DLSS, FSR and XeSS: Which Upscaler, Which Setting

Upscaling went from a curiosity to the default way modern games are played. It’s also routinely misunderstood, particularly the difference between upscaling and frame generation.

What upscaling does

The game renders at a lower internal resolution, then reconstructs a higher-resolution image from it using motion vectors and information from previous frames.

Rendering 1440p and reconstructing to 4K costs roughly half as much as rendering 4K natively. The reconstruction is the clever part, and it’s got good enough that in many titles the result is genuinely hard to distinguish from native.

The three implementations

DLSS (NVIDIA) — runs on dedicated hardware, RTX cards only. Generally the best image quality of the three, particularly in motion and on fine detail like fences and hair.

FSR (AMD) — runs on any GPU including NVIDIA and Intel. Broadest compatibility. Recent versions closed much of the quality gap, especially in the machine-learning based releases.

XeSS (Intel) — best on Intel Arc where it uses dedicated hardware, runs elsewhere in a compatibility mode. Quality sits between the other two.

If you have the choice, use the one native to your card. If you don’t have that option, FSR runs everywhere.

The quality presets

Preset	Renders at	Use when
Native / DLAA	100%	You have headroom and want maximum quality
Quality	~67%	The default choice. Often indistinguishable
Balanced	~58%	Reasonable compromise
Performance	50%	Noticeable at 1080p, fine at 4K
Ultra Performance	33%	4K only, and even then it shows

The rule that matters: the higher your output resolution, the more aggressive you can be. Performance mode at 4K reconstructs from 1080p and looks decent. Performance mode at 1080p reconstructs from 540p and looks poor.

At 1080p, stick to Quality or don’t bother. At 4K, Performance is genuinely usable.

When upscaling beats native

Counter-intuitive, but real: Quality mode can look better than native in some games.

The reconstruction includes temporal anti-aliasing that’s often superior to the game’s built-in TAA. If a game has poor native anti-aliasing — shimmering fences, crawling edges — the upscaler frequently cleans it up while also being faster.

The specific case where it wins: fine geometric detail in motion.

Where it struggles

• Fast motion with disocclusion — things appearing from behind other things
• Particle effects not written into the motion vector buffer
• Text and UI, though these are usually rendered after upscaling
• Very low input resolutions — garbage in, garbage out

Ghosting behind fast-moving objects is the most common visible artefact, and it’s much reduced in recent versions of all three.

Frame generation is not upscaling

This is the most common confusion, and it matters.

Upscaling makes each frame cheaper to render. Frame generation invents entirely new frames between rendered ones.

The critical consequence: generated frames contain no new input. Your latency is based on the rendered frame rate, not the displayed one. A game showing 120fps via frame generation from a 60fps base feels like 60fps — smoother-looking, not more responsive.

Practical guidance:

• Good for single-player games where visual smoothness is the goal
• Bad for competitive shooters, where latency is the entire point
• Needs a decent base frame rate — generating from 30fps produces artefacts and still feels like 30fps

Always pair it with Reflex or the equivalent, which offsets some of the added latency.

What to actually set

Competitive shooter: upscaling Quality if you need frames, frame generation off, Reflex on. Latency over everything.

Single-player at 1440p: Quality mode. Consider frame generation if your base rate is already above 60.

Single-player at 4K: Balanced or Performance. Frame generation is at its most useful here.

Older hardware: FSR at Quality is often the difference between a game being playable and not. This is the best use case for upscaling and the one that gets discussed least.

The VRAM interaction

Upscaling reduces render resolution, which reduces frame buffer size — so it helps a little with VRAM pressure. Frame generation increases VRAM use, because it holds extra frames.

On an 8GB card at 1440p, that distinction can matter. See the VRAM guide.

---

Bottom line: use the upscaler native to your card, Quality mode as the default, get more aggressive as output resolution rises. Frame generation makes games look smoother without making them feel more responsive — keep it off in anything competitive.