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NVIDIA Said to Integrate Checkerbox Rendering Used in the PS4 in its GPUs

PC gamers generally tend to dislike the console versions of games. The reason being lower frame rates (30FPS) and worse visual quality along with the inability to modify the level of graphics fidelity. However, both sides benefit from the technological strides each of them makes. NVIDIA launched its GeForce RTX cards with hardware-level ray-tracing support and as a result, Sony and Microsoft scrambled to announce for the same in their upcoming PS5 and Xbox Scarlett consoles, respectively.

Similarly, NVIDIA seems to be taking a hint from console manufacturers with respect to its rendering techniques. According to a post on 3DCenter, NVIDIA is looking to implement the PS4 Pro’s checkerbox rendering technique to boost performance.

According to Redditors, CBR can be enabled on SLI rigs using NVIDIA Inspector using drivers from the r435 branch. It is reportedly working with all the versions of DirectX, including 9, 10 and 11.

It can’t be enabled on single-GPU setups just yet meaning that it’s still being tested. Now, why would NVIDIA want to enable a rendering method used in consoles? For starters, CBR isn’t just standard upscaling. It’s much better than traditional techniques and when done right can come quite close to the real thing.

In case you’re curious, checkerbox rendering works by rendering half of the frame and using info from the previous one to fill in the gaps. Of course, in reality it’s more complex than that but that’s the simplest explanation. In reality, the objects and polygons are tracked as they move from pixel to pixel across frames for better quality, but let’s not go into that right now. What you need to know is that in CBR rendering, one half of frame A is rendered, and data from the previous one is used to complete it, and then the missing part of frame A is rendered for frame B and then the info from A is used to fill in the gaps after some approximation.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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