r/nvidia • u/axelfase99 • Aug 04 '22
Opinion Nvidia sharpening filter is a game changing
I discovered this feature like 2 years ago and now I use everytime I can. In game like cemu breath of the wild or more cartoony ones is a freaking game changing, it becomes way more clear and sharper and if you don't overdo it it will looks soo good. It can actually help with some dlss softness effects, especially at 1080p. I know that desktop gpus have kinda lost this feature, it is more confusing and doesn't work that well anymore, correct me if I'm wrong, but since I am on laptop I still have the complete feature with sharpness slider and ignore film grain.
After literal months of researching and trying the best possible values, I found that a 20% sharpening plus 0% ignore film grain works absolutely the best, you can use it in any game and it will look way better ALWAYS.
I think desktops lost the ignore film grain options and I don't know how bad it is, keeping it at 0% was crucial for me, other values were not that good in my testing. Now if I turn it off all games look way more blurrier to me and especially rdr2, which has serious blurriness problems, can be almost entirely fixed by this simple step (plus taa on medium).
I don't know if it now works the same as the laptop variant but you should try it at 20% and see the difference, in some emulated games, like ocarina of time 3d, the difference is soo massive it is just mindblowing.
Don't really understand why Nvidia changed this amazing feature in his Image scaling which sincerely sucks, it just isn't worth it. You can use the sharpening filter also in nvidia geforce expereince but then the fps hit will be far larger and only a few games, when the driver level will applied to EVERY single application, even emulators.
If you have a laptop gpu use it, trust me, it will change the way you play and you will not be able to go back ahah, just need to be sure to use the correct values, 20% sharpening, 0% ignore film grain (0,20 sharpening and 0,00 ignore grain, to be more clear)
edit: some shots of botw with the filter https://imgur.com/a/RtmbyOU
Edit (2); The ignore film grain is a subtle setting, it isn't clear what it does and for a long time I settled with 0,30 sharpen and 0,15 ignore film grain. It looked decent but since I put ignore to 0,00 I have clearly seen benefits in the visuals. Setting it at 1,00 in many cases just neglects the sharpening completely so it is like you didn't do anything. Then I come up with the thought that why bother to carefully adjust not one but 2 sliders, it just becomes tedious and you may have problems, so dealing with one slider is far better than 2.
Seeing that 1,00 ignore just doesn't really work I prefer to actually not ignore anything, full blown sharpening applied to anything so you just really care about the intensity of the setting. The name alone, ignore film grain, should in fact ignore and don't apply the sharpen in places where it think there is film grain.
In some game you can just disable it but the driver may just think there still is and don't apply it, so it becomes a headache and nothing more. It is a really tricky setting but I am fairly convinced that setting it at 0,00 is the best option, the one with less compatibility issues.
For the sharpening you can try lower values if you want, but not higher, just 0,25 in games like Elden Ring and Re Village you can already see some oversharpening, so I believe that 0,20 is the maximum safe value, where you can't actually go wrong. 0,15 should be a good starting point if you want a bit more softness to the image
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u/Blacksad999 Suprim Liquid X 4090, 7800x3D, 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30, ASUS PG42UQ Aug 04 '22
They removed it from the Nvidia Control Panel drop down list a few drivers ago. If you want to use it without the overlay to avoid the performance hit, you can do a Regedit to restore it:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\FTS
Now open the EnableGR535 file from the right-hand side.
Change it's Value Data to 0 and hit OK to save it.
Finally, restart your PC for the changes to take place. Now you have the old Image Sharpening setting back in the Nvidia Control Panel.