Introduction

Cyberpunk 2077 was released almost two years ago, but a loyal modding community improved the game by itself before CD Projekt Red even released its patches. Last summer I discovered that DLSS can be updated to the newer version manually, by swapping the DLL, which fixes some of the visual issues, such as excessive ghosting while driving a car. This summer, PotatoOfDoom from the modding community created another important in-game improvement—AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) support without any external software for the installation.

The way this mod works is by hooking into NVIDIA's DLSS algorithm through a customized DLL replacement. FSR 2.0 and DLSS 2.0 are very similar in their nature, so all that is needed is to translate the DLSS calls into their FSR 2.0 equivalents. Theoretically this method should be compatible with all games supporting DLSS, but some manual adjustments are needed per-game. Just to clarify, CDPR has not added official FSR 2.0 support to the game, and we know if that will ever happen. What we are reviewing today is the community-patch to replace DLSS with FSR 2.0.



How to install the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 Mod for Cyberpunk 2077 (download link):

• Extract the archive into the Cyberpunk folder so that all three DLL files are in the same folder as the main EXE file.
• Very important: Run the included "EnableSignatureOverride.reg" file as an admin.
• Launch the game, go into the graphics options, and enable the "DLSS" setting.
• The game will now run with FSR 2.0.

Below, you will find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, 1080p, and in different FSR 1.0, FSR 2.0, and DLSS quality modes. For those who want to see how DLSS, FSR 1.0, and FSR 2.0 perform in motion, watch our side-by-side comparison video. The video can help uncover issues like shimmering or temporal instability, which are not visible in the screenshots.

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings with ray tracing enabled; motion blur, depth of field, and some elements of the HUD were disabled for better image viewing. DLSS was manually updated to version 2.4.3 by swapping the DLL file.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In Cyberpunk 2077, the DLSS implementation has a separate sharpening slider in the settings menu, and this time around, we used the zero value for the DLSS sharpening filter to eliminate any conflicts when testing the FSR 2.0 mod because it is build upon the DLSS implementation and basically replaces DLSS. The official FSR 1.0 implementation also uses a sharpening filter in the render path, but you can't control the level of sharpening applied by FSR 1.0, and it can't be disabled. Even though a "FidelityFX sharpening" toggle is visible in the menu, it is forced to enabled after you enable FSR 1.0.

Image quality of FSR 2.0, compared to FSR 1.0, is a very noticeable upgrade in image quality at a slight performance cost. In our previous testing of FSR 1.0 in Cyberpunk 2077, we stated that the image quality with it enabled is pretty underwhelming without the ability to tweak the sharpening level, and unlike some other FSR 1.0 implementations, it's heavily oversharpened even at high resolutions, which had the game look even darker and was especially noticeable on trees or grass. At 1080p resolution, things even worsened because of the excessive shimmering on not only thin objects, but the whole image. All of these issues with FSR 1.0 were resolved with this unofficial FSR 2.0 community patch. You might still see the shimmering at very low internal resolutions; 1080p performance mode, for example. But other than that, the shimmering issues were greatly reduced.

However, as this mod is not an official implementation, it has some of the issues FSR 1.0 or DLSS 2.4 do not. The most noticeable of those with this FSR 2.0 mod is excessive ghosting while driving a car. The level of these ghosting issues is similar to DLSS 2.1 or even worse in some scenarios, which most people will find quite distracting. The other major issues we discovered during our testing are related to ray traced reflections. With the FSR 2.0 mod enabled, ray traced reflections are in some scenes rendered at very low resolution. The in-game screen space reflections are not affected by this issue. Also, the FSR 2.0 mod conflicts with in-game motion blur, creating black borders around the image as if squinting, so we recommend turning off motion blur.

Compared to DLSS 2.4, FSR 2.0 provides a similar level of image quality if we exclude the few issues we described earlier, which may of course be fixed in the future. FSR 2.0 eliminates excessive shimmering in comparison to FSR 1.0, small details in the distance are rendered more correctly and completely, and the image is less blurry and oversharpened at lower resolutions. Performance-wise, FSR 2.0 works at a slight performance cost in comparison to FSR 1.0, but DLSS 2.4 is noticeably superior than FSR 2.0 in terms of performance gains due to the help of tensor cores when rendering the image.