If you’re playing PC games and not using supersampling, you’re gaming wrong
DLSS or get the heck out
![Nvidia DLSS 3.5 vs native screen resolution with a car driving through Night City in Cyberpunk 2077.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/sNjcXHoR8n7K4HE38oNPW9-320-80.jpg)
When we review the best gaming laptops here at Tom’s Guide, our testing guru Matthew Murray runs frame rate benchmarks at both a laptop’s native screen resolution and 1080p (1920 x 1080). It’s a key process in detecting the raw processing power of a portable PC’s GPU, and these figures absolutely do matter.
Yet if you own either an Nvidia 30-series or 40-series graphics card — both ranges support Team Green’s DLSS — or if a game supports either AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution or Intel XeSS, and you’re not using any of these forms of supersampling, you’re doing PC gaming wrong.
At least in this writer’s semi-spicy opinion.
What is supersampling?
In case you don’t know what supersampling is, it’s an increasingly AI-driven technique that both smooths in-game image quality by removing jagged edges while also helping to boost frame rates by rendering a title at a higher resolution then downsampling it to fit your monitor size.
That all sounds a bit technical, right? In layman’s terms, when supersampling is done well, it boosts a game’s fps with minimal loss to image quality compared to playing at your display’s native resolution.
The frame-boosting tech first became a thing when Nvidia launched DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) back in early 2019. Over the years, it’s kept getting better and better.
In certain games, like my beloved Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, using DLSS 3.5 in either Quality or Balanced mode looks so good, even my obsessive eyes can’t tell the difference between the upscaled image and playing natively in 4K on my 48-inch LG OLED C2, which I use as my main gaming display in my home office.
God of Wow
The image above of the terrific PC port of God of War is the dictionary definition of “an image paints a thousand words”. DLSS remains the most effective form of supersampling, and it’s an utter game-changer when it comes to squeezing out additional frames.
Stepping into Pappa Kratos’ mighty shoes in upscaled 4K compared to running the reboot natively at that resolution can claw you back as much as 36 frames per second (depending on your hardware). I’ve played a ton of games that support DLSS, and the tech has reached such a phenomenal point thanks to AI advancements, I’ll never not use it when a title supports the feature going forward.
There’s no question Nvidia remains the runaway leader when it comes to supersampling, but Intel XeSS has made up impressive ground on its rival in lickety split time. As for AMD’s upscaling methods? While it's great you can make Steam Deck even better thanks to FSR 3.1 in a clutch of PlayStation ports, it’s usually the worst form of supersampling in terms of delivery close to native screen resolution picture clarity.
In a nutshell, if a game supports supersampling and you have the PC hardware to do it justice, my take is that you should always, always enable it.
Far Cry 6: was $59 now $14 @ Steam
Ubisoft’s latest despot-overthrowing sandbox shooter is a fun rehash of Far Cry 3. In our Far Cry 6 review, we called it “great fun for open-world fans." Crucially, it also supports AMD’s FSR, allowing you to boost your frame rates, which definitely helps in more challenging firefights.
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Dave is a computing editor at Tom’s Guide and covers everything from cutting edge laptops to ultrawide monitors. When he’s not worrying about dead pixels, Dave enjoys regularly rebuilding his PC for absolutely no reason at all. In a previous life, he worked as a video game journalist for 15 years, with bylines across GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and TechRadar. Despite owning a graphics card that costs roughly the same as your average used car, he still enjoys gaming on the go and is regularly glued to his Switch. Away from tech, most of Dave’s time is taken up by walking his husky, buying new TVs at an embarrassing rate and obsessing over his beloved Arsenal.
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RavingGrob I understand that for some reason, the meaning of SuperSampling has lost its original meaning, however, DLSS, FSR, and XESS are not SuperSampling in how you've described.Reply
These technologies are upscalers; they render the game at a resolution lower than your monitor's native, and then upscale the image, using various methods. You can see a drastic improvment in FPS.
True SuperSampling on the other hand, is about rendering the game at a higher resolution than your monitor can display, and then downscaling back to your target resolution. This will eat your performance for breakfast, especially if you are already struggling to reach 60FPS. -
jesster10
100%. Upscaler is the much more accurate term. But we know how much PC marketing teams care about technical accuracy and informative naming.RavingGrob said:I understand that for some reason, the meaning of SuperSampling has lost its original meaning, however what DLSS, FSR, and XESS are not SuperSampling in how you've described.
These technologies are upscalers; they render the game at a resolution lower than your monitor's native, and then upscale the image, using various methods. You can see a drastic improvment in FPS.
True SuperSampling on the other hand, is about rendering the game at a higher resolution than your monitor can display, and then downscaling back to your target resolution. This will eat your performance for breakfast, especially if you are already struggling to reach 60FPS. -
RavingGrob
Yeah, I definitely agree on that point, especially because the technology that popularized the upscaling idea, confusingly has "Super Sampling" in their initialism. However the author of the article is using the traditional definition of the word and applying it to the upscalers.jesster10 said:100%. Upscaler is the much more accurate term. But we know how much PC marketing teams care about technical accuracy and informative naming. -
jesster10 I love this article because I feel the exact same. DLSS isn't perfect, but let's all go back 10 years and look at our antialiasing options then...Reply
Supersampling, which produced flawless results, but for a cost higher than path tracing these days.
Multisampling was the tried-and-true method, but it missed all transparencies and still had crawling edges and specular flickering in motion. And depending on the engine, it was very expensive to enable.
Post-processing filters like FXAA and SMAA were a great cheap alternative that cleaned up the whole image, but still suffered from blurring and/or crawling edges and specular flickering. (My favorite solution was turning on one option in-game and injecting the other one to clean up the image further, then sharpening the end result.)
The first time I saw TXAA, I knew it was the future - it fixed almost all the annoying motion-based aliasing that other solutions couldn't touch. At the cost of MSAA plus a little too much blur...
Other game engines integrated increasingly effective temporal antialiasing options and I was amazed at the results - games were really starting to look like offline CG.
I suppose Nvidia took what they learned with TXAA and eventually turned it into DLSS.
And of course AMD and Intel have followed suit with slightly-less good options.
In conclusion, even FSR is an amazing option compared to the antialiasing options of the past, and you GAIN performance by enabling it. DLSS is basically magic. -
3060_12GB
Agreed 100% people hate TAA so much like some kind of a cult but it is far better than FXAA and SMAA while being far cheaper than MSAA and SSAA. And as for upscaling, not using is almost as dumb as ultra settings. You gain so little visuals by sacrificing so much performance. Especially when DLSS quality looks better than native in most new games.jesster10 said:I love this article because I feel the exact same. DLSS isn't perfect, but let's all go back 10 years and look at our antialiasing options then...
Supersampling, which produced flawless results, but for a cost higher than path tracing these days.
Multisampling was the tried-and-true method, but it missed all transparencies and still had crawling edges and specular flickering in motion. And depending on the engine, it was very expensive to enable.
Post-processing filters like FXAA and SMAA were a great cheap alternative that cleaned up the whole image, but still suffered from blurring and/or crawling edges and specular flickering. (My favorite solution was turning on one option in-game and injecting the other one to clean up the image further, then sharpening the end result.)
The first time I saw TXAA, I knew it was the future - it fixed almost all the annoying motion-based aliasing that other solutions couldn't touch. At the cost of MSAA plus a little too much blur...
Other game engines integrated increasingly effective temporal antialiasing options and I was amazed at the results - games were really starting to look like offline CG.
I suppose Nvidia took what they learned with TXAA and eventually turned it into DLSS.
And of course AMD and Intel have followed suit with slightly-less good options.
In conclusion, even FSR is an amazing option compared to the antialiasing options of the past, and you GAIN performance by enabling it. DLSS is basically magic. -
Adzy01 I can't say I fully agree. In CP 2077 @ 1440p I can definitely see a difference between Quality DLSS and native. Even if DLSS works wonders, the lower resolution source image still comes through somewhat when there's any movement of your perspective.Reply
Where I find DLSS really shines is the DLDSR technique. Running a game @ 1920p on a 1440p monitor with Quality DLSS renders it internally at the native resolution (then upscales and then downscales it), but it's basically the best anti-aliasing technique bar none. It's one of the best ways to boost image quality in game. -
Brkaheart Imagine thinking you need UPSCALING* (not supersampling) to play a modern game at decent framerates instead of blaming the developers for making such crappy games you actually need third-party technologies in order to play decentlyReply -
Looming Dementia
I know. It's maddening. I've seen so many people make videos to explain how to tweak the settings in games, and they'll repeatedly say something like, "... but we aren't actually upscaling it. We're downing the resolution to 1620p, instead of our desktop resolution of 4K."jesster10 said:100%. Upscaler is the much more accurate term. But we know how much PC marketing teams care about technical accuracy and informative naming.
No, what the person (in the video I'm thinking of) just described is upscaling, and then he declared that it's wrong that the game labeled it upscaling. 🤦 He's rendering it at 1620p, and the system is then upscaling that image to 2160p. People need to learn what words mean, before they try to educate people about things that make use of those words. -
sfjuocekr If you are playing a game that needs upscaling to run better, you are gaming with the wrong intentions to begin with.Reply
If your system can't handle 4K, like most people, just play the game at 1080p. Can't play at 1080p? You go down to 720p.
You do not need to waste more resources on already struggling hardware...
Oh wait, we are comparing top of the line hardware with unrealistic settings in unrealistic scenarios. Stop feeding the upscaling hype, you don't need it and it looks downright awful.