UL Benchmarks has announced that it has added a Tier 2 Variable-Rate Shading benchmark test in 3DMark. In case you aren’t aware of, Variable-Rate Shading (VRS) is a new DirectX 12 feature that lets game developers improve performance by selectively reducing the level of detail in parts of the frame where it’s unlikely to be noticed.
Shading rate refers to the number of pixel shader operations called for each pixel. Higher shading rates improve accuracy but are more demanding for the GPU. Lower shading rates improve performance at the cost of visual fidelity.
With Variable-Rate Shading, a single pixel shader operation can be applied to a block of pixels, for example shading a 4×4 block of pixels with one operation rather than 16 separate operations.
By applying the technique carefully, VRS can deliver a big performance boost with little impact on visual quality. With VRS, games can run at higher frame rates, in a higher resolution, or with higher quality settings.
There are two tiers of VRS support in DirectX. With Tier 1, developers can specify a different shading rate for each draw call. Tier 2 adds more flexibility and control by allowing different shading rates within each draw call.
In 3DMark’s new Tier 2 test, lower shading rates are used in areas where there is less contrast between neighboring pixels, for example, areas in shadow or with fewer details.
The 3DMark VRS feature test runs in two passes. VRS is disabled on the first pass of the test to provide a baseline for comparison. Variable-Rate Shading is enabled for the second pass. The test then reports the average frame rate for each pass and calculates the performance gained with VRS.
The VRS feature test is available as a free update for 3DMark Advanced Edition and for 3DMark Professional Edition customers with a valid annual license.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
I saw a shading rate option in Metro Exodus, always thought it was just some weird proprietary name for an internal res slider, so it is basically a res slider but for shaders, going under 1:1 ratio makes the game blurry and this is very noticeable, this is something normal nothing groundbreaking, ugly = performance, nice = fidelity, or i’m just completely wrong ??
You’re definitely correct that ugly = performance and that isn’t new.
However, variable rate shading introduces the ability to render CERTAIN PARTS of the whole frame at a lower or higher shading rate to optimize performance without sacrificing APPARENT visuals.
For example, the sky in games rarely changes so there’s no need to shade it every frame. You can keep the data from the previous frames and this will save on performance. You won’t notice this easily because the sky doesn’t visually change often.
This technology doesn’t really work well for fast paced FPS’s though. The data per frame changes too quickly too often.
Dynamic Skydomes exist, which might invalidate that use case already.
My opinion: VRS, as implemented by NVIDIA at least, seems to destroy minute details, so I hope whatever AMD comes up with does not crap on image quality so much.
Got it, thanks dude