Black Myth Wukong: DLSS vs. FSR vs. XeSS Comparison

[maxus24]

Black Myth: Wukong 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 Frame Generation, and the newest version of Intel's Xe Super Sampling. In this review we compare the image quality and performance gains offered by these technologies.

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[GodisanAtheist]

*Release extremely taxing game that requires upscaling and frame generation at highest settings*

*Fumble the implementation of upscaling so now your beautiful game looks noticeably worse*

*Profit*

 

[mb194dc]

Surely better to just run it native and turn the details down.

Upscaling doesn't actually make any sense, at least no more so than it did with LOD implemented in the likes of the PS2 20 years ago...

 

[Lew Zealand]

Having run through the benchmark on a few Nvidia and AMD GPUs at 1080p and 1440p, W1zz's assessment seems to match mine exactly. FSR is overly pixelated in flat detail areas but pretty stable at leaf margins. But the long trails from moving objects like falling leaves are just distracting and wrong.

DLSS handles flat detail better with no pixelation but then foliage fringes are strangely shimmery, with background fog making this look the worst. Sometimes it can't decide on the thickness of the twigs this terminal foliage attaches to. But independently moving objects like falling leaves look very good, pretty much natural.

FSR needs to fix the pixelated textures and disocclusion trails and DLSS needs to fix the fine foliage stability.

 

[ViperXZ]

It’s really funny how they use outdated versions of DLSS and FSR - especially surprising with DLSS, with FSR I already saw that very often, so I’m used to it. With Nvidia users the manual upgrade to the newer DLSS is kinda mandatory then, with FSR 3.0 it’s simply not possible.

 

[Noyand]

Surely better to just run it native and turn the details down.

Upscaling doesn't actually make any sense, at least no more so than it did with LOD implemented in the likes of the PS2 20 years ago...

I don’t really understand the comparison, LOD is still a relevant tech today…upscaling exist because the hardware can’t advance fast enough to keep up with the demand for higher resolution, higher refresh rates and visuals improvements

 

[Dsirius]

The 1st mandatory thing to mention when doing these kind of analysis is if the game is endorsed and sponsored by any of Nvidia, AMD or Intel. This is important to know if, or how any of these upsacalers are favorized, optimized etc. Unfortunately this article failed it spectacularly.

 

[Arkz]

I'll play this in a few years on my FARTX 6070 or ARRRX 9700 XT

 

[mb194dc]

I don’t really understand the comparison, LOD is still a relevant tech today…upscaling exist because the hardware can’t advance fast enough to keep up with the demand for higher resolution, higher refresh rates and visuals improvements

Upscaling exists because manufacturers need an angle to sell their product, thats what DLSS is mainly about. Combined with being able to downspec cards and therefore increase the margin on them.

Both are just reducing image quality to get more frames.

Which you can do anyway by just lowering settings and you don't get the shimmering, ghosting and other issues.

 

[sethmatrix7]

*Release extremely taxing game that requires upscaling and frame generation at highest settings*

*Fumble the implementation of upscaling so now your beautiful game looks noticeably worse*

*Profit*

Now this is gaming optimization in 2024

 

[Noyand]

Upscaling exists because manufacturers need an angle to sell their product, thats what DLSS is mainly about. Combined with being able to downspec cards and therefore increase the margin on them.

Both are just reducing image quality to get more frames.

Which you can do anyway by just lowering settings and you don't get the shimmering, ghosting and other issues.

Upscaling was a thing before DLSS. Epic Games also has its own upscaling tech for the Unreal engine. And they don't sell hardware. IF upscaling is well implemented, it can be a better compromise over having to reduce the settings to get a similar increase in performance.

Your angle seems to be solely focused on Nvidia's business practices, when FSR being open and not generation-locked makes it a poor "new GPU seller". RDNA 3 is also down-specced on purpose? Do you think that AMD is so happy about being below Nvidia when it comes to flagship performance that they would just take it easy?

I mean, yeah, Nvidia did make a massive cut for anything below the 4090, but even with its 609mm² die (which is Big) doesn't exactly enable a native rendering, high refresh rate gaming experience at 4K in many of the new releases. We've been waiting for 4k gaming to become mainstream for a decade, and it's still not happening even with the fastest GPU currently available.

People need to make peace with the fact that we've reached an era of diminishing returns, with hardware that is more costly to make in a capitalist world where no company of non-essential goods is going to take a hit on behalf of the customer. TSMC and ASML don't care about us, other companies either accept their price hike or go extinct

 

[watzupken]

*Release extremely taxing game that requires upscaling and frame generation at highest settings*

*Fumble the implementation of upscaling so now your beautiful game looks noticeably worse*

*Profit*

But which game developer produces games not for profit? To me, profiting is expected. It’s really the quality of the product that matters. While I agree and I don’t like the fact that upscaling and frame gen (something that I really dislike) is a must for reasonable performance, this is probably nowhere near the worst amongst all the AAA titles released this and past years. In any case, I pretty much stopped playing all these overhyped AAA titles. Most are boring and excessively taxing on hardware.

 

[Prima.Vera]

This article fails to mention that, for the non RTX 40x0 GPU users, the only option to have frame generation is to use either TSR, which is very good at 75%, or FSR.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

But which game developer produces games not for profit? To me, profiting is expected. It’s really the quality of the product that matters. While I agree and I don’t like the fact that upscaling and frame gen (something that I really dislike) is a must for reasonable performance, this is probably nowhere near the worst amongst all the AAA titles released this and past years. In any case, I pretty much stopped playing all these overhyped AAA titles. Most are boring and excessively taxing on hardware.

-Profit is earned, not expected.

 

[wolf]

Great article as usual, it's a shame all upscalers have issues, but at least DLSS suers can drop in DLL's to find the better balance. Even in the Benchmark FSR seems to really struggle with the water and tree leaves stability, jumps out immediately as looking 'crunchy'.

I'd be nice if the Benchmark has had a demo (or a demo came out that included the benchmark), it's harder to judge certain things in a canned flyby, I'd have preffered to be able to see how it looked and felt when controlling the character.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Those 1:1 screenshots are extremely bad compressed or made:

 

[Minus Infinity]

*Release extremely taxing game that requires upscaling and frame generation at highest settings*

*Fumble the implementation of upscaling so now your beautiful game looks noticeably worse*

*Profit*

Did they outsource the release to AMD?

 

[W1zzard]

Those 1:1 screenshots are extremely bad compressed or made:

The game looks VERY grainy indeed

 

[Prima.Vera]

The game looks VERY grainy indeed

Looks like there is no Alpha Blending on the renderings

 

[napata]

Upscaling exists because manufacturers need an angle to sell their product, thats what DLSS is mainly about. Combined with being able to downspec cards and therefore increase the margin on them.

Both are just reducing image quality to get more frames.

Which you can do anyway by just lowering settings and you don't get the shimmering, ghosting and other issues.

What a load of nonsense. The whole point of upscaling is to maximize graphics. It does pretty much the same thing as TAA which also exists to maximize graphics. The gist is that you win performance from upscaling and TAA so you can push other things further to gain a net positive.

Games have used upscaling for over a decade, long before the existence of DLSS. Ironically upscaling vs native isn't that different from raster vs RT as the both upscaling and raster were made for the same purpose: to avoid performance loss.

 

[Paramount]

The game considered the Crysis of 2024

 

[Frick]

I genuinely believe devs should just not focus on graphics for a few years. Let it rest, focus on mechanics and writing.

The game considered the Crysis of 2024

I haven't played this, but Crysis played really well across a wide range of systems and looked really good even at lower settings.

 

[redeye]

from the first page photos, it seems to my eyes, that DLSS 1080 looks better than 1440 DLSS, yet, on FSR 1440 FSR looks better than 1080.

(also on the DLSS 1080, my eyes are telling me, “where did all the leaves come from” … upon further “spying” the 1080 DLSS is sharper, thus looks like more leaves…

of course, this is all pixel peeping, differences disappear (not noticed) when fighting. but 80% of the game is the environment…
btw, bought the game, and it is amazing how close this AAA game, is it to the “fictional” Game being “Developed“ in the Chinese TV show (english subtitles, no English dub) on Netflix (Canada) “Everyone loves me”… (yes it is a romance drama, with the Gaming Studio as a reason for the drama/Romance…)

 

[colossusrageblack]

4K DLSS Performance mode looks like FSR's 4K Quality mode.

 

[Pumper]

Sharpening on top of sharpening.