UL Benchmarks today released an update to 3DMark that adds a Feature Test for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2), the company's popular upscaling-based performance enhancement. This was long overdue, as 3DMark has had a Feature Test for DLSS for years now; and as of October 2022, it even got one for Intel XeSS. The new FSR 2 Feature Test uses a scene from the Speed Way DirectX 12 Ultimate benchmark, where it compares fine details of a vehicle and a technic droid between native resolution with TAA and FSR 2, and highlights the performance uplift. To use the feature test, you'll need any GPU that supports DirectX 12 and FSR 2 (that covers AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel Arc). For owners of 3DMark who purchased it before October 12, 2022, they'll need to purchase the Speed Way upgrade to unlock the AMD FSR feature test.

The PC version of "Red Dead Redemption 2" received official support for the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) performance enhancement with the latest Version 1.31 patch. The game now supports FSR 2.0 as well as DLSS. The update also includes improvements to the temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) implementation in the PC version. The update comes two months following a community mod that added FSR 2.0 to the game unofficially, which required you to run the game with its DirectX 12 renderer, and add or replace certain game files. The official 1.31 patch adds FSR 2.0 support for both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan renderers. The 433 MB patch is being pushed through Steam.

The latest Community Update 1 patch of "Dying Light: Stay Human" adds support for the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) performance enhancement. This adds several more quality-performance presets that improve visuals over FSR 1.0 at a given frame-rate, or improve frame-rate at a given quality-level. The update also improves the game's memory-management of the GPU's video memory in DirectX 12 mode, which should benefit features such as real-time ray tracing. There are other minor fixes for SSAO and TAA temporal anti-aliasing.

Capcom's "Monster Hunter: World" opened to generally positive reviews on the backs of strong gameplay mechanics, inventory system, and an addictive yet simple RPG quest, although we found it falling slightly short in the eye-candy department, as its visuals and texture-quality felt dated and a good 3-5 years behind what's considered cutting-edge today. Capcom alleviated some of this criticism by releasing a free and optional high-resolution texture pack for the game. The "High Resolution Textures Pack" is an optional feature-update that adds not just significantly higher resolution textures for the game, but also the new "TAA+FXAA" anti-aliasing mode under graphics settings. Rock Paper Shotgun comments that it has also observed some refinements in some of the visual effects. You can get the update from the "DLC" section of your game's Steam page, or this page.

The Creative Assembly has released the system specifications for Three Kingdoms: Total War. It seems those with less powerful systems will still be able to enjoy this title with relative ease considering the minimum specifications reference an Intel i7-8550U, UHD Graphics 620, and 6 GB of system memory. With a system of this caliber, users can expect to run the game with low settings at 1280x720 while getting 25-35 FPS. Minimum specifications change somewhat when looking at dedicated graphics cards. The CPU requirement drops from an Intel i7 to a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, but only if the GPU is equal to or better than an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 7850.

In regards to pushing the game at high or ultra settings. Users will need a slightly beefier system. For High at 1080p you're looking at needing an Intel i5-6600 or Ryzen 5 2600X with 8 GB of memory and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. All these considered these requirements are quite reasonable. Moving on to Ultra settings is where the requirements take a large jump with the Creative Assembly suggesting the use of an Intel i7-8700K, 8 GB of memory and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 or RTX 2060. Even with the large jump between high and ultra the fact remains these requirements are rather tame compared to some other AAA titles as of late.

NVIDIA, in a blog post/Q&A on its DLSS technology, promised implementation and image quality improvements on its Metro Exodus rendition of the technology. If you'll remember, AMD recently vouched for other, non-proprietary ways of achieving desired quality of AA technology across resolutions such as TAA and SMAA, saying that DLSS introduces "(...) image artefacts caused by the upscaling and harsh sharpening." NVIDIA in its blog post has dissected DLSS in its implementation, also clarifying some lingering questions on the technology and its resolution limitations that some us here at TPU had already wondered about.

The blog post describes some of the limitations in DLSS technology, and why exactly image quality issues might be popping out here and there in titles. As we knew from NVIDIA's initial RTX press briefing, DLSS basically works on top of an NVIDIA neural network. Titled the NGX, it processes millions of frames from a single game at varying resolutions, with DLSS, and compares it to a given "ground truth image" - the highest quality possible output sans any shenanigans, generated from just pure raw processing power. The objective is to train the network towards generating this image without the performance cost. This DLSS model is then made available for NVIDIA's client to download and to be run at your local RTX graphics card level, which is why DLSS image quality can be improved with time. And it also helps explain why closed implementations of the technology, such as 3D Mark's Port Royal benchmark, show such incredible image quality scenarios compared to, say, Metro Exodus - there is a very, very limited number of frames that the neural network needs to process towards achieving the best image quality.Forumites: This is an Editorial

A report via PCGamesN places AMD's stance on NVIDIA's DLSS as a rather decided one: the company stands for further development of SMAA (Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing) and TAA (Temporal Antialising) solutions on current, open frameworks, which, according to AMD's director of marketing, Sasa Marinkovic, "(...) are going to be widely implemented in today's games, and that run exceptionally well on Radeon VII", instead of investing in yet another proprietary solution. While AMD pointed out that DLSS' market penetration was a low one, that's not the main issue of contention. In fact, AMD decides to go head-on against NVIDIA's own technical presentations, comparing DLSS' image quality and performance benefits against a native-resolution, TAA-enhanced image - they say that SMAA and TAA can work equally as well without "the image artefacts caused by the upscaling and harsh sharpening of DLSS."

Of course, AMD may only be speaking from the point of view of a competitor that has no competing solution. However, company representatives said that they could, in theory, develop something along the lines of DLSS via a GPGPU framework - a task for which AMD's architectures are usually extremely well-suited. But AMD seems to take the eyes of its DLSS-defusing moves, however, as AMD's Nish Neelalojanan, a Gaming division exec, talks about potential DLSS-like implementations across "Some of the other broader available frameworks, like WindowsML and DirectML", and that these are "something we [AMD] are actively looking at optimizing… At some of the previous shows we've shown some of the upscaling, some of the filters available with WindowsML, running really well with some of our Radeon cards." So whether it's an actual image-quality philosophy, or just a competing technology's TTM (time to market) one, only AMD knows.

NVIDIA released comparison benchmarks for its new AI-accelerated DLSS technology, which is part of their new Turing architecture's call to fame. Using the Infiltrator benchmark with its stunning real-time graphics, NVIDIA showcased the performance benefits of using DLSS-improved 4K rendering instead of the usual 4K rendering + TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing). Using a Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz CPU paired with 16 GB of Corsair DDR4 memory, Windows 10 (v1803) 64-bit, and version 416.25 of the NVIDIA drivers, the company showed tremendous performance improvements that can be achieved with the pairing of both Turing's architecture strengths and the prowess of DLSS in putting Tensor cores to use in service of more typical graphics processing workloads.

The results speak for themselves: with DLSS at 4K resolution, the upcoming NVIDIA RTX 2070 convincingly beats its previous-gen pair by doubling performance. Under these particular conditions, the new king of the hill, the RTX 2080 Ti, convincingly beats the previous gen's halo product in the form of the Titan Xp, with a 41% performance lead - but so does the new RTX 2070, which is being sold at half the asking price of the original Titan Xp.