Quote:effects disappear as well, and aliasing appears clearly on the image's borders when we use the most aggressive MRS mode. Check the blade of the sword, for example. The contours of the image are more blurry, especially with MRS turned up.

Here again, lens flares disappear as soon as MRS is activated. The halo of light level with the hole in the cave, towards the upper-left, is only visible if MRS is turned off. The borders of the puddle of water are blurry when MRS is cranked up. The mud stain just in front of the bridge partially disappears, even though it is located at the center of the image and therefore shouldn't be affected at all.

The difference with respect to reflections on the body of the vehicle in the foreground is flagrant, with MRS imposing inferior quality. The ambient lighting of the scene is lower with MRS active, and the character to the right is pixelated when we use the aggressive MRS mode.

By removing numerous lighting effects (reflections, refractions, diffractions, scattering…), even at the center of the frame, MRS noticeably degrades the visual quality of this scene and strongly diminishes ambient lighting. The hologram to the right is particularly pixelated in the higher MRS mode.
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While Multi-Res Shading has a negative impact on visual quality that cannot be ignored, at least in this specific implementation, performance gains attributable to the feature are quantifiable. The improvement is supposed to be greater with Pascal than Maxwell, but our measurements don't appear to support this: the GeForce GTX 970 benefits very well (except in 4K) with the same visuals.
Our only disappointment is that the technology as it's exposed in Shadow Warrior 2 isn't happy with just degrading the peripheral image's resolution. It also removes some components, which also affects the scene's quality right in the middle of your screen, where it's supposed to be untouched. In the end, it is far from the screen captures provided by Nvidia.
This option will come in useful in specific cases, though. Take our results at 1440p, for example. A resolution like 1080p doesn't tax mid-range graphics cards enough to make the visual degradation worthwhile, and the GeForce GTX 970 and 1060 aren't fast enough to play at 4K, even with MRS. In the end, we recommend against using the more aggressive MRS mode because it impacts graphics quality too negatively for our liking.