Introduction

God of War Ragnarök has finally released on PC, with several enhancements over its original PlayStation 5 release, such as:

• Enhanced quality of reflections and lighting, higher fidelity shadows, as well as increased geometric detail
• Full support for ultra-wide screens
• NVIDIA's DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation (DLSS 3)
• NVIDIA's Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA)
• Intel's Xe Super Sampling 1.3 (XeSS 1.3)
• AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.1 (FSR 3.1) upscaling and Frame Generation

To run God of War Ragnarök at maximum graphics settings and reasonable framerates at native resolution, a powerful GPU is necessary. Therefore, upscaling solutions are crucial for most gamers. Different games have varying implementations of NVIDIA's DLSS, Intel's XeSS and AMD's FSR. We are excited to examine how these temporal upscalers perform in God of War Ragnarök, so let's get started.

Below, you'll find comparison screenshots at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p resolutions, showcasing different quality modes for XeSS, FSR, and DLSS. Screenshots for TAA, DLAA and DLSS/FSR Frame Generation are also available in the dropdown menu. For a dynamic view of these technologies in motion, watch our side-by-side comparison video. This video reveals issues such as shimmering or temporal instability that might not be evident in still images.

All tests were conducted using a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings. To enhance image clarity, motion blur, film grain, and chromatic aberration were disabled. We also used a GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 7900 XT for additional testing. The game features DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation version 3.7.10.

Screenshots

Side-by-Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

Right off the bat, we would like to point out a few questionable design choices when it comes to how upscaling solutions are implemented in this game. The first most noticeable issue is that the graphics settings menu is showing internal resolution only instead of output resolution when upscaling is enabled, which is very confusing for most players. We find this UI design very odd and confusing, especially considering that the previous God of War game had both output and internal resolution in the graphics settings menu. The second issue is the absence of a sharpening slider for upscaling and antialiasing, which was also present in the previous God of War game. Although it wasn't present on day one, but was added later after multiple requests from players, so essentially the developers have made the same mistake twice at this point. It's important to point out that this game was ported to PC by Jetpack Interactive, not Nixxes—the studio responsible for most recent PC ports from Sony, such as Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima and the Spider-Man games.

Upscaling Quality

Speaking of overall image quality with upscaling enabled, all upscaling solutions are producing similar image quality with minor differences:

• As the game is using the latest version of FSR, the FSR 3.1 implementation in God of War Ragnarök is one of the least problematic FSR implementations in terms of image clarity and stability, compared to what we usually see from FSR. The visibility of disocclusion artifacts around Kratos and enemies is pretty low and not very distracting, even during intense combat. The overall image is stable and free of any ghosting artifacts, the typical shimmering of vegetation is not present as well, even at low resolutions such as 1080p. However, there is one aspect of the FSR 3.1 image that still has a noticeable flaw—it's the quality of particle effects. This quality loss is especially visible on fire, waterfalls and water effects in general. Water in particular in some instances has a very shimmery and pixelated look in motion, which might be distracting for some people when traversing through rivers on a boat.
• The XeSS 1.3 implementation in its DP4a mode is also one of the best XeSS implementations we've seen recently. It is free of ghosting, shimmering or disocclusion artifacts, producing a very stable and detailed overall image. The quality of particle effects isn't degraded, and the water effects are stable when traversing through rivers. On the negative side, the XeSS image has a slightly softer look in comparison to FSR 3.1 or DLSS.
• The DLSS Super Resolution implementation is great as well, producing the most stable and perfectly clean image across all resolutions and quality modes compared to other available upscaling solutions. With DLAA enabled, the overall image quality improvement is even higher, offering the best graphical experience overall when compared to the native TAA solution, FSR 3.1, DLSS or XeSS.

Frame Generation

With the ability to enable FSR Frame Generation with any antialiasing or upscaling solution, including DLSS or DLAA, we can now properly test AMD's Frame Generation image quality without artifacts introduced by FSR upscaling, directly comparing it to NVIDIA's Frame Generation.

• And the results are great: when using DLSS as the base image, FSR 3.1 Frame Generation produces excellent image quality and smoothness. We didn't see any major issues or artifacts in image quality compared to NVIDIA's Frame Generation during average gameplay or during intense combat, which is a very good thing. The overall image quality of FSR 3.1 Frame Generation in conjunction with FSR upscaling is very appealing as well, with the exception of unstable quality of water effects, which is present in the FSR upscaling image and slightly exaggerated when Frame Generation is enabled on top of that. Also, there is a bug where sometimes after enabling FSR 3.1 Frame Generation, the game is suddenly running only at 15 FPS—a simple restart of the game will fix the problem. To alleviate any concerns over the GPU hardware used, we tested FSR 3.1 upscaling and Frame Generation using not only a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU, but also a GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 7900 XT, to see how FSR 3.1 upscaling and Frame Generation would perform on different GPU architectures—the results were identical.
• While the image quality and stability of DLSS Frame Generation is excellent when the technology is actually working properly, at the time of writing this review, the activation of DLSS Frame Generation is somewhat broken in this game and requires additional steps from users in order to properly apply this feature. We weren't able to identify what exactly causing this issue, but most of the time DLSS Frame Generation feature simply doesn't have any effects when you try to enable it. A simple restart of the game rarely fixes the issue, and during our intense testing we found out only one consistent workaround for this issue:
  • Load into gameplay, go to your settings and enable DLSS FG with DLSS on Quality.
  • Close your settings and move around for a few seconds.
  • Open the settings again and select XeSS on Ultra Quality with DLSS FG enabled.
  • Close your settings and move around for a few seconds (at this point DLSS FG should "wake up").
  • Open the settings again and switch back to DLSS/DLAA instead of XeSS and DLSS FG should be working as intended now.
• Patch 2 fixes DLSS Frame Generation, it works as expected now, without any additional hoops to jump through.

Performance

Regarding performance, the DLSS, XeSS 1.3 and FSR 3.1 implementations in God of War Ragnarök offer lower performance gains compared to the norm set by previously tested games that use the same technologies. Usually, going from native rendering to an upscaler set to "Quality" mode will grant a solid 45% performance boost, or even higher in some games, but in God of War Ragnarök, the upscaling performance increase is only around 30% in "Quality" mode compared to native rendering at 4K resolution, and around 20% at 1440p and 1080p resolutions. With DLSS Super Resolution or FSR 3.1 in "Quality" mode and DLSS/FSR Frame Generation enabled, you can expect almost doubled FPS at 4K and 1440p resolutions when compared to native rendering. The native DLAA, FSR and XeSS modes have a performance cost of around 6% compared to the native TAA solution, and the DLAA solution offers the best graphical experience overall. DLAA can also be combined with DLSS or FSR 3.1 Frame Generation for both better than native image quality and FPS.