DLSS 4.5 outperforms native and AMD FSR in gamer image quality test

A large-scale online test has revealed that gamers tend to choose NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 over native rendering and AMD FSR 4. German publication ComputerBase conducted a blind comparison of image quality in several popular games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Forbidden West, and The Last of Us Part II. Participants were shown video clips without any indication of the technology used—options were labeled only with numbers to eliminate brand bias.

After two weeks of voting involving thousands of participants, DLSS 4.5 received the most support across all scenarios. Even in Cyberpunk 2077, where preferences were nearly evenly split, NVIDIA's technology still came out ahead, albeit by a slim margin. This is notable because native resolution is traditionally considered the benchmark for image quality.

The success of DLSS 4.5 is linked to its use of a new second-generation Transformer module, trained on a much larger dataset of gaming content. According to NVIDIA, the computational resources for its training were increased fivefold compared to the previous version. The use of FP8 format allows for more information processing with minimal loss of accuracy, while the updated algorithm better accounts for scene context, resulting in a sharper and more detailed picture.

As for AMD FSR 4 and the Redstone technology suite, in supported games like Cyberpunk 2077 and ARC Raiders, users more often preferred either DLSS or native rendering. It's noted that AMD's solutions provide a respectable performance boost in FPS, but in terms of visual perception, most test participants still favored DLSS 4.5.