Introduction

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice recently received a big update on PC which added support for NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), and ray tracing (RT-reflections and shadows) and enhanced visuals. With the addition of the new enhanced visuals and full resolution RT-reflections, the game became much harder to run. In order to achieve 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.

All tests were made using a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU at Ultra graphics settings with ray tracing enabled (RT-reflections and shadows); motion blur and depth of field were enabled as there is no option in the settings menu to disable it. DLSS in this game shipped with version 2.3.0.

Screenshots

Side by Side Comparison Video

Conclusion

In Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice Enhanced, only the FSR implementation uses a sharpening filter in the render path. As per usual, you can't control the level of sharpening applied by FSR, but in this game, it is tuned well enough by the developers. 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 Hellblade developers chose not to include that feature. You can still adjust the setting through the NVIDIA control panel manually.

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 in comparison to the TAA/FSR solution. Speaking of FSR, the image quality with it enabled is pretty good even without the ability to tweak the sharpening level, and unlike some other FSR implementations, it's not heavily oversharpened at lower resolutions.

During our testing, we've encountered a few graphical issues with FSR enabled. First, during gameplay, some shadows may produce weird flickering on the environment or grass. This is a completely random issue and can appear in any sequence of the game. Second, in some cutscenes, FidelityFX Super Resolution may conflict with in-game depth of field, which can't be turned off in the settings menu and results in a noticeable loss in texture quality. Both of these issues were absent with DLSS enabled.