Click Here To Find Out How To Enable DSR.
During NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution testing we incrementally change the in-game rendering resolution, beginning at 1080p and then increasing to 1440p and 4K respectively. MSAA settings for Far Cry 4 and Assassins Creed 4 were adjusted downwards to more realistically simulate a relevant use-case, rather than re-purposing previous results which would have been unhelpful at higher resolutions. Similarly we tweaked our Thief 4 AA settings downward in order to represent a situation where DSR was being used as a substitute anti-aliasing technique, rather than complementary one.
Once again GIGABYTE's GTX 970 G1 GAMING holds up remarkably well under the pressure of higher resolutions, something that this range of GPUs will certainly need to do when the high resolution and frame rate requirements of Virtual Reality come to the fore in 2016. Once again showing that 1440p is an ideal target resolution to have in mind for this graphics card, it was able to show off immensely playable frame rates in all three titles; but that's not the whole story here.
Our Thief 4 results were solid, showing >60fps values in the canned benchmark at all times at both 1080p and now 1440p for the first time. Average frame rates for both resolutions didn't change all that much, emphasising that the benefits seen are about an improved experience rather than inflating high-end frame rates for no really benefit. The most eye-opening improvement was in the 4K resolution zone, where for the first time the game reached what we'd consider 'Playable' average frame rates over 40fps. That's a huge improvement over the ~25fps we saw with the 347.52 drivers back in February.
Switching over the Far Cry 4 we again somewhat surprisingly see playable frame rates across the board, with much improved minimums and averages. Comparing the results to that for the 1080p testing alone it becomes clear that the 8xMSAA anti-aliasing implementation for FC4 is quite expensive, i.e. the frame rate gains with it disabled are far greater than we would expect. It's also possible that there's more going on here than we're aware of.
Combining both Far Cry 4 and Thief 4 results you have to come to the conclusion that the newest drivers are far superior to the older 347.52 at higher resolutions specifically, with particular attention drawn to the 1440p 'sweet-spot'.
The Assassins Creed Unity results by contrast are something of a concern. The average frame rate has fallen between February and today at both 1440p and 4k resolutions, but minimums are up. This implies that a bottleneck has been alleviated somewhere, but also that the game engine is now stressing the card more than previously. Anecdotally, although texture pop-in remains a problem in ACU, it's less noticeable with the newer drivers; perhaps the underlying parameters for rendering objects on-screen have changed.
