The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: FSR 2.1 vs. DLSS 2 vs. DLSS 3 Comparison

[maxus24]

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next-Gen update recently released on PC with support for NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution (DLSS 2.4), NVIDIA's DLSS Frame Generation (also known as DLSS 3) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 (FSR 2.1). In this mini-review we take a look, comparing the image quality and performance gains offered by these technologies.

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[Oberon]

How much time does it really save to copy and paste the vast majority of the conclusions in every one of these articles?

 

[AsRock]

It's buggy right now and all kinds of issue's with it, who did not expect that to be must of been blind folded and tone deaf.

He's a odd out come, this is for those using the 6800XT.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Mmmm, FG seems to be working well with these types of games that are not too fast-paced. nVidia really should find a way to enable it for the RTX2000/3000, it is possible, don't tell me it's not. :/

 

[tomcug]

How much time does it really save to copy and paste the vast majority of the conclusions in every one of these articles?

If the conclusions are mostly the same for most games, what's the need to rewrite text completely?

 

[Vecix6]

So which CPU is used in this test?, you say that in DX12 is bottlenecked, knowing the CPU used could help to have an idea what to expect...

There is a GPU performance comparison review of this game scheduled?

 

[Oberon]

If the conclusions are mostly the same for most games, what's the need to rewrite text completely?

Brevity? Originality? Not looking like a content mill? Actually providing value to the reader?

 

[okidna]

So which CPU is used in this test?, you say that in DX12 is bottlenecked, knowing the CPU used could help to have an idea what to expect...

There is a GPU performance comparison review of this game scheduled?

i7 10700F

 

[Xeanoa]

@maxus24 Still don't understand why you don't review the games as they ship, and do the modded .dll's as an addendum.
It does not reflect the expected user experience. You don't overclock or mod hardware before reviewing it either.

 

[maxus24]

@Xeanoa I've explained it in my conclusion: "Speaking of the ghosting issues, the original DLSS 2.4.0 has some noticeable ghosting issues, the most noticeable were flying birds with black trails behind them at medium and far distance. You can fix these ghosting issues by manually adding the DLSS 2.5.0 dll file into the game folder".

 

[phanbuey]

FSR looks like I rubbed Vaseline on my screen. DLSS 3 + sharpening at max looks great tho.

 

[HD64G]

A hotfix of the game is online. I will try that out and report back about the previously slow and stuttery DX12 vs the smooth and fast DX11.

UPDATE: After the game was patched and on DX11 at 1080P with all Ultra apart from nVidia's works gimmick of and textures at ultra+ I get 116-121FPS. Dropped to 89-104FPS when turned DX12 with all settngs equal. Not fixed yet it seems.

 

[dyonoctis]

That game is massively CPU heavy with DX12, Cyberpunk 2077 runs better on my system (in raster and in RT). Seeing a 4080 only getting 58 FPS at 1080p is scary... that update is really not optimized

 

[phanbuey]

A hotfix of the game is online. I will try that out and report back about the previously slow and stuttery DX12 vs the smooth and fast DX11.

DX12 is way less stuttery with re-bar off and shadercache set to unlimited, I think it wants to stream in assets way too aggressively. Borderlands used to do the same thing pre-patch.,

 

[igralec84]

I've seen the hotfix on Steam, hope it fixes something as with FG on, it's been unplayable most of the time for me. Indoor areas / cutscenes seem to be the worst, also needs a couple of seconds if you go to the menu and back. Spent most of my 11 hours so far on DLSS Quality but no FG... 80ish FPS is okay i guess.

 

[Punkenjoy]

DLSS 3 might really be a killer feature.

As for the Hotfix, it look like it resolve the stutter after exiting menu and cutscene. I didn't had indoor stutter myself with a 5800x and a 4080 at 4K DLSS Quality with Frame Generation On.

Also there was renaming the D3D11on12.dll in the bin folder that renaming it or deleting it improved thing before the hotfix, not sure after.

Look like most of the game run using that wrapper. They didn't fully rebuild the game but is running it on that compatibility layer and add DX12 feature on top.

Glad i changed my mind and didn't buy a 7900xtx. The AIB model were almost the same price as 4080 in my region. I had a bad opinion of Frame Generation /DLSS 3 so it was not a buying factor (and god i was wrong, this is a killer feature in game like this one). So in the end that was really DLSS + better RT for 8 GB less ram and lower power consumption.

AMD will need to step up their game with FSR 2 and get their fluid motion frame soon to stay in the game. FSR 2.1+ well implemented is really good, don't get me wrong, but the fact that is have to be fine tuned manually by each devs is a big downside. There are some that put the effort it in, and there other that just do the minimum and the end result is average at best.

 

[PrEzi]

Has anyone tried to replace the FSR dll with 2.2 and check if it makes any difference in the quality?

 

[Xeanoa]

@Xeanoa I've explained it in my conclusion: "Speaking of the ghosting issues, the original DLSS 2.4.0 has some noticeable ghosting issues, the most noticeable were flying birds with black trails behind them at medium and far distance. You can fix these ghosting issues by manually adding the DLSS 2.5.0 dll file into the game folder".

I'll be honest, I often skim the conclusions to reviews because I like to make my own, and I missed that. I went by the following:

DLSS Super Resolution in this game shipped with version 2.4.0, but for our testing we manually updated it to the 2.5.0 version.

Still, I believe modding is something so few people will attempt, that I think the reviews should be done as it ships, with an addendum for those of us who care.

Looking forward to replaying the game myself, my own conclusion is that I still would rather turn down settings than use upscaling. It's simply lacking the clarity of a native image, which is the most important aspect of image quality to me.

 

[Churro121]

Mmmm, FG seems to be working well with these types of games that are not too fast-paced. nVidia really should find a way to enable it for the RTX2000/3000, it is possible, don't tell me it's not. :/

They probably can but it will never happen, DLSS 3 FG it's going to be a major selling point for the mind range RXT 4000.

 

[Gucky]

For me it was Native->DLSSQ+FG->DLSSQ->FSRQ from the picturequality.

 

[Sithaer]

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a fast paced action game.

I guess I have a different idea about fast paced cause to me Witcher 3 is not that.
Maybe with a speedier sword based build combat 'I did play one like that actually during my 170+ hours I spent in the game' could be called that but the overall gameplay nah.

I tried the update but in its current state and on my rig, DX 11 maxed out settings/native is still the way to go.
DX 12 was way too stuttery regardless of the settings and the performance hit is just too big at the moment. 'runs worse than Cyberpunk with RT enabled'

I also agree that manual switching the DLSS dll is not what the average user does or even knows about, I'm also into modding games but most ppl simply does not do that.

 

[1stn00b]

FSR looks like I rubbed Vaseline on my screen. DLSS 3 + sharpening at max looks great tho.

That's because they only added sharpening setting for DLSS not FSR. Game now is trash anyway from perfectly running before to a shuttering blured pile of crap that crashes randomly.

 

[phanbuey]

That's because they only added sharpening setting for DLSS not FSR. Game now is trash anyway from perfectly running before to a shuttering blured pile of crap that crashes randomly.

Doesn't really matter tho -- at the end of the day FSR looking like DLSS 1.0 in this title kind of screws all amd card owners.

 

[Aretak]

Doesn't really matter tho -- at the end of the day FSR looking like DLSS 1.0 in this title kind of screws all amd card owners.

Everybody gets screwed with this update. It runs like absolute turd on my 3070. Even with RT off it's a stutterfest compared to the old version. I also get constant frametime problems when RT is enabled, yet for some reason enabling Reflex largely smoothes that out.

Reflex off:

Reflex on:

No other settings changed, G-Sync enabled. Although it will randomly just start doing it again for a couple of seconds every now and then for no apparent reason.

 

[EatingDirt]

A bit confused on why FSR 2.1 looks so bad. This might be the worst I've ever seen it look in any game on this site. Quality looks as bad as Performance does in any other game, it's just a smeary mess. It's even worse than FXAA. I actually have a hard time believing FSR 2.1 has any sort of sharpening filter applied to it in its current state. It's also not selectable when you choose FSR, so you can't adjust the sharpening for it, however I noticed in the video that you can for DLSS. I don't know what they did to make it so bad, so I'll assume that they didn't implement FSR 2.1 correctly.

As for DLSS 3.0 Frame Generation... I... kind of have an issue calling the FPS it puts out frames per second. Sure, it throws out frames, but they're... only kind of real? If I understand frame generation correctly, in simple terms they're predictions of what the frames are going to be. I just don't see the usefulness of simply jamming predictive frames during gameplay besides saying "Look, higher number better!" in benchmarks. Its a technology that would actually get worse the lower base FPS you have, because there won't be enough good frames for the predictive frames to be obscured. I expect that this may actually make the experience worse for people actually need to use DLSS. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and it's amazing. I don't expect I'll know for another few years when the next-gen GPU's come out.