Software Mode upscaling

[refraction]

what about OpenCL/direct computing over GPU?
It should be more accurate than OpenGL/DirectX as well but I haven't seen much progress there.

Gabest tried OpenCL but the lack of decent support i think from the Nvidia side kind of put him off continuing, however he did mention he might try DirectCompute as it's generally more widely compatible achieving similar results, but yes this would provide the accuracy we need with better speed than software rendering, if it will be as fast as DirectX or OpenGL, that remains to be seen.

[gregory]

DirectComputer/DX/OpenGL/OpenCL ... if you remove all marketing BS and limitation to sold new GPU what remains?

Just an hardware GPU with its constraint nothing more.

The fastest solution will be to use a "sw renderer" on shader for few complex draw calls and use a "hw renderer" on hardware unit for numerous but basic draw calls. As you can see by yourself, the new accurate option is much faster than it used to be.

The GS Emulation over DirectX and OpenGL is full of hacks and workarounds to make specific effects look correct but it usually breaks effects in other games. all these workarounds slow stuff down and can probably make it slower than software emulation.

You're wrong. Code isn't full of hack. It has a couple of clever solution to emulate the GS memory behavior. There are 3 major issues
1/ MEM <=> PCI tranfer => it is an issue for dedicated GPU (not related to Dx/GL)
2/ Texture format conversion. OpenCL does it on the fly. SW & HW uses a texture cache
3/ Upscaling. You can't write anymore the result of the rendering in the GS memory. The only possibility is to scale down the rendering and convert it back to the GS format. OpenCL & SW don't support upscaling so it is easy.

Remove upscaling and all those extra filtering options and it will be much easier to make the HW rendering accurate.

[quakeulus]

Is there anyway we can use the cpu to do the rendering in software mode and utilize the gpu only to upscale?

What about using DLSS or FSR to upscale from software?

[ffviistrife]

What about using DLSS or FSR to upscale from software?

if I recall correctly, I saw a github post where FSR was in the works for a bit, but they ended up just cancelling it for reasons that i dont remember.

also FSR 1.0 looks like crap, especially when you're upscaling from a low resolution like 480i.