Introduction

God of War has finally released on PC, with plenty of visual enhancements over its original PlayStation 4 release, and this version on PC has support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) from day one. In order to run this game at maximum graphics settings and 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 in the implementation of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), so we are keen to have a look at both in this game.



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

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings with motion blur disabled. DLSS in this game shipped with version 2.3.4.

Screenshots

Side by Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In God of War, both FSR and DLSS are implemented with a sharpening filter in the render path. With version 2.3, NVIDIA has added the ability for game developers to include a DLSS sharpening slider, which adds a customizable sharpening pass—the God of War developers chose not to include that feature; instead, they added a fixed sharpening level value to the DLSS render path. On the FSR side, you can't control the level of sharpening applied by FSR, but in this game, the sharpening level is well-tuned by the developers. Even though an NVIDIA's sponsored release, it is great to see the developers made sure the FSR implementation will also be playable across all resolutions.

Speaking of image quality and performance, compared to native resolution, the DLSS performance uplift at 4K is a great improvement to the game even in Quality mode, and image quality is more detailed and stable than the TAA/FSR solution. One important thing to note is that the FSR image in this game doesn't have excessive shimmering issues like in Horizon Zero Dawn, for example. Going down to 1440p and 1080p resolutions, the DLSS and FSR performance increase is less impressive as it will boost performance by only around 10%, or even less at 1080p, a very similar FSR and DLSS performance boost as in Horizon Zero Dawn.