Needless to say, NVIDIA is the dominant force in the GPU market. The RTX 4000 series took the market by storm with its flagship graphics card (RTX 4090) offering the best performance ever in a gaming PC.
With the announcement of the long-awaited RTX 5000 series just around the corner, all eyes will now turn to what Nvidia’s long-awaited RTX 5090 and DLSS 3 successors have to offer. Team Green’s upscaling technique is a powerful tool for RTX 4000 series users, especially those who aren’t using the high-end, over-the-top (and expensive) 4090.
I love AMD and FSR 3.1, but I don’t think this upscaling method is better than Nvidia’s rivals, especially when it comes to what they’ve done for handheld gaming PCs like the excellent Asus ROG Ally X. is very simple. DLSS 3 with frame generation has been shown to enable ray tracing to push in-game frame rates beyond normal standards at high resolutions.
However, this is not the only factor in deciding which GPU to purchase. There are plenty of games that run great on AMD’s Radeon GPUs (particularly the RX 7900 XT and XTX), and this should continue to be the case for years to come.
Upscaling methods should not be easy for game developers
Now, I agree that DLSS, FSR, and XeSS are on their way to being important parts of the future of PC gaming. As AMD confirmed for the upcoming FSR 4, DLSS 4 is expected to be powered by the RTX 5000 series’ AI (Nvidia, better not make it exclusive to this generation). This is Team Red’s departure from previous versions. Specifically, we did not use AI for upscaling.
If Moore’s Law continues to hold true, it makes sense to look to AI as the next big step, as Nvidia’s or AMD’s future series releases are limited in their ability to increase GPU capabilities from generation to generation. It’s good. While this is a benefit for all PC gamers (and consoles that may use upscaling, such as the PSSR feature on the PS5 Pro), I’m already seeing it leave game developers with unreliable, unoptimized options. I’m worried that it will give them room to release enough games. patch.
This has been happening for a long time. In recent memory, Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and Starfield were all poorly optimized on PC at launch. In that case, you have no choice but to use the upscaling methods and frame generation software mentioned above, but again, there’s only so much you can do to fill the cracks.
GPU power and hardware specifications become paramount when faced with upscaling methods that offer little improvement in frame rate in poorly performing titles. Considering how expensive Nvidia’s graphics cards are compared to AMD’s, and the similar power of the RTX 4080 Super and RX 7900 XTX, it’s easy to choose the latter.
This is AMD’s current flagship GPU, and it’s still one of the best graphics cards out there, with a hefty 24GB of VRAM compared to the 4080 Super’s 16GB. I truly believe that ignoring the possibility of purchasing this GPU simply because DLSS is not available is problematic. Bad choice. It may seem like Team Red is losing the upscaling battle to Nvidia (and now Sony with PSSR), but thanks to FSR’s open source design, all GPUs utilize upscaling technology. We remain true to what we do.
For users who game on midrange or budget GPUs, AMD’s decision to make FSR 3 available on a wide range of graphics cards, including integrated graphics on NVIDIA and Intel chips, shows where their loyalties lie. This will be of great help in showing what is going on. Improvements for all gamers (looking at you again, Nvidia).
It’s important to me to mention that AMD GPUs don’t have Tensor Cores so you can’t use DLSS, but that’s no excuse for Team Green to dedicate its upscaling techniques to the new GPU range. Despite Nvidia’s claims that improved optical flow acceleration is the main reason for DLSS 3’s RTX 4000 card exclusivity, it hasn’t been long enough for PC players to find a way to use DLSS 3 on older hardware. It didn’t take (like the following workaround at NexusMods).
Even if Nvidia allows its DLSS 3 successor to be used with older GPUs, that won’t change. Don’t let this be the deciding factor in your next GPU upgrade, especially as prices for AMD’s high-end graphics cards continue to drop.
