Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

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open
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Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by open » 24 Feb 2018, 20:13

This setting is exposed by the nvidia inspector. Its low down on the list. The only explaination I could find about it said that it used some driver magic and maybe played with the animation timings to achieve a smoother experience at the cost of latency. The lowest on setting (1) was supposed to maintain competitive gamer level latency. I remember using it to some decent effect on my old 144hz static refresh monitor in overwatch. Sadly I have never learned more about it and stopped using it because it was unclear how much latency it added. Still it did make things apper nice and smooth without gsync.

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Chief Blur Buster
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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 24 Feb 2018, 22:45

These kinds of settings (or similar) are likely quite useful for fixing ULMB/LightBoost amplified microstutters --
as seen in HOWTO: Properly Using ULMB Beautifully or Competitively.

That said, while I'm not sure how much input lag this adds, many techniques of frame pacing adds input lag. The act of de-jittering frames often requires at least some buffering or mini-delays on frames to even out the frame pacing.

If you're playing solo, then motion quality can become more important than lag -- and this setting can be a valuable tool. On the other hand if you exclusively play Overwatch/CS:GO/etc, then one avoiding using configurations that increase lag.
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RealNC
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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by RealNC » 24 Feb 2018, 23:20

Nobody knows what this setting does. It might not do anything if you don't use fastsync, even, because it was added alongside fastsync.

Or, it might not be doing anything at all... When someone from nvidia was asked about this setting in a talk, they dodged the question completely. Which probably means it's an inactive setting without any effect whatsoever in release builds of the driver.
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k2viper
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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by k2viper » 25 Feb 2018, 05:38

Anyone tested it yet?

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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by open » 26 Feb 2018, 22:15

Yeah maybe a year or more ago. The dejittering was noticeable in overwatch.

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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by open » 26 Feb 2018, 22:18

found this:

SILK Smoothness
Silk reduces stutters in games caused by variable CPU or GPU workloads by smoothing out animation and presentation cadence using animation prediction and post render smoothing buffer.
• Off – Silk is disabled.
• Low – Moderate smoothing is enabled and most microstutter is eliminated.
• Medium – Many stutters and hitches are removed in typical games.
• High – More smoothing is applied and may result in observable input lag.
• Ultra – Maximum smoothing is applied and most stutters and hitches in games are eliminated. Lag may be unacceptable in some games.

Note: Selecting High or Ultra settings for silk can increase noticeable lag when playing, and may not be appropriate for first person shooters or competitive gaming.

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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by k2viper » 27 Feb 2018, 01:48

I mean, how much input lag it introduces.
I also found this details, according to them, it uses post-render buffer which should add additional ~frame of input lag to the whole pipeline.

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Re: Nvidia hidden silksmoothness setting

Post by BTRY B 529th FA BN » 24 May 2021, 07:13

Does the registry key still enable it's visibility, with the latest drivers 466, in NCP?

EDIT: This worked on 461.40. Updated to 466.47 today. Registry location

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\FTS
EnableRID61684 - 1


EDIT2: it's available with 462.59 Studio drivers when you add the reg key, just rolled back from 466.47. However I don't see it in NVPI

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