This same week the update of God of War which adds support for technology AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0. AMD’s upscaling solution offers significant improvements, especially in terms of image quality. Thanks to the folks at TechPowerUp, we can see the difference in performance between FSR 1.0, FSR 2.0, and DLSS.
The first to develop and introduce a rescaling technology image was NVIDIA with DLSS. Its solution is based on artificial intelligence and is a complement to compensate for losses in Ray Tracing. Shortly after AMD FSR arrived and at some point, we don’t know when, Intel XeSS should arrive.
FSR in God of War shows great evolution, but still far from DLSS
God of War is one of the first in game that has supported FSR 2.0 and is the first to support both versions of AMD technology and NVIDIA DLSS. The interesting thing is that it allows us to compare the two versions of FSR and NVIDIA technology.
For comparison, our colleagues have used a NVIDIA RTX 3080 graphics card. Although this may sound strange, AMD FSR technology can run smoothly on NVIDIA graphics. The reason is that it does not use specific hardware, as if it does DLSS, so it can be used in competitor graphics and older graphics.
The game is compared God of War in versions FSR 1.0, FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2.3.4. So the two versions of AMD technology and the latest NVIDIA technology are compared.
Thanks to this comparison we can see that there is a performance loss between FSR 1.0 and FSR 2.0. The new version of AMD technology bets on improve image qualitywhich implies a sacrifice in performance.
The Loss of performance between the first version and the latest version of AMD technology oscillates between 10-15 FPS. This loss of performance is not very substantial when we talk about rates above 60 FPS for a non-competitive game. But the “loss” in performance is offset by an improvement in image quality.
As a curious fact of this comparison, the new version of FidelityFX has worse performance than the DLSS solution. This really isn’t uncommon, as AMD’s technology is slightly behind NVIDIA’s in development. The difference in image quality has been fairly evened out.
| FSR 1.0 | FSR 2.0 | DLSS 2.3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| super quality | 90fps | – | – |
| Quality | 96fps | 85fps | 87fps |
| Performance | 109fps | 94fps | 97fps |
A good evolution, but still needs tweaks
They emphasize that there are some quite important points to take into account. Under the 1080p resolution, the image seems to look very dark, as if the brightness has been turned down a lot. TechPowerUp colleagues point out that the lower the resolution, the darker the image. This problem also occurs when running the game on 1440p resolution.
They also comment that in some cases there is a small image instability. As they say, at times when the snow falls in front of the trees, the leaves simply lose all quality and details are blurred. We are talking about very general details that may not be perceptible in many cases, since we may not pay attention.
The important thing is that the image quality improvement over the previous generation of this technology. Sharpness filter value adjustments are added, something that did not exist in FSR 1.0.
While the quality improvement is noticeable, peers point out that in God of War, it still lags behind DLSS. Where this technology behaves best is with the 4K resolutionwhile in 1080p and 1440p the quality is lower, especially when compared to DLSS.