Nvidia’s DLSS is an obvious choice over AMD’s FSR, but it shouldn’t dictate your GPU purchasing decisions
It goes without saying that Nvidia is the dominant force in the GPU market. The RTX 4000 series has taken the market by storm, with its flagship graphics card (the RTX 4090) delivering the best performance yet on gaming PCs.
With the highly anticipated announcement of the RTX 5000 series on the horizon, all eyes will be on Nvidia’s highly anticipated RTX 5090 and what the successor to DLSS 3 has to offer. Team Green’s upscaling method has been a formidable tool for RTX 4000 series users, especially those not using the high-end overkill (and vastly overpriced) 4090.
While I love AMD and FSR 3.1, especially with what it has done for portable gaming PCs like the excellent Asus ROG Ally . DLSS 3 with Frame Generation has been shown to increase in-game frame rates above typical standards at higher resolutions with ray tracing enabled.
However, this certainly shouldn’t be the only factor when deciding which GPU to buy. There are plenty of games that run great on AMD’s Radeon GPUs (particularly the RX 7900 XT and XTX) and this should remain the case for years to come.
Scaling methods shouldn’t be the easy way out for game developers
Now I have to acknowledge that we are more than likely heading in the direction where DLSS, FSR and XeSS become prominent factors in the future of PC gaming. DLSS 4 is expected to be AI-powered for the RTX 5000 series (better not make this generation exclusive again, Nvidia), just as AMD has confirmed for the upcoming FSR 4 – a departure for Team Red, since previous versions notably did not use AI for scaling.
If Moore’s Law continues to hold, future series from Nvidia or AMD won’t be able to do much to ramp up GPU capabilities generation after generation, so it makes sense to look at AI as the next big thing. While this is a benefit for all PC gamers (and consoles that may use upscaling, such as the PS5 Pro’s PSSR feature), I’m already concerned that this could give game developers more leeway to release poorly optimized games with the faint promise of the future. plasters.
This has been happening for a long time; even just in recent memory, Hogwarts legacy, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dragon dogma 2And Starfield all suffered from poor optimization on PC at launch. We then have no choice but to use the aforementioned upscaling methods and frame-gen software, but again, there’s only so much that can be done to patch the cracks.
When you’re faced with upscaling methods that barely improve frame rates in underperforming titles, your GPU’s power and hardware specs matter most. When you consider how expensive Nvidia’s graphics cards are compared to AMD’s, and the power that lies between the RTX 4080 Super and the RX 7900 XTX, the easy choice is the latter.
This is AMD’s current flagship GPU, coming with a hefty 24GB of VRAM against the 4080 Super’s 16GB, and is still one of the best graphics cards. I truly believe that turning down a potential purchase of this GPU just because of missing out on DLSS is a poor choice. It seems like Team Red is losing the upscaling battle to Nvidia (and now Sony with PSSR), but it remains committed to ensuring that all GPUs can take advantage of the upscaling technology thanks to FSR’s open-source design.
For those gaming on mid-range or budget GPUs, AMD’s decision to use FSR 3 on a wide range of graphics cards, including Nvidia’s and even integrated graphics on Intel chips, goes a long way in showing where his loyalty lies – in ensuring improvements for all gamers (I’m looking at you again, Nvidia).
While it’s important for me to note that AMD GPUs can’t use DLSS because they don’t have tensor cores, this doesn’t give Team Green the excuse to make its scaling methods exclusive to new GPU lineups. Despite Nvidia’s claim that the improved optical acceleration was the main reason for DLSS 3’s exclusivity on RTX 4000 cards, it didn’t take long enough for PC players to find a way to get it on older hardware (like this solution for NexusMods from ‘Nukem’).
Now, if Nvidia allows the successor to DLSS 3 to be used with older GPUs, the point still stands. You shouldn’t let this be the dealbreaker for your next GPU upgrade, especially as the prices of AMD’s high-end graphics cards continue to drop…