Nvidia's DLSS upscaling beats AMD's FSR and plain old native rendering at 4K in a poll of over 1,000 gamers

News
By published

Upscaling is only becoming more important.

Computerbase upscaling
(Image credit: Computerbase, Sony Interactive Entertainment)

German website ComputerBase.de has conducted a blind comparison test pitting AMD's and Nvidia's latest AI-based upscaling technologies against native rendering at 4K in a poll of over 1,000 gamers. Across six different games, Nvidia DLSS came out on top as the stated preference of gamers, beating not only AMD FSR but also native 4K rendering.

The six games tested were Anno 117, Arc Raiders, Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Forbidden West, Satisfactory, and The Last of Us Part 2. Around 1,000 to 1,200 gamers voted for their preference in each title based on viewing pre-rendered videos comparing the two upscaling technologies with native 4K rendering.

Image 1 of 2
Computerbase upscaling comparison
Computerbase's video player allowed for side-by-side viewing...(Image credit: Computerbase, Sony Interactive Entertainment)

That DLSS is preferred to FSR probably isn't a huge surprise, though the total dominance of Nvidia's upscaler is impressive. But what about DLSS beating native rendering? There are some good reasons why DLSS upscaling can look better than native, especially at 4K.

DLSS generates detail based on several methods, including temporal and vector data. As a consequence, DLSS can actually sharpen textures beyond their native appearance. So, upscaled rendering can actually look more detailed than native in some scenarios. Moreover, many modern games are coded with upscaling in mind, so optimal image quality is intentionally achieved with upscaling.

Of course, both DLSS and FSR have developed substantially over the years. So, this is just a snapshot in time. But, right now, this survey clearly puts DLSS ahead, a conclusion with which I would personally concur. AMD's AI-based FSR update is certainly an improvement. But DLSS is still better, most of the time.

An interesting added insight that this comparison doesn't include is Intel's XeSS upscaling, which has generally been pretty competitive and, perhaps, splits the difference between DLSS and FSR. Intel's presence in the GPU market is obviously very limited, so the most advanced version of XeSS, which requires an Intel Arc GPU is of questionable relevance. However, Intel also offers a version of XeSS that runs on all three of the GPU vendors' hardware. So, it would be interesting to see how well that would fare.

Anywho, what with the mess the hardware market is right now, thanks to the AI boom, extracting ever more performance out of existing GPUs has never been more important. Like it or lump it, upscaling quality and performance has become incredibly important.

Asus RX 9070 Prime graphics card
Best graphics card 2026

1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070

2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB

3. Best budget: Intel Arc B570

4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090


👉Check out our full graphics card guide👈

Jeremy Laird
Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.