DLSS 2.0 is a lie?

[IMMINENT]

Every review of Control praises its utilisation of DLSS 2.0, specifically for its ability to produce an upscaled image that's better than native. But...in my experience, DLSS 2.0 doesn't work that was out of the box. The final image looks much softer. I play @ 1440p and am using the quality preset, with all other settings maxed. Yes, I understand very well that an upscaled image could be worse than native, but according to multiple sources, if I were to use DLSS on its highest quality preset, details and sharpness are not only faithfully reconstructed but enhanced.

I've had to use nvidia's own sharpening filter (alt+f3) to get a decently sharper image in the end. Has anyone had similar experiences with DLSS or is something really wrong with me??

[Seamus]

Depends, really.

I've used it less here than I did in death stranding, but, in death stranding it definitely brings some details out better than native resolution does. Hair in particular.

Unfortunately, it also eats some things, like it makes light rain almost impossible to see.

[Kaldaien]

That's marketing fluff. A good temporal AA + native resolution's always going to make DLSS look like garbage.

Only thing DLSS has going for it is when it's used it games that don't offer temporal AA to begin with. You're getting a kinda bad experience either way in those cases :-\

[IMMINENT]

It's weird though. side-by-side shots of gameplay clearly show that DLSS provides a way better image out of the box compared to native. It's just that I've had to apply a few filters to actually get that same level of fidelity. Filters were never disclosed in reviews or comparisons.

[Jac]

DLSS was a must for me in this game as I played with all RT settings on and at 3440x1440 - that was too much for my 2070S to handle. Death Stranding was another matter, I could play at max settings natively and found that I preferred the look of DLSS 1440 over native - details were better using DLSS. Anyone who tells you that DLSS is just 'marketing' clearly doesn't know what they are talking about.

[Andrius227]

I like dlss too. It acts as antialiasing too, which is nice. Maybe if i looked at 2 screenshots with dlss on and off, i would probably see a difference, but when im playing and everything is moving, its very hard to see a difference.

[IMMINENT]

I dont hate DLSS. I've used it unconditionally, whether i had ray tracing or not, but ray tracing is WAY better when used right.

[Gradius]

There's a tradeoff. First, make sure the internal resolution is as high as possible. If it isn't, you're gonna get more softening than you want. Either way, it's not as sharp as native... but Control isn't a game with very sharp edges anyway with TAA and quite shimmery lighting even without RTX. The original implementation of DLSS had heavy oversharpening that I think made it look much uglier, but now it's a lot less offensive. Your mileage may vary, but sharpening filters tend to give everything a halo. I ended up searching for the 2.2.6 dll that was dropped in a Rainbox 6 Siege update and replaced the game's dll with that one. In theory that should give even better results. Either way, edges definitely do break up quite a bit if the camera is in motion. But it makes it practical to run the RTX effects as a decent resolution, and looks decent enough. Shouldn't look that much blurrier than native so long as you normally have TAA enabled and you've got your internal resolution for the DLSS as high as possible.

[⎛⎝⎛-||-⎞ ⎠⎞]

I play at 1080p with quality preset (and upgraded 2.2 DLSS) and it looks the same as native, but allows better framerate and all the RTX stuff maxed out. The graphics style on control (unlike other games) is supposed to look kind of soft (i.e. it does on native also) so if you want razor sharp, you're gonna have to use the nvidia sharpening filters or not worry about it.

[thirdgen89gta]

I started playing control with a Intel i7-4790k + RTX2080. The CPU was pretty stressed at times when loading content into memory, but gameplay itself was not very CPU intensive.

I upgraded to a AMD Ryzen 5800x and that fixed all of the micro-stuttering during content loading into memory, but didn't really improve the frame rates significantly.

I can play it at 1080p no problem on my TV, but prefer to play it on my Ultra-wide. I used to play it on an LG 34" 21:9 at 3440x1440 with DLSS enabled.

DLSS will never make the game look better than native, nothing will. However, I will say that the quality drop compared to the performance increase is well worth the minor trade-off in quality.

DLSS can get you 90% of the quality, but nearly double your frame-rate. I also praise control for not using the "Ultra/Balanced/Performance" crappy names, and just telling you "Control will render at X by Y resolution, and upscale. Honestly I usually just play it at 1720x720 on my computer and it looks damned good, and the performance is great.

Running this current AAA RTX titles at full native resolution is a job for the RTX 3000 series, and future cards. Until then, DLSS will help us out by letting us render at lower resolutions and upscale.

Sadly, when I replaced my LG with a Samsung G9, I need to do some trickery to enable 5120x1440 resolutions. And I think there were still some issues with the hud/menu system.

[Seamus]

Originally posted by thirdgen89gta:

I also praise control for not using the "Ultra/Balanced/Performance" crappy names, and just telling you "Control will render at X by Y resolution, and upscale.

While that is nice, if you learn the integers that DLSS uses, it's easy enough to know what those names mean even if the developers don't put the actual resolutions in the way Remedy did. They're all fixed percentages of your chosen resolution.

Quality is 66%, balanced is 58%, Performance is 50%, Ultra is 33%.

So, on a 1920x1080 screen that'd be 1280x720, 1114x626, 960x540 and 640x360

[Keelan]

Native is better if you have good hardware. What bothers me the most about DLSS is the ghosting.
Alot of the youtube videos (i.e. digital foundry) are sponsored by Nvidia so take them with a grain of salt. They mostly compare still screenshots too where DLSS falls apart in motion.

[Andrius227]

Originally posted by Keelan:

Native is better if you have good hardware. What bothers me the most about DLSS is the ghosting.
Alot of the youtube videos (i.e. digital foundry) are sponsored by Nvidia so take them with a grain of salt. They mostly compare still screenshots too where DLSS falls apart in motion.

I never see any ghosting. I have top end hardware, i9-9900k, rtx3090, 165hz 1440p monitor and dlss looks exactly the same to my eyes, but much smoother because i get almost double the framerate...

[Seamus]

Originally posted by Keelan:

Native is better if you have good hardware. What bothers me the most about DLSS is the ghosting.
Alot of the youtube videos (i.e. digital foundry) are sponsored by Nvidia so take them with a grain of salt. They mostly compare still screenshots too where DLSS falls apart in motion.

There's actually a fix for that in a lot of games. The 2.2.6 dll that some games ship with(rainbow six, some lego game, etc) can be thrown into the game folder to replace the earlier dlss 2 dll and it fixes the issue.

Quite effectively in some cases. Like the tracers on small objects in Death Stranding.

[Seamus]

Apparently 2.2.9 brings the problem back, but 2.2.10 fixes it again. Though, I don't have a 2.2.10 dll to test.

[Keelan]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Originally posted by Keelan:

Native is better if you have good hardware. What bothers me the most about DLSS is the ghosting.
Alot of the youtube videos (i.e. digital foundry) are sponsored by Nvidia so take them with a grain of salt. They mostly compare still screenshots too where DLSS falls apart in motion.

I never see any ghosting. I have top end hardware, i9-9900k, rtx3090, 165hz 1440p monitor and dlss looks exactly the same to my eyes, but much smoother because i get almost double the framerate...

depends on the person im very sensitive to ghosting. cyberpunk 2077 DLSS was the worst especially while driving you can see major ghosting on the back of cars. Metro Exodus DLSS was okay but id still rather have it off since at 1440p/3080 you dont really need it.

I will have to try the newer DLSS version though.