Guides/Graphics
DLSS, FSR and XeSS explained: which quality mode to use
Upscalers render the game at a lower resolution and rebuild a sharp picture at your screen's resolution. Done well, you get much more FPS for a small loss in detail. The mode you pick decides how much of each.
Render resolution by mode#
The common presets render at roughly these shares of your screen's width and height (the exact factors vary a little between upscalers and versions):
- Quality: about 67% (1440p renders at about 960p).
- Balanced: about 58%.
- Performance: 50% (4K renders at 1080p).
- Ultra Performance: about 33%, for 8K or as a last resort.
The higher your screen resolution, the more pixels the upscaler starts from, so lower modes look better at 4K than at 1080p.
Which upscaler runs where#
- DLSS: NVIDIA RTX cards only. Usually the best image quality.
- FSR: AMD's upscaler. FSR 2 and 3 run on almost any card; the newest FSR versions with machine learning need recent Radeon cards.
- XeSS: Intel's upscaler. Best on Intel Arc, but runs on other cards too in a simpler mode.
- TSR and other engine upscalers: built into the game, running on any card.
DLAA and native AA#
DLAA (and FSR's Native AA mode) uses the same technique at full resolution, purely for better anti-aliasing. No FPS gain, but often a cleaner picture than the game's normal anti-aliasing.
When upscaling doesn't help#
If the processor limits your frame rate, rendering fewer pixels doesn't help: the graphics card was already waiting. How to tell CPU and GPU limits apart.
Questions#
Is DLSS Quality worse than native?
Does upscaling add input lag?
Frametide's scan checks your PC for setup problems like this one and tells you how many it found (Basic, €12.99 once). Premium (€26.99 once) shows which ones and how to fix them. Frametide measures FPS, 1% and 0.1% lows and stutters per minute in your own game with PresentMon, before and after a change, so you don't have to guess (Premium).