Topic-Free Mega Thread - v 1.11.2020

Drolicious · September 25, 2020, 4:00pm

Hahaha, I love LockPickingLawyer, his style of genuinely fun to watch videos that take only a minute of your day should be used by more tubers out there.

Any of you folks managed to get an Ampère card in the midst of all of this launch confusion? Been a hectic few days here on my end, but managed to secure me an ASUS TUF RTX 3090, those are being regarded as some of the better quality 30 series cards so far (yet not amongst the most expensive - though yeah, being Brazilian that did set me back some $2,300 still) models, should arrive sometime over the next few weeks.

Aemony · September 25, 2020, 4:09pm

It’s because those claims traces their origin back years ago, during an entirely different time. Wiki editing as a whole have an issue with outdated statements in an ever-changing environment. We typically don’t enforce references as much on our glossary pages as otherwise it’s usually set in stone, but yes, where applicable they should be provided as often as possible.

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 4:16pm

That’s going to cause stutter. Waiting for VBLANK can lower latency, but you should only use it for that purpose if you have an extremely high framerate without limiting (i.e. CS Go).

Vertun · September 25, 2020, 4:49pm

Hmm the reported latency with Presentmon doesn’t seem to move from no frame limiter to SK limiter unless i enable VBLANK, with VBLANK disabled presentmon reports the same latency as framelimiter disabled

JonasBeckman · September 25, 2020, 6:06pm

Mafia 1 Definitive seem to take well to SpecialK 0.11.0.49 so far.

The lovely developers altered the geometry for the racing course and a certain mission so clearing that with digital keyboard controls is going to require some luck although the game has removed a ton of fail states and conditions so destruction derby is a legitimate method as it turns out.

Hated the prologue mission when that 1920’s F1 type vehicle had to be delivered and returned intact plus the numerous ways to get into problems due to the games focus on realism and then the race itself to where it was eventually patched to be doable without being a perfect sports car racer ha ha.

Other than that yeah it’s Mafia 3 with the Mafia 1 story and a whole ton of tweaks but also the same issues like the wonky artificial intelligence and some sort of mouse acceleration going on.

Found the UI shaders after some tinkering too, makes for some cleaner screen grabs.

Fun game otherwise, wonder if they’ll be able to make a fourth one eventually.
Game loves defaulting to 1920x1080 though, doesn’t save the config file properly and manual editing causes a checksum error they have on there.
(Saves and such do save properly at least just the resolution state but a min res in SpecialK circumvents it.)

EDIT: In the meantime though, import foods!

Of sorts, Lidl here has some fun themed weeks even if Italian is often desert and ice cream or Finish is licorice of all things.

US tends to be focused on various snack dishes though seasonally also some interesting stuff like marinades for grilling and Greek has various meat and pastry dishes.

French has these snail things and cheeses.
British had dark humor with assorted biscuits last time.

EDIT: Hmm perhaps better without the escargot image.

~ Just eat it. ♬

Or how that song went again.

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 6:09pm

That’s why the framerate limiter has a low latency mode and an option to discard late frames.

For low latency, turn on:

Waitable SwapChain
Tearing in DWM

(-) Low Latency
(-) Minimum Latency

The two latency modes in the SwapChain settings are optional.

If you do it right, PresentMon’s going to say 100% of frames were dropped because there’s 0 present latency

I actually have to run the limiter with some of its settings turned off or PresentMon says 0.0 ms.

Which is what prompted me to acquire special test hardware from NVIDIA

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 6:19pm

Speaking of confusing software based on PresentMon…

Ever wish you could go back in time and display late frames when they weren’t late?

That’s what RTSS’s framerate counter looks like in graph form

I’m rendering on 6 different surfaces at once and it’s adding them all together as if they were independent frames.

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 8:30pm

WTF? Anyone else notice when opening the task switcher (alt-tab) that SKIF’s icon flashes from the default placeholder icon in Windows to the one GPUnity created?

No other software does this. I don’t know what I did wrong.

HolyDeath3000 · September 25, 2020, 8:37pm

Have you tried HDR mode with SK b/c in my case it messed up a ton of the bloom the moment I got to the first taxi open world stuff.

JonasBeckman · September 25, 2020, 8:52pm

Unfortunately the lg27gl850(b but that’s just the stands color.) isn’t quite HDR.

~300 - 350 NITS of sorts but a 8-bit panel but as per marketing 10 bit (8+2 FRC / dither.) and no backlight tech.

DCI-P3 and SRGB color gamuts (SRGB locks most of the configs though.) but while it carries a HDR signal if enabled it’s inferior to even the varied HDR400 specifications on simpler panels and full displays.

Solid later 2019 price/performance mid-range display but not without certain trade-offs for being more affordable.

Once the flicker issue (FreeSync2 only?) has been worked out it sounds like the more recent 2020 Samsung Odyssey is nearly a straight upgrade although the 3840x2160 resolution needs a good GPU or reducing some settings. (Unoptimized I mean Ultra to Very High should do. )

Plus it’s a curved display which takes a bit getting used to.
Won’t match the big HDR1000’s like the newest Asus or LG’s and it won’t match the HDR1000 up to I think even 1200+ NIT’s TV panels from Samsung and LG but it’s also not going to cost almost the same as a solid high-end computer system would.

EDIT: HDR is planned for the next display upgrade the way support is improving (Or getting third party improved, works too. ~ ) but for this display adaptive VRR sync and a 120 - 144Hz was the target.

10 bit native panel as a extra but didn’t happen though 8+2 is decent and a step up from 6 or 6+2 though native 8 is slowly becoming the new standard.

EDIT: AMD FreeSync2 or NVIDIA G-Sync could also be utilized and will be a bit of a improved standard and quality increase over Variable Rate Refresh in displays. (Often also of variable quality but nobody writes that bit out. ~)

But the G-Sync module on it’s own while it seems to be good quality is also quite costly.
FreeSync even with AMD’s PremiumPro is also still a bit varied from the (Few but growing.) displays that utilize FreeSync2 so far.

EDIT: Kinda this.

But it’s 3000$
(Also it’s a ultra wide at 3440x1440 and 21:9 is still a bit varied in how well supported it is let alone older games but spec wise and it’ll get better still…possibly costlier too though.)

EDIT: Not sure what the actual response time is either.

Often marketing means gray to gray and a quicker switch or overclock/overdrive response time not black to white or a full switch here so say 6 - 8ms perhaps for the “true” value.
(This is used a lot for 1ms marketed displays.)

HolyDeath3000 · September 25, 2020, 9:07pm

I currently own the Samsung C27HG70 which is HDR 600 panel. But as I stated earlier I ran into some HDR bug with SK. Don’t think any Mafia game so far has done well with HDR mode on. Looked fantastic in initial first part of game. But sadly just exploded bloom way over the top all of a sudden moment I got to starting to drive cab. Mine is 10bit but like yours its 8bit+2FRC. Hits close to 351 levels but does have QLED and Backlight as well. I can’t enable Freesync right now b/c how bad the flicker is with drivers as well.

My old panel was a 6+2 panel so yeah its definitely a step up from that

Mine has Freesync 2.0 as well.

Edit: If I let HDR slider go to max luminance it will reach 601 though. in SK.

GPUnity · September 25, 2020, 9:59pm

Seems fine on my end?

Is there a specific process that triggers your issue?

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 10:00pm

The alt and tab keys, that’s the process

Press, them, look at the task switcher, watch the icon flash.

It only seems to do it on extremely slow computers (i.e. my tablet).

GPUnity · September 25, 2020, 10:03pm

8 bit with dithering/frc is very common, i think it’s used in all consumer grade “10 bit” displays. It’s hard to tell a difference between true 10 bit and good 8+2 bit panel, according to some reviews i’ve checked.

GPUnity · September 25, 2020, 10:04pm

I did test alt-tabbing constantly, even checking the taskbar while doing so, but can’t seem to trigger it.

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 10:11pm

So this is weird…

They’ve got a damn good framerate limiter that can do perfect frame pacing at the wrong rate

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 10:35pm

Clock drift recovery in the last test release of SK was broken, allowing the framerate to go much higher than the set limit after a spike in framerate. (Unrelated to the screenshot above :P).

Here’s an updated release candidate build of SK with the framerate limiter working correctly:

SpecialK64.7z (7.6 MB) SpecialK32.7z (6.3 MB)

Kinda sad to fix that problem, because it nearly always meant faster load screens, lol.

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 11:34pm

This has got to be a pain in the ass, how do you even use the menus in a game that’s only running at 7 FPS? Collecting this data takes patience I know I wouldn’t have.

Ahmlet · September 25, 2020, 11:36pm

thanks, btw any setting for witcher 3? any recommended setting for HDR in witcher 3

Kaldaien · September 25, 2020, 11:38pm

It’s very finicky. In my case there seems to be an NVIDIA driver bug and the driver downclocks my card into power saving mode whenever the window is in the foreground. That makes it hard for me to recommend anything.

It’s truly bizarre, as long as it’s not the foreground window the game runs at full speed, the second it becomes the foreground window, GPU goes into power saving. These games with lots of NVIDIA-only features always do the weirdest things.