Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II: DLSS vs. FSR vs. XeSS Comparison

[maxus24]

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is out now on PC, with support for NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution, DLAA and Frame Generation. Also supported is UE5's Temporal Super Resolution, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling, and the newest version of Intel's Xe Super Sampling. In this mini-review we compare the image quality and performance gains offered by these technologies.

Show full review

 

[oxrufiioxo]

DLAA or bust pretty much what I observed locally.

 

[wolf]

DLAA or bust pretty much what I observed locally.

DLAA looks absolutely phenomenal and compliments the fidelity of the game and artistic direction very well, but affording that performance is a tough ask on a 3080 (still, it can be done and stay over 30 so still a console beating visual experience if you're happy with that FPS), DLSS Quality takes an easy 2nd place.

I can't wait to hear from the usual crowd who can't enable DLSS/DLAA themselves though, it's crazy to me that AMD fans will look at this and insist that you're just blind and FSR looks much better.

 

[Chomiq]

DLAA or bust pretty much what I observed locally.

If you don't mind the performance drop and GPU power usage going up - sure.

 

[bug]

Unfortunately, all upscaling solutions suffer from immersion breaking ghosting and smearing on small flying objects...

However, all these graphical upscaling issues observed during our testing might be not so important because of the general art style of this game

Which one is it?

 

[oxrufiioxo]

If you don't mind the performance drop and GPU power usage going up - sure.

With a 4090 not overly worried about power although at 1440p it sits around 350w with adequate perfomance.

This is actually one of the few games I don't like DLSS in.

 

[Cryio]

There is an optimized kernel for Intel Integrated Graphics and a Standard XeSS Upscaling Model for other architectures supporting Shader Model 6.4, including recent AMD and NVIDIA cards. This standard model is simpler, with lower performance and quality, and was used in our tests with an RTX 4080. If DP4a instructions aren't available, such as on the Radeon RX 5700 XT, slower INT24 instructions are used instead.

Can we clean this up a bit? It's not correct.

1. One kernel is for ARC GPUs running on XMX cores
2. Second kernel, the intermediate one, runs on DP4a instructions for the majority of modern GPUs. Including Intel GPUs previous to ARC.
3. Third and last kernel runs on Shader Model 6.4, on GPUs without DP4a support.

 

[soupinator]

One issue I noted that wasn't mentioned in the article: In the first chapter, DLSS exhibits some temporal instability on the gravel beaches with bright single pixel highlights blinking in and out of existence in a number of places when in motion. Other upscalers seem to correctly filter this out. I actually found this distracting enough that I switched to TSR to finish chapter 1 then switched back to DLSS. Tested at 1440p with Quality mode and DLAA.

 

[bug]

One issue I noted that wasn't mentioned in the article: In the first chapter, DLSS exhibits some temporal instability on the gravel beaches with bright single pixel highlights blinking in and out of existence in a number of places when in motion. Other upscalers seem to correctly filter this out. I actually found this distracting enough that I switched to TSR to finish chapter 1 then switched back to DLSS. Tested at 1440p with Quality mode and DLAA.

Duude, no spoilers

 

[starfals]

I had a really nasty artifact issue during cutscenes when DLSS was on any setting. It was the least visible on Quality, but it still.. it was more than obvious. On balanced/performance.. it looked absolutely horrible. Funny cus FSR has 0 issues for me. Ive never seen DLSS being worse than FSR, this is the first time. Because I'm stupid, i almost finished the entire game with the ugly pixelated artifacts. I discovered how to fix this issue when i was already at 90% in the game. Perhaps I'm not stupid, cus this is the first time this kind of thing EVER happens, so how could have i known i guess? ;p I was gaming at 4K for the record. When i went to 1440p, the issue disappeared with DLSS. It only happened on 4K for me. That's why FSR is the way to go for my build.

Funny, having to use FSR on an Nvidia card, then again.. i had to use FSR 3 frame gen more than 5 times already, cus Nvidia doesn't support/care about people with the 30 series ;p

One issue I noted that wasn't mentioned in the article: In the first chapter, DLSS exhibits some temporal instability on the gravel beaches with bright single pixel highlights blinking in and out of existence in a number of places when in motion. Other upscalers seem to correctly filter this out. I actually found this distracting enough that I switched to TSR to finish chapter 1 then switched back to DLSS. Tested at 1440p with Quality mode and DLAA.

Yeah, too bad i already finished the game with this issue. It was quite bad on DLSS balanced mode... shame nobody told me this before. Another reason to never play games on day 1. Look when you wrote your comment... a week after the game is out. All the videos and pictures i took look horrible, like a game from 1996.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I can't wait to hear from the usual crowd who can't enable DLSS/DLAA themselves though, it's crazy to me that AMD fans will look at this and insist that you're just blind and FSR looks much better.

Where do you see people claiming this?

 

[ShogoXT]

This is the second new game that removed the sharpening option that has it caked it to SOME options.

In Alan Wake 2 I remember an ini setting for it. Is there anything like that for these?

 

[Trunks0]

This is the second new game that removed the sharpening option that has it caked it to SOME options.

In Alan Wake 2 I remember an ini setting for it. Is there anything like that for these?

It's UE5. Wouldn't surprise me if you can do the same engine.ini tweaks as other UE4/5 games with r.Tonemapper.Sharpen to sharpen it up abit.

 

[wolf]

Where do you see people claiming this?

Literally the last article for Ghosts of Tsushima, I can link it if you like.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Literally the last article for Ghosts of Tsushima, I can link it if you like.

How we keep it on topic and discuss those responses there. And wait for actual Hellblade II comments here instead of imagining what someone might post.

 

[wolf]

All the videos and pictures i took look horrible

This is with DLSS quality, just with chromatic aberration and lens distortion disabled, I've had essentially no IQ issues you speak of. The beach had some minor sparkling on the rocks but it was never so bad it was distracting.

And wait for actual Hellblade II comments here instead of imagining what someone might post.

I'll proceed how I please thank you very much I find such comments are so inevitable and ubiquitous, that I'll make that point how and where I please.

 

[Sound_Card]

DLSS seems to delete a lot of clouds and overly sharpen everything. This is what people justify spending twice as much for a video card for?

 

[ratirt]

The XeSS has some nasty ghosting around the characters. I hope that is not the final release.
Still, not a fan of upscaling, not yet.

DLSS seems to delete a lot of clouds and overly sharpen everything. This is what people justify spending twice as much for a video card for?

This is for brighter future. without clouds it is better

 

[GeorgeJr]

Great review as always.
Is there a chance we'll see a review of Immortals of Aveum and how the "PC FSR 3" version is of better quality? (hopefully compared to older version)

 

[tomcug]

DLSS seems to delete a lot of clouds and overly sharpen everything. This is what people justify spending twice as much for a video card for?

Ok, so when it's FSR oversharpening the image, people say it's great, better than DLSS because it's "more detailed". But when for a change it's DLSS having a sharper image, it's suddenly a bad thing. Nice judgement consistency

 

[soupinator]

DLSS seems to delete a lot of clouds and overly sharpen everything. This is what people justify spending twice as much for a video card for?

You can adjust the sharpening or turn it off. For my part, I'm pretty sensitive to oversharpening artifacts and the only issues I've noticed persist across every upscaler.

 

[Redwoodz]

This is pure insanity. A game review that talks nothing about the game or the hardware to run it. Just an advert for upscaling software tech. That's like reviewing a race car to see who's team can push it by hand faster. Insanity.

 

[Lew Zealand]

This is pure insanity. A game review that talks nothing about the game or the hardware to run it. Just an advert for upscaling software tech. That's like reviewing a race car to see who's team can push it by hand faster. Insanity.

Read the article title again, this is a review of how well the upscaling techs work in Hellblade II. If you want a review of the game and how GPUs perform with with it, TPU already did that:

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II Performance Benchmark Review

In "Hellblade II," Senua returns, confronting her haunting past as one of gaming's most tragic heroes. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, the graphics are among the best we've ever seen, but hardware requirement are high, too. In our performance review, we're taking a closer look at image quality, VRAM...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Sound_Card]

This is with DLSS quality, just with chromatic aberration and lens distortion disabled, I've had essentially no IQ issues you speak of. The beach had some minor sparkling on the rocks but it was never so bad it was distracting.

View attachment 348985


I'll proceed how I please thank you very much I find such comments are so inevitable and ubiquitous, that I'll make that point how and where I please.

The skin and blood looks overly glazed like a diabetic donut. The hair over the ear looks like DLSS is not sure if it wants to delete or not. They look like gray pencil lines from MS paint. The teeth look fantastic though.

 

[wolf]

Ok, so when it's FSR oversharpening the image, people say it's great, better than DLSS because it's "more detailed". But when for a change it's DLSS having a sharper image, it's suddenly a bad thing. Nice judgement consistency

The skin and blood looks overly glazed like a diabetic donut. The hair over the ear looks like DLSS is not sure if it wants to delete or not. They look like gray pencil lines from MS paint. The teeth look fantastic though.

The things you've pointed out aren't DLSS specific, that's a combination of me disabling certain post processing effects and using photo mode, changing the depth fo field and zoom substantially to get right in close to the model, closer than the game does in regular game play.