be in a better state right now if AMD just stopped caring about Nvidia's release cadence and just followed their own, releasing new GPUs when the hardware and software are both 100% ready? This is what they do with CPUs (for the most part) so why not GPUs? RDNA3 ended up being pretty good in the long run, but it launched with unfinished drivers and issues, not to mention bad pricing, which tainted early reviews and hurt the brand's image. I feel like that's a lot more harmful than just waiting til everything is ready and good pricing can be figured out.

Pomps

Formal salutations to you fine gents! With the long awaited unveiling of the Switch 2, do you think it is likely we'll see Xbox announce games for the platform during their Developer Direct? With recent rumours pointing to some games like the Masterchief collection possibly coming over, I wonder if this is something they can announce now that the system has finally been confirmed as "real".

Massimo Mongiardo

With games like Halo and FF VII Remake rumored for switch 2, wondering what your impossible ports predictions or wishes might be. Cyberpunk on Switch 2? They did Witcher 3 on Switch! Would love to hear your thoughts and thank you for all you do!

Thomas Martinez

Morning DF Gents! You all spent a lot of time covering the failures of Concord and other live service games. I’m honestly grateful that Sony saw the ship sinking before wasting any further time or money. They have some excellent talent which will hopefully get redirected back to making great single-player experiences and maybe some unique, smaller-scale multi-player projects. Do you all have any final thoughts on games as a service for other companies? It seems we have countless failures but every once in a while we get a gem, Rivals being the most recent, but that came at the cost of dethroning the decaying Overwatch 2. Should other publishers follow Sony and steer clear from these games and let the space remain as saturated as it already is? Anywho, stay healthy boys!

Snorlax cat

How do you think next gen will play out? We have seen nvidia shake the market with the transformer model… so do you see Xbox getting next gen earlier by winter 2026 with a cnn model and then ps6 2027 with cnn or both 2027 but Xbox with a transformer model… is it feasible to bring it with amd hardware for next gen or do you see mid gen as more of a place for a new kind of upscale model

TheMightyEthan

Hey DF! How big really are the image improvements in DLSS 4? As someone with a 4090 and 4k 120hz display, but who isn't quite happy with the image quality of DLSS 3.x performance mode, are the image quality improvements in DLSS 4 enough to deliver 3.x quality mode IQ at performance mode framerates? And if so does it eliminate all incentive to upgrade for anyone without a super high refresh rate display that would benefit from MFG? Thanks as always for your insights!

tangy

Long time listener, first time poster here. In the last ten to fifteen years, my best gaming experiences have been with Indie games. Except for last of us on the PS3, nothing in the AAA space has intruiged me as much as Indies have. Return of the obra dinn, hades, Disco Elysium, outer Wilds and many more aa and below games have just delivered better narrative and cool systems. Willingness to try to do something innovative but contained, lesser in graphics but better in artstyle. Not having full open world and thousands of fetch quests that takes a year to complete but crafting a neat story with awesome stories fitting to the experience aaand systems to back it up. - Phew, exposition over - What are your best aa-and-below experiences the last ten to fifteen years? Best regards from Norway

wildwildwesty

Ahoy hoy Founders. While Nintendo hasn't surprised us with the physical form of the Switch 2, could they be planning to utilise Nvidia's technology to push their gameplay mechanics in new ways? Here's my pitch: a new Luigi's Mansion game where you defeat ghosts by manipulating ray-traced light sources and uncover secrets or destroy obstacles in destructible environments. Thoughts?

Zero

Hi Gents! In light of your planned discussion of Sony's live service struggles, I wanted to offer an additional source of information: https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025 A high-profile business analyst did a deep (and lengthy) dive into the current state of the games industry. It lays out many of the problems the industry is facing. Some conclusions aside, the raw data it presents is sound and confirms what many, including you all, have suspected about the industry. Wanted to make sure you all at least had a chance to check it out!

Michael Brown

Hello DF Team! Why are people getting so excited for B$ frames? Like the 5090 looks pretty slick on paper, then you find out to get to its peak performance its going to just create 4 frames out of the ether and pretend that's the same?!?!? Come on DF, speak some sense into them!

Aaron

Curious to hear your thoughts as to why Nintendo opted for a 1080p panel for the Switch 2 as opposed to a spec that would be easier to target, such as 720p or 800p. I have some concerns about this decision, as even my adorable Series S has difficulty consistently reaching 1080p in many games while sustaining a reasonable frame rate. Do you think we’ll actually see very many Switch 2 games hitting 1080p in portable mode?

Having an AI-neurysm

What do FSR4’s seemingly excellent initial impressions mean for the future of PSSR? Does a proprietary “PSSR 2.0” for PS6 make sense in a world where Project Amethyst will likely result in an upscaling solution that works across any future AMD platform?

HelenX

Hello everyone, sorry to hear how awful physically attenting CES sounded lol. I saw a conversation the other day about spider man 2 and it's incredible budget. People were calling it 'basically and asset flip' even though it was an incredibly high effort production. My thought is that, alongside all the claims that game's don't look any better in general is that traditional rendering techniques plateaued at the end of the PS4 generation and that it is only the fully pathtraced raytraced games that can reliably bring the 'wow' true next-gen factor now. Is the incredibly limited scope of Hellblade the exception that proves that rule (idea), or does the game simply disprove it entierly?

Hobobench

Hello fellows! With the 50 series introducing MFG, it is clear that this will be a big part of the future of achieving high performance for lower cost. But what about input latency? Is there a path forward that will give us the generated frames along with reduced input lag? Years ago I believe Linus did a vid on asynchronous reprojection, I am curious if these two technologies might be able to be combined in some meaningful ways. Love to hear your thoughts!

FrametimeSommelier

Hi DF Crew! With Steam OS now making its way to third-party devices, what are the chances we'll never see a Steam Deck 2? Was the Steam Deck just a cunning part of Gabe Newell's master plan to subtly infiltrate Microsoft's pool of PC and handheld gamers? There are, after all, 1.86 billion PC gamers in the world. Could this move to third-party PC handhelds be just the opening act, with Valve gearing up to challenge Microsoft in the DIY Gaming PC market next? And if that happens, will Valve even bother with hardware anymore or stick to their software roots? What do you think, are they about to stage the ultimate plot twist in PC gaming history?

Mr Fujisawa

Hey DF gents! A small conundrum! What is better image quality wise - 4K using DLLS Performance with no frame gen at 120fps, or 4K DLSS quality (or no DLSS) but using Frame gen, again at 120fps? I'll admit from a couch it can be hard to tell the difference, but presumably there will be different artifacts between these 2 setups (and maybe other trade offs). Is this something you have looked into, and is there a more desirable choice between the two?

Rich

It's still a 30-40% improvement in overall shader compute without MFG. To say peak performance is not improved is dishonest.

trent howell

Ahoy DF! Long time listener, first time caller. Not really a 5090/DLSS4 question, but in the same realm: What is it going to take until we get artifact free versions of the current VFX? RT, upscaling, framegen are all well and truly here with us, and are darned good generally...but have problems in the details. Is it just iteration and a couple of generations more of GPU power, or are artifactless versions of these technologies impossible?

Michael Brown

And that's where the focus should be I think. Native performance. We all know ai upscaling can double, triple and now quadruple frames. I just think that AI frames are kinda B$. :) keep up the awesome work, I love your videos and I got my students hooked on your channel!

Rich

The new transformer features of DLSS4 are also going to be available on rtx40 cards (and older), so they would only provide an incentive to upgrade if they run considerably slower on non 50 series GPUs.

Mr Bespoke

Hi DF Crew! Do you guys with your busy schedule have anything planned for the 200th DF Direct? Thanks and keep up the awesome work!

Daz

Hey team DF, firstly thank you Rich for my assimilation profile pic over on bluesky! Secondly, with India Jones ranking outside of the top 10 games in it's first week, do you think that being a game pass title has harmed the release as it seems I've hardly seen any marketing/promotion for it in mainstream media here in the UK, and will Avowed follow in its footsteps as I didn't even know it existed till last week! Will the playstation release of Indi get it the recognition it deserves? Keep up the good work exclamation point, exclamation point.

Rich

Some games can absolutely work well with FG from 30hz - not every game is a fast action twitch shooter. Flight Simulator is a perfect example, most movement in that game is slow and latent anyway, starting from 30hz works perfectly well there. Many people enjoyed 30hz games for decades long before frame generation, let's not pretend the input latency of 30hz can never be acceptable.

Rich

According to the recent DF interview with Bryan Catanzaro, DLSS4 should be strictly better in every respect for frame generation. The only real question is performance (eg a tradeoff for quality vs framerste on older rtx30 and 20 GPUs.

TheMightyEthan

That's what I mean, does the fact that transformer model is giving me image quality improvements on my current card, allowing me to run lower DLSS presets and still maintain image quality, mean that I don't actually need the extra performance of the newer cards?

gartenriese

I didn't mean to say that 30 fps is unacceptable. I just find it curious that there is a growing empty gap between the possible fps ranges. How will this be represented in bar charts, for example?

Sloth

Flush with cash from reaching 1.44 million subscribers, Richard decides to launch the third YouTube channel in his media empire: Digital Foundry +1. Fronted by his protégé, Ricky Leadlater, the channel covers the same content as Digital Foundry - but with a one-year timelag. This means the DF+1 team gets to cover games with the benefit of a year's worth of patching and updates. For example, they are currently prepping their first-looks at Avatar, Robocop and Persona 3 Reload. If you take up Ricky's offer to join the DF+1 team, you might no longer be at the cutting edge of technology, but your soul will be soothed by no longer being exposed to early performance issues. Digital Foundry’s HR department are impatiently waiting your decision – do you stay with DF or move to the DF+1 team?

sj33 (Jake)

Hi all, I think frame generation is an excellent technology, but the big flaw to me is that it only works as a multiplier - 2x, 3x, 4x etc. I'd argue that most people aren't looking to double or treble their frame rate, but instead bring their frame rate up to match their refresh rate. Somebody somebody using frame gen to get their e.g. 110fps game up to 144fps would have to go down to a lower 'native' frame rate when using frame generation. It's a big flaw in the technology. What methods could be taken to use frame gen to simply match a user's refresh rate and essentially make VRR unnecessary?

Spodlude

Hello gents. We haven’t seen many (if any?) handhelds with VRR OLED screens yet. My understanding is that the self-emissive nature of the pixels results in flicker during extremes of frame rate variance? Do you think the switch 2 has a VRR display and hence this is why Nintendo have seemingly stuck with an LCD over an OLED for the launch of the switch 2?

Marc Reis

I am especially interested in how the Ai generative frame generation and of course the further new technologies integrated fair. Since this is the actual new benefit this generation. Sure the "old" raw power has some value still, but as it goes in IT, it's becoming far less significant.

Spodlude

Hello gents, if the switch 2’s display is 1080p and without patching it runs backwards compatible games at portable 720p max, will the image have scaling issues or blur? I’d like to hear your ideas about what Nintendo could/should do to remedy this other than patch the games?

FrametimeSommelier

With great interest, I watched and enjoyed Alex's DLSS4 interview with Bryan Catanzaro. I'm very intrigued by the upcoming changes to super resolution, frame generation, and ray reconstruction, especially since many of the improvements will also be available for older RTX generations. However, in the interview, it sounded like these picture quality improvements come with a significantly higher tensor core processing cost (Bryan mentioned optimized tensor cores with Blackwell). As someone who plans to stick with the RTX 4080 card for a couple more years, how worried should I be that the DLSS4 improvements may not be worth the performance cost on older cards? Will the RTX 4080 or other older RTX cards be able to handle these updates without a significant performance hit, or should I brace for impact?

Ryan Luker

Hopefully they leverage the upscaling tech / patents to do a nice 720p->1080p but this is also Nintendo we are talking about so I wouldn't be surprised if they just did linear upscaling :sweat-face:.

Ryan Luker

> Nintendo opted for a 1080p panel for the Switch 2 as opposed to a spec that would be easier to target Maybe related to feedback that the Switch was a little small for some folks (especially the joycons). This is Nintendo iterating on the feedback folks gave probably.

Alex Kolstad

While Microsoft was in the process of acquiring Activision, they made a 10 year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles the "same day as Xbox". The Switch 2's performance is forecast to be similar to that of a base PS4, but likely with stronger CPU performance. Seeing that the level of performance achieved on base 8th generation consoles for Black Ops 6 is less than ideal, how can we expect Activision to bring a performant version of new Call of Duty games to the Switch 2?

Ryan Luker

Hello DF gents! With more and more games requiring a Ray Tracing GPU of some sort, what kind of gameplay specific changes could we see in the future that are enabled by having the Ray Tracing as a minimum floor for all? I found one interesting example from the upcoming Doom: The Dark Ages where they talk about the gameplay changes / improvements that are possible! https://tech4gamers.com/doom-the-dark-ages-ray-tracing-fps/

Spodlude

Hello gents, whilst I appreciate cyberpunk 2077 is decked out with all the latest Nvidia features hence making it a must test for your 5090 review, does it frustrate you somewhat to be demonstrating the GPU via a game that most likely 5090 buyers (“bleeding edge enthusiasts”) likely already played and finished two GPU generations ago? I posit that many 5090 buyers will reopen their 100 hour plus cyberpunk save, remark “ooo that looks nice” to self validate their purchase and then promptly move onto something newer yet ironically less demanding on the GPU. I do recognise the counter argument however that it’s this very reason that cyberpunk provides a good point of reference for many potential buyers!

Thomas Trala

Hey DF Team! What’s the plan for DF Direct 200? Will it be a live stream or something else to get the viewers involved?

tod weitzel

Pretend you are a console game developer, but you have a passive aggressive relationship with whoever is making the PC port of your console game. What justifiable decision should you make in your code that would cause the most trouble for the PC port?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

Switch 2 will be around a base PS4 in raw rasterization performance but it's going to blow the PS4 away in capability because of its modern architecture and features, and DLSS. Not to mention the better CPU and IO throughput.

Maelstrom

It's been 2 years since AMD first "unveiled" chiplet GPUs and they're still nowhere to be seen on the consumer GPU market. With GPUs running up against the current limitations of hardware, might parallelization be the way of the future? (I know apple recently made a GPU that's essentially 2 pieces of silicon duct taped together) Or does AMD's zero fanfare and zero chiplet RX 9000 reveal suggest that future may be more challenging than it seems?

Matt_Rant

Some brief analysis of the Xbox Dev trailers would be awesome. I’d also love to know if DLSS4 DLLs can be copied into games from a few years ago to get the improved image quality both with and without frame gen. I’m particularly interested in Sackboy, where the DLSS smear artifacts are pretty distracting to my eyes.

Crashpad

Any thoughts on a potential doom the dark ages switch 2 port?

yogi

Hello everyone, does the new transformers upscaling model for DLSS improve DLDSR? I'm a big fan of DLDSR for older games like Arkham Knight, so any improvements would be very welcome

yogi

What games do you think would particularly benefit from being ported to switch 2?

TIE VR

Gents at DF , with DLSS four times framegen being great for 4k players, I wish we could get a version that works for Virtual Reality. As effectively pcvr games must run smoothly at 90 or 120 fps pushing 4k resolutions minimum for a good experience. So, naturally it would be great to be able to use the DLSS frame gen magic. Do you expect some progress in that front , ie a version of DLSS that works well for vr ?

GenerativeJake

Hello Gents. I wonder what you think the impact of new AI features are on game development and the ultimate quality of the games produced? On the PC side especially we have seen how difficult it seemingly is to get a good quality PC port out the door without significant issues compared to those on fixed platforms like consoles. With so many new features and bespoke ML libraries from AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and now Sony, do you worry this will continue to make PC development more complicated and ultimately result in more unstable ports without significant financial and time investment from the developers?

Nuwa

The new Doom the Dark Ages trailer looks awesome, it visually looks like Doom Eternal but textures, models, lighting, and effects looks superior than what was possible on PS4/XBOXONE But it seems according to the Steam requirements, it is going to require RT capable hardware, do yall think performance should be comparable to Indy?

Alex’sRayTracedBottom

Lads! Now that the 50 series is here and you have had some hands on experience with the new transformer model vs the old CNN model. What type of jelly do you put on your PB&J?

FrametimeSommelier

this is not supposed to be an answer but an uneducated comment to further the discussion: Isn't VR SpaceWarp something similar to Frame Gen already used on VR head sets? I believe when you use Quest 3 with Virtual Desktop you can turn on SpaceWarp which is a VR feature that interpolates between frames to create a smoother VR experience. But than again, the new Reflex 2 feature is also sometimes compared to VR SpaceWarp, since both share a similar approach. Seems like it is all getting pretty convoluted with all those fancy software and AI based graphics features. Oh yeah, and there is an upscaler as well, called Snapdragon Game Super Resolution (SGSR).

DaJaCo (Dan)

Happy Half Fortnight Lads, I noticed from some posts on Famiboards that Lexar China is releasing a 1TB Micro SD Express (4 times the capacity of current sandisk and samsung ones). I had been worried that capacity might be a major tradeoff to achieve Express speeds in the Micro SD form factor. Lets hope higher capacity cards are not obscenely overpriced, and that some manufacturer releases a 2TB Micro SD Express card (The current max capacity of non-express cards).. but more broadly, how much do you think Nintendo is going to be leaning on SD Express vs the game cart itself? Is there a danger 3rd party ports scrimp on cart capacity?

Michael Pearn

Hey DF chaps, just wondering if someone will volunteer and take a look at the new Ninja Gaiden 2 remaster on PS5, Xbox and PC? Are there PS5 Pro improvements, are there Lumen puddles?! Thanks!

Xbox Ally Has Gone ROGue!

How's the stair scene plays for the newly released Ninja Gaiden 2 Black? Are we seeing a not-so-glorious return of massive framerate drops too?

Someguyperson

I want to say a good number of games have an actual resolution of 540p on the Switch in portable mode, so those might look good with integer scaling.

Someguyperson

According to Digitimes, the Switch 2 will launch in the first half of this year. Do you think it will come before or after July?

Someguyperson

You measured a 31% increase in the 4K performance of the 5090 when compared to the 4090, which is relatively close to the amount of floating point performance difference (26.8%). This result seems very in-line with my expectations, so why is everyone whining & complaining about the 5090?

Someguyperson

Not to beat a dead horse here, but Rich, are you considering changing the placement of your microphone for the most pleasurable audio experience?

Someguyperson

Do you guys feel that frame generation is more of a performance feature, a monitor compatibility feature, or something else? I feel it enables people to use 4k panels with extremely high refresh rates for smoother looking content devoid of persistance blur, but it's not really a "performance" win per say. What's your take on it?

Bulbous_Bow

Good Evening Gentlemen. You are all looking fully path traced and upscaled to perfection, as per usual, I see. However, I wondered if it was necessary for us to discuss the parameters by which rival upscaling technologies should be judged? It struck me as well as a few of the commenters below Oliver and Alex’s Jedi Survivor video as surprising given what we’d just seen and heard from the video’s analysis that DLSS was the ‘clear winner’ when PSSR was clearly sharper in motion. Even more surprising still, having seen this stark improvement over its previous implementation, was Alex’s conclusion that PSSR might be pointless on the basis that FSR 4 looks good. It seems to me we’re on only the second version of PSSR, and having debuted with some stunning looking titles (Demon’s Souls, The Last of Us, Stellar Blade, etc) it’s now being tidied up nicely on the scenarios it previously struggled with. Moreover, as far as a I know FSR 4 won’t be compatible with PS5 Pro - which I imagine should remain relevant to the general consumer for the next 4-5 years - and indeed may not even look as good as it does without AMD being able to leverage Sony’s research. So it seems to me that the point of PSSR is quite clear at least for the next few years (who knows how it will compare to FSR by the time the PS6 is a mature platform?) and it may even excel at what many would consider an upscaler’s most important task: producing high image quality in motion.

Iuri Grangeiro

If latency is one half of performance, shouldn't like-for-like comparisons include framerate AND latency? Seems weird we switched to including 1% lows because they represent fluidity better but not latency, which represents latency perfectly. Cheers exclamation point!

Ryan Luker

I vaguely remember seeing somewhere, that Indy was ID Tech 7.5 and the new doom is version 8? Doesn't mean much given the fact the engine is not used outside of Bethesda (so we don't have great comparisons until Doom comes out) but it probably signifies another graphical leap 🤔 (Alex would know more about the ray tracing in the Doom trailer and whether there is new improvements over Indy?).

8BitVoxel

Hi DF gents, with Doom the Dark Ages now confirmed to have the "Full Fat" RT experience on PC with path tracing etc, I hope to be there with a 5090 albeit minus a kidney! I'm now curious however to what impact this will have a PS5 "Professional". Unlike Indie that isn't on PS5 or Pro atm, DOOM is launching on these platforms simultaneously. With id's optimisation mastery, what are your thoughts on a possible defining gap in visual presentation on the Pro console compared to the amateur current gen consoles?

CABBAC

My question is.... How are you all?

Prestonality

Evening gents. I know there's some upcoming DLSS4 deep dives which I'm looking forward to. Having played with Cyberpunk 2077 and the DLSS4 update, I gotta say I'm quite impressed. The new Transformer model DLSS Performance looks like DLSS Quality on the old CNN model! My question is, will you be testing the visual and performance impact of the new Transformer model on lower end cards like the 2060 and perhaps the new Ray Reconstruction as well? Also, what about the impact of the new Frame Generation on say a 4060? Thanks and keep up the good work!

Alan

Hi Guys, Apparently some gaming corpos think GTA6 will be $100 and this will "save gaming" because it will allow others to follow with $100 being the new normal for games! I can see GTA6 being $100 as it will be a huge game, but it would be hard for others to follow surely?

Neotokyouk

PS5 Pro VRR micro stutter bug- why is this not being talked about? Huge flaw with this £700 system that is effecting many different users, most notably in Pro enhanced games with unlocked framerates on 120hz+ screens. Will you guys be looking in to it?

Noah Pancratz

Hello my DF Dandies, I'm curious to know your thoughts on the leaked Switch 2 motherboard. Is it possible there is custom hardware attached that we still don't know about, possibly with some kind of specialized function? Perhaps a specialty chip that can perform dedicated hardware upscaling (like those featured in smart TVs) in conjunction with whatever DLSS flavor Nintendo uses? This could help reduce the CPU, GPU or CUDA core workloads. Or could there be some other specialized hardware features that we still have no idea about yet? It sort of irks me when people say authoritatively that we already know all there is to know about the hardware. Even if they're somewhat predictable at times, Nintendo does seem to consistently keep us on our toes, which I personally don't appreciate as a non-ballerina. Again, I would just like to hear your thoughts. Thanks for what your team does to keep us informed and entertained. First time questioner, long time Bespoker. Cheers!

liosan

Do you guys already have a rig in mind that’s equivalent to the PS5 Pro? I’d like to see what it could do with Spider-Man 2, as I was pretty disappointed by the Pro patch. It really looked like Insomniac was hyping it up to include RT shadows, but instead we got RT ambient occlusion and “key light” shadows, which even as a pixel peeper myself, can’t notice at all in real gameplay. Could you see if this PS5 Pro equivalent PC is capable of running RT reflections and shadows at 40ish FPS to match the PS5 Pro’s Fidelity mode?

Pomps

I would double dip on Elden ring if they bring it to the switch 2 tbh

Plasma4Life

Good'ay Gents, with the release of the 5090, would you say that 5k ray traced gaming is here? That was not a typo, I posit that at 5k on a 27 inch monitor that it would effectively be Retina display gaming. What do you all think?

Salman

Hello DF crew If you use your one week time machine, would you say the RTX 5090 is the GPU to get for a 4K 240Hz life?

Watershed

not really a question for DFDirect but would you guys be able to find the time to cover "Lonely Moutains: Snow Riders" on PC, Steam Deck, PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X|S. it's the only game ive seen that exposes resolution options, refresh rate selection, and other graphics settings on consoles in a way typically seen only on PC.

Watershed

Hello, do you guys forsee traditional game AI frameworks like behavior trees and finite state machines being replaced by neural-network powered approaches? Is reshaping CPU-based AI tasks into lightweight matrix-friendly frameworks simply too ambitious for current hardware? I would love to see what things like adaptive AI behavior would look like by taking advantage of gpu components like tensor cores. Thanks!

Taggen86

Quite dissapointed with the 5090 performance vs the 4090, especially in RT. Expected much more in cyberpunk and Indy. Does it perform better than what was shown in the review when using dlss (and especially the transformer model)?

Taggen86

Do we see a larger performance leap for the 5090 over the 4090 when using the dlss transformer model (which I assume that we will mainly use from now on)

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hey DF Crew, with upcoming OLEDs hitting 4,000 nits on a 10% window are they finally bright enough for our brightness aficionado - Oliver? Have a great weekend, folks!

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hey gentlemen, if someone owns a 40-series card (4070 and above) but hasn’t got a 240Hz monitor (and is not planning to buy one in a couple of years) do you think they should wait until the 60-series? New FG looks cool but I don’t think it makes any sense to use it if your base fps are below 60. Cheers!

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Good morning to all of you! Do you think we’ll see an Intel ML-boosted framegen this year? You discussed it back in the day but it feels like if they don’t show it soon, they may miss the bus? Cheers!

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Dear DF, while Microsoft strategy might be a mystery to all of us, do you think they make some of the best games in terms of design and art direction this generation? Hi-Fi Rush, South of Midnight, Expedition 33, to name a few. Cheers!

Perfect_Organism

Not sure how embargo’s look on this but any whisperings on how ultra performance targeting 4K looks on DLSS 4?

Christian Büschel

Hey DF! CP2077 seems to get all the new NVIDIA features as soon as they are available. However, the game still uses old versions of FSR and XESS, and it took a long time for FSR Frame Generation to get implemented. Are NVIDIA features such as DLSS easier to implement depending on the game engine, or is there another explanation? Also, with DLSS 4 getting a quality uplift, is there a reason to even use quality or balance mode anymore at 1440p or 4K?

Jiruuino

Hello gents, the fact that we can now run video games while only rendering 1 out of 16 pixels made me wonder, which fraction of rendered pixels contain the most information? Say you want to boost a native 4k60Hz game to 4k240Hz. Do you expect to get a better image quality from dlss perf+2xFG or DLSS 4x FG? Thanks!

Michael Pearn

Praise be to John in the year of our lord 2025

LeoDaWeeb

Hello DF Team! With Doom: The Dark Ages requiring Ray-Tracing-capable hardware, we're seeing the same discourse that took place a few months ago with Indiana Jones, with people claiming before the game's launch that its seemingly "heavy" requirements were unfounded and a sign of poor optimization. Even though the game turned out just fine, many people still remain resistant to the idea of a Ray-Tracing-Only game. You’d think that after 6 years, developers would have successfully sold the idea of fully ray-traced games to consumers. Why do you think that hasn’t happened yet? Is it because developers haven’t created anything compelling enough to capture the attention of gamers, or is it that performance still isn’t fully there on the hardware side? Interested to hear your opinions on this!

hobx

Hey guys, any chance of a path tracing video with the 5080/5090s? It’s hard to tease out that data from your review.

David Ruppelt

Probably not, but I would like to hear hard numbers on what brightness is deemed necessary by Oliver.

Abir Chowdhury

👋🏾 G’day Digital Foundrymen, A few months ago, John made a passing comment about mouse movement feeling better on Windows at 120Hz than 144Hz. 👀 Could John or Alex, please expand on this? Should we be running our monitors at refresh rates that are multiples of 60Hz even if they can go higher? (E.g., 120Hz on a 144Hz capable screen) 🤔 Thanks in advance! Abir from Melbourne, Australia 🤙🏾

David Ruppelt

The speed of DLSS upscaling seems to linearly scale with the amount of pixels. 5k vs 4k is +77% pixels but 5090 vs 4090 is only about +30% faster. The upscaling will probably take 30-40% more time. To get the same frametimes, you will probably have to lower the native res / change the upscaling factor, and thus get worse image quality. If you think the 4090 does raytraced gaming not just barely but comfortably, than the answer to your question is yes. I think even the 5090 is quite weak for proper raytraced gaming at 4k, so 5k is only for "cinematic experiences" and nothing fast paced. I'd love to be proven wrong as I'd like to upgrade to 6k 32" asap.

HelenX

A late question and an etiquette breaking 2nd question at that. Would Nvidia have been better of using all that die area for the 6000 extra cuda cores in the 5090 for RT and Tensor Cores instead. I feel like my 4090 has all the traditional rendering power i will need until the ps6 but I still yearn and hunger for better ray tracing performance. Aren't most potential 5090 buyers, the gamers at least looking for the same focus on RT?

wildwildwesty

I think you answered your own question ;) I have a 4070Ti with a 1440p 144hz monitor which is a good match with standard FG. I will wait for 60 series to upgrade and maybe go to 4k 120hz+

FrametimeSommelier

I think it doesn't matter for frame caps when using VRR, but if you use Vsync (and not VRR) to lock to a certain fps limit then I believe it should be a factor of the max refresh rate of the monitor (not multiples of 60). In case of a 240hz monitor is should be 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120 or 240. On a 144hz monitor it would be 36, 48, 72 or 144. But take this with a grain of salt, because I'm only 95% certain. LOL

FrametimeSommelier

Assassins Creed Shadows is also going to be a Ray-Tracing-Only game. Seems it's getting rather normal going forward.

FrametimeSommelier

I think he is worried about overall brightness and that is even on those 4000nits 10% peak still way lower than LCDs. I have a very bright living room with skylights. An OLED wouldn't be bright enough for day time TV watching. On the other hand, our bed room never gets very bright and most TV watching or gaming on it will happen at night anyway. That is a perfect use case even with current brightness TVs. But in my opinion HDR looks much better on a not as bright OLED than on a much brighter LCD.

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

I really I asked my question for the broader audience as there might be people on YT wondering if they should upgrade. I’ve got a similar setup, with 4070TiS and an UW 1440p monitor and I’m not looking to upgrade now :)

digitalfoundry

More likely 2160p for 4K screens but obviously the games will be running at much lower resolutions.

Alfonso

Hi DF! Lately I’ve seen some online discourse (mostly YouTube videos, but also some game journalists and streamers) that heavily criticise the over reliance on DLSS/FSR to hit FPS targets in games, rather than doing “real” optimisation. Could you please ellaborate on that? Do you share that stance? Isn’t it, at the end of the day, taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the hardware vendors? Many thanks for all the fantastic content. Keep it up! Alfonso (Cambridge, UK)

Massimo Mongiardo

IKR, if they brought dark souls 3, sekiro and elden too I'd probably play them all again

JakeTheJake

Howdy Gents! My question for you guys is pretty simple, have hardware manufactures “lost the plot”? As Rich has mentioned multiple times, it’s becoming more and more expensive to produce more powerful hardware. The peak of this is that 5090 price tag. For me though even the reaction to the PS5 pro price, as well as Steam hardware surveys, shows a complete disconnect between the modern, average consumers needs and wants from hardware. I understand for a long time HW companies sold their devices entirely on these advancements. But not only have the returns diminished, but younger audiences frankly care less and less about that stuff. Honestly, so do I. Especially since something like Frame Gen kinda misses the point of higher frame rates for me. I guess what I’m getting at here is; Was Nintendo in the right to give up This chase and focus on unique HW rather than powerful?

FrametimeSommelier

The problem is that we're getting close to the physical limits of shrinking semiconductor process nodes. Back in the day, every generation saw the transistor density double, leading to either double the performance, the same performance at half the power, or a mix of both (remember Moore's Law?). Nowadays, transitioning to a new process node no longer doubles the density. The steps from node to node are becoming incrementally smaller. However, as the processes get smaller, they also become more expensive. This time around, Nvidia didn’t even bother with a new process node. Blackwell is using the same 4n (5nm) process as Ada Lovelace. It seems like they aim to move to a smaller node with the next generation, as there have been rumors about Samsung's 3nm process. So, for now, chip companies are thinking outside the box, seeking ways to improve performance without shrinking transistors. This is where DLSS, Frame Generation, and other AI tools come into play. Simply making the chip bigger isn’t feasible, as it would significantly raise costs and reduce yields (the chip in the 5090 is already gigantic). The Infinity Cache on AMD's X3D CPUs is an example of such an approach, where they strive to get more performance out of an existing node. So...these are the times we're living in.