DLSS 4.5 versus FSR 4 and FSR 4.1: which technology is PC gamers' favorite?
A few weeks ago, the German site ComputerBase published the results of a very interesting study carried out among its community. The aim was to compare the graphics rendering of games natively or after application of the two main scaling techniques: NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR. Nearly 7,000 votes were cast in this study, so even if the representativeness of this cohort is uncertain, it nevertheless constitutes an interesting group. The results showed that DLSS - here in version 4.5 - was well ahead of native mode (48.2%) and native mode (24%), which was also well ahead of FSR 4 (15%). Interestingly, 12.8% of gamers voted for "renderings are equivalent".
When AMD compares the visual rendering of FSR 4 vs. FSR 4.1 © AMD
Today, ComputerBase published the results of a very similar, but "updated" study. This time, it was no longer a question of comparing scaling techniques with native mode, but rather of comparing them with each other and involving the latest update, AMD's FSR 4.1. Too bad, in fact, that our German colleague has still not decided to include Intel's XeSS technique in his panel. A comparison with this third party would have been interesting, especially as Intel seems to be getting closer to NVIDIA in the way its upscaling works. Perhaps a third study will provide an opportunity to go into even greater detail.
In the meantime, this second study has the drawback of a much smaller cohort than the previous one. We're talking here of just 163 to 234 votes, depending on the games concerned: Anno 117, ARC Raiders, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Resident Evil Requiem and The Last of Us Part I. Players were offered a choice of videos, and then asked to select their favorite, without knowing which video corresponded to which rendering. Amusingly, in most cases, more than a third of voters admitted to finding the result "equivalent". Still, DLSS 4.5 won out quite often, with votes approaching 50% for ARC Raiders and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, for example. However, the most interesting thing was for AMD: the improvements integrated into FSR 4.1 compared with FSR 4 paid off, with very few gamers preferring the old version on all games.
Performance comparison FSR 4 vs FSR 4.1 © ComputerBase
Finally, ComputerBase points out that, while the visual aspect of things is important - and therefore favors DLSS 4.5 and, to a lesser extent, FSR 4.1 - the impact on performance is not to be overlooked. Here again, AMD has much to celebrate: our colleagues report that FSR 4.1 manages to achieve clear improvements in image quality without having a negative impact on observed performance.
