Introduction

Recently we reviewed the FSR 2.0 community mod for Cyberpunk 2077, and after four months CD Project Red has now released official support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 (FSR 2.1) with the release of patch 1.61. In order to run this game at maximum graphics settings with reasonable framerates at native resolution, quite a powerful GPU is required, which is why upscaling solutions are so important. But depending on the game, there are subtle differences with the implementation of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.1 (FSR 2.1) upscalers, so we are keen to examine both in Cyberpunk 2077.



Below, you will find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, 1080p, and in different DLSS and FSR 2.1 quality modes. For those who want to see how DLSS and FSR 2.1 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 and depth of field were disabled for better image viewing. DLSS was manually updated to version 2.4.12 by swapping the DLL file.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In Cyberpunk 2077, the DLSS and FSR 2.1 implementations all use a sharpening filter in the render path, and the game has the ability to tweak the sharpening values through separate sliders. This time around, we used the zero value for the DLSS and FSR 2.1 sharpening filters. The inclusion of a separate sharpening filter for each upscaling and temporal anti-aliasing solution is a great option to have, but there is one important issue of note. At lower internal resolutions, such as 1080p DLSS/FSR 2.1 Quality mode for example, the default value of 0.5 for sharpening filters can cause negative side effects in this game, such as excessive shimmering in motion, so we recommend to set the sharpening filter value to 0 for 1080p resolution, when using upscaling.

Compared to native TAA, FSR 2.1 image quality is a very noticeable upgrade across all resolutions. The in-game TAA solution has shimmering issues in the image across all resolutions except 4K, with very poor rendering of small object detail—tree leaves, for example. All of these issues with the in-game TAA solution were resolved with FSR 2.1 enabled. Compared to DLSS, one of the most noticeable differences in image quality between DLSS and FSR 2.1 is the quality of the built-in anti-aliasing. In the DLSS image, most of the edges of the game geometry are smoothed well, where in the FSR 2.1 image they have a somewhat more pixelated look. The second-most-noticeable difference is how FSR 2.1 deals with ghosting. In comparison to DLSS, FSR 2.1 handles the ghosting issues even better than DLSS at day time, but when there is a lack of lighting in the scene, the FSR 2.1 image may have some black smearing behind moving objects at extreme angles.

For those who been wondering how the official implementation of FSR 2.1 looks compared to the FSR 2.0 community mod: the most noticeable issues with the FSR 2.0 mod were excessive ghosting on cars while driving through the world, ray traced reflections appeared at very low resolution and motion blur effects were broken. In the official implementation, the issues with excessive ghosting were resolved, resolution of the ray traced reflections are rendered correctly, and motion blur effects are also working as intended. The anti-aliasing quality is also different: in the official FSR 2.1 implementation, the overall image has more jaggies in motion, especially visible behind cars while driving through the world and in vegetation—these issues were not present when the FSR 2.0 mod was applied.

Speaking of performance, compared to DLSS in this game, FSR 2.1 basically works identically to DLSS 2.4 in terms of performance gains across all resolutions. Overall, the DLSS and FSR 2.1 performance uplift at 4K is a great improvement to the game, you can expect around 50% more performance in "Quality" mode, with all graphics settings maxed out, definitely helping to cushion the performance penalty of enabling ray tracing for non-RTX owners. Going down to 1440p and 1080p resolution, the DLSS and FSR 2.1 performance increase is also impressive, as it will boost performance by around 30% in "Quality" mode.