Cyberpunk 2077: DLSS vs. FSR Comparison

[Zubasa]

The lights inside office looking tower right? I think it's a random instance or sth idk. 4K FSR Quality (a step below Ultra Quality) doesn't have it either. While the floor below does. But all the other quality settings contain light in that floor.

As usual for CP2077 this patch introduced bugs, there is a new bug where driving in the rain you have the rain disappearing seemingly at random at certain spots.
Also there is the weird pop in / draw distance bug on the road that is quite annoying in driving.

 

[siluro818]

The image you have chosen for comparison heavily emphasizes the best in DLSS as it can infer the patterns in textures and surfaces that feature a lot of thin lines and redraw them (even in parts where they'd actually be obscured from view be it because of one's perspective surface or distance).
I played around with FSR the other day and if you take the average scene in the game - indoors, some random back street, or in motion, especially in your car, it's very hard to find differences between native and UQ FSR. Try running the benchmark in both modes and spot the differences - you'll be hard pressed to find any at high resolution at least
But there's no question that if you stop and take a picture the machine learning algorithm is untouchable ^^

 

[NuCore]

With every such comparison, no matter what you see on the screen, you repeat the same texts that Nvidia sends you.

Probably only the blind will find that DLSS looks better here, especially in 1440p or 1080p, where the image from FSR is of better quality (less jagged, smoother).

It is not the first time that FSR offers better image quality, and you continue to copy and paste the same conclusions, which makes you unreliable.

 

[aciDev]

I've been looking forward to this comparison - interesting how much better the DLSS implementation is in terms of retaining and showing smaller details (the heating element lines in the car window and details in the glass on the car lights being particularly obvious).

Here's the thing. DLSS ruins images by making up things that shouldn't be there. The defogger lines are not that thick!

 

[rodneyhchef]

As someone still stuck with a 980 TI because of scalpers, this is a nice bonus, especially with this game!

 

[Deleted member 24505]

As someone still stuck with a 980 TI because of scalpers, this is a nice bonus, especially with this game!

Me too, but it does not like 1440 with this game.

 

[Bomby569]

With every such comparison, no matter what you see on the screen, you repeat the same texts that Nvidia sends you.

Probably only the blind will find that DLSS looks better here, especially in 1440p or 1080p, where the image from FSR is of better quality (less jagged, smoother).

It is not the first time that FSR offers better image quality, and you continue to copy and paste the same conclusions, which makes you unreliable.

he got a fanboy here

 

[aciDev]

he got a fanboy here

I don't think so.
Personally, I don't play screenshots.
Try playing the performance mode of both techs then tell me which one is the hot mess.

p.s. <--- specs here

 

[Punkenjoy]

Sure for the tech savvy it's interesting to note and perhaps ponder, but for the vast majority that doesn't matter to them whatsoever, both solutions will be compared as they exist today. Nvidia didn't get a pass on DLSS 1.0 being super average, and AMD doesn't get a pass on IQ either. I remember DLSS 1.0 being absolutely ridiculed because a downscale+CAS could give better results.

Naturally I am excited for any future FSR version and what it could improve, as well as XeSS.

The thing is DLSS 1.0 was already hard to implement, was heavy to run (required tensor cores) and required huge amount of training per game at 16k. It was so much firepower for a crappy results.

For FSR, it's open source, run on almost any GPU that still around, and is a simple implementation. But the thing with FSR is it came after and it must not get an easy pass just for that.

As for DLSS 1.0 and DLSS 2.0 vs FSR 1.0 and 2.0, the main difference is Nvidia want to use a Neural network were AMD just use algorithm.

The thing is it's much harder to do temporal upscaling as you have to take pixel from previous frame using various source of data. Does that mean a set of tailored and optimized algorithm couldn't do better than DLSS 2.0 like FSR did better than DLSS 1.0? i don't know. Time will tell for sure.


As for the quality of both solutions, there was not really anyone that detail all part of image quality and score them independently. it's more just a question of taste. And DLSS 2.0 win most of the time because it's technique allow to display sub pixel detail. Is that really the only thing to win ? i don't know.

 

[Makaveli]

Sure for the tech savvy it's interesting to note and perhaps ponder, but for the vast majority that doesn't matter to them whatsoever, both solutions will be compared as they exist today. Nvidia didn't get a pass on DLSS 1.0 being super average, and AMD doesn't get a pass on IQ either. I remember DLSS 1.0 being absolutely ridiculed because a downscale+CAS could give better results.

Naturally I am excited for any future FSR version and what it could improve, as well as XeSS.

You are not wrong but that is who i'm addressing on this site the tech savy. The average person that doesn't know anything about computers will do and follow whatever their friends tell them. I'm also looking forward to the seeing XeSS running on Radeons and the comparisons between all 3.

 

[junglist724]

DLSS definitely looks better than before, but there's still ghosting on some stuff in motion.

 

[Benman2785]

AMD FSR is forced with WAY TOO MUCH SHARPENING (like Dying Light 2 does - but luckily we can edit video.scr) // when we could reduce the CAS Sharpening to 0.125 or better 0.06666 it would look way better

EDIT: you can remove CAS with ConfigOverhaulCyberpunk.exe (39kb)

 

[Nima]

With every such comparison, no matter what you see on the screen, you repeat the same texts that Nvidia sends you.

Probably only the blind will find that DLSS looks better here, especially in 1440p or 1080p, where the image from FSR is of better quality (less jagged, smoother).

It is not the first time that FSR offers better image quality, and you continue to copy and paste the same conclusions, which makes you unreliable.

World needs an investigation to understand how AMD can make their fanboys like this. between all fanboys I have seen in my entire life AMD fanboys were always more special.

 

[wolf]

The average person that doesn't know anything about computers will do and follow whatever their friends tell them

You're not wrong, I am happy to cover history as much as they want too but what matters most is present day and my recommendation, which as we all know is exceedingly hard to give, fairly lacking on a crystal ball these days.

Honestly FSR as a baseline on any new hardware purchased is an easy thing to talk about, paying more (at least in most markets) for Nvidia equivalents just to get better RT and DLSS and maybe CUDA stuff if any is applicable is somewhat a more complex discussion, so many nuances and I can tell I start to lose people early in those rants lol. The thing I've found is that among gamers, even the less savvy ones, Nvidia has that household name / mindshare aspect where they've already decided they want one because they're "the best". I can even strongly recommend better options at certain price points, like the 6600 and 6600XT for example, but sometimes peoples minds are just made up.

I'm also looking forward to the seeing XeSS running on Radeons and the comparisons between all 3.

Oh hell yeah. The upscaling / reconstruction race is already fascinating and awesome to me, let alone the next 12++ months of what we can expect.

 

[zx128k]

DLSS image has far more detail than the FSR image. You can see it right away on all the plants and the car. The car window and the details around the car. There is a blur to the FSR image, its hard to see but is there compared to the DLSS image. If you look at native in the past, there is a blur between DLSS and native that is hard to see. So FSR is less detailed and more blurred with a high internal resolution. In games like CYberpunk 2077 that means less image quality and lower performance when compared to DLSS. As performance is affected by resolution increases.

Zoming into the image there is objectively more detail in the DLSS image. You can see all the upscaling issues in the FSR image that NVidia outlined in NIS which DLSS was created to fix. DLSS fools you into thinking its close to native. FSR is objectively nowhere near native and you see that right away. I don't think FSR has better image quality than DLSS 1.x. Every trained version of DLSS 1.x is better than FSR.

 

[NuCore]

he got a fanboy here

Yes, you are a fanboy, because I have every second graphics card (same situaation with cpu, once AMD, once Intel) from Nvidia

 

[wolf]

where the image from FSR is of better quality (less jagged, smoother).

It is not the first time that FSR offers better image quality

It's blurry, smeary and is killing fine detail.

If that's what you prefer in an image, nobody can take that from you, so enjoy, but objectively better image quality? it is not.

 

[darrenj]

So people, is it "worth a buy"?

 

[Punkenjoy]

So people, is it "worth a buy"?

Maybe not full price but yeah. very interesting games with a lot of stuff to do.

 

[-1nf1n1ty-]

I knew what I was losing when I switched from a 3070 to a 6800XT and I still don't regret it. It's all gonna get better with time eventually. It is super interesting to see the comparisons though!

 

[mama]

World needs an investigation to understand how AMD can make their fanboys like this. between all fanboys I have seen in my entire life AMD fanboys were always more special.

I take it you're not a fanboy?

So people, is it "worth a buy"?

Yes.

 

[860lacov]

I'm looking for gpu for many other things than gaming.
But I've a discount in my shop and I can have RX6900XT red devil ultimate in similar price as MSI 3080 12GB version.

Which of those GPUs would you choose?

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I'm looking for gpu for many other things than gaming.
But I've a discount in my shop and I can have RX6900XT red devil ultimate in similar price as MSI 3080 12GB version.

Which of those GPUs would you choose?

It really just comes down to what's more important to you pure rasterizaion performance where the 6900XT will probably average around 10% higher +/- over a wide range of games or RT performance where depending on the game the 3080 will be up to 30-40% faster like in Cyberpunk/Metro. Personally I'd probably lean towards the 3080 12GB as long as it's the gaming trio varient.

 

[zx128k]

In the techpowerup review the 6900xt and the 3080 ti are equal at 1440p and the 3080 ti is faster at 4k. This is the 3080 ti fe and the stock 6900xt.

The reviews that make the 6900xt look faster than a 3090/3090ti will look like this:
Far Cry 5&6
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Codemasters Formula 1 2020
Battlefield V
Red Dead Redemption II
Horizon Zero Dawn
Far Cry New Dawn
Dirt 5
Strange Brigade
Borderlands 3
Gears 5
Forza Horizon 4 or 5
Resident Evil Village
The Riftbreaker
Death Stranding

With a few nvidia games in the mix.
Cyberpunk 2077
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition which will be treated as an outlier.

Conclusion: quote The product performs truly great overall at RTX 3080/3090 performance levels but drops a little in stamina at Ultra HD 4k. end quote Now if you look at the review you can find things like in time spy score the 6900xt wins beating all other GPUs but they then make the misstake in showing a graphics score lower than the 3090 and just a tiny bit higher than the 3080 10GB. This means that the 6900xt has a far better cpu than both the nvidia systems, an AMD system with SAM turned on likely. Example of this in a review

A 50 game review will conclude:
Example quote The Red Devil RX 6900 XT trades blows with the RTX 3090 FE in rasterized games although overall it is slower. The Red Devil RX 6900 XT is factory clocked 90MHz higher than the reference version at 2250MHz using the OC BIOS. Red Devil RX 6900 XT boost can clock up to 2340MHz out of the box. end quote

3080 12GB vs 6900xt Example
quote Moving up to 1440p reduces the margin further, and in fact the 3080 is now 1% faster on average when we include Metro Exodus Enhanced results. Removing Metro swung the margins around and now the 3080 is 2% slower, which is a negligible margin.

Playing games at 4K, the 3080 was 5% faster on average, and typically we deem anything 5% or less to be a tie.

For those gaming at 1440p or lower, the 6900 XT is typically the puncher card, though for the most part it's too close to call. So if they were available at the same price, and it was a reasonable price, we feel the RTX 3090 would be the superior product. ....the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB has the advantage of DLSS and more mature ray tracing, which generally yields far better results.

Yes, FSR has helped to lessen that blow, and is quite an impressive solution in its own right, but it doesn't nullify DLSS and it's not a key selling point of Radeon GPUs, largely because it supports all GPUs, GeForce included.

It's also worth mentioning that all testing was conducted on a Ryzen 5000 system with Smart Access Memory enabled (resizable BAR), and this tends to favor Radeon GPUs more than GeForce. end quote

 

[konga]

I'm looking for gpu for many other things than gaming.
But I've a discount in my shop and I can have RX6900XT red devil ultimate in similar price as MSI 3080 12GB version.

Which of those GPUs would you choose?

This thread is a weird place to ask about this, but nonetheless, I'll say that I'd lean toward the 3080 12GB. In terms of raw performance, as discussed, they are very closely matched. What gives Nvidia the edge is its additional features. Nvidia has superior hardware encoding support, superior ray tracing support, and DLSS support. Even if you don't want to turn ray tracing on in every game, it's a nice value add for when you do want to use it. And while FSR 2.0 is coming and may be competitive with DLSS, it's less mature and fewer games will support it, at least at first.

The one point I'd give in AMD's favor is its lower power consumption. If power efficiency/heat management is important to you, then maybe go with AMD. But even if that's the case, then I think you should try to find a way to make the 3080 12GB work instead (Ampere cards undervolt well, and you can keep the 3080 12GB's power consumption to under 300W with a good VF curve)