DLSS, FSR and XeSS compared

An upscaler lets the card render a game at a lower resolution than your screen and then reconstruct a full-resolution image. Fewer pixels to draw means a higher frame rate, and a good reconstruction looks close to the native image.

The saving is large. Rendering at about the 1440p equivalent and outputting 4K means the card does far less work than drawing native 4K. That is why upscaling has become central to how people play at 4K and with ray tracing.

DLSS runs on the dedicated hardware in NVIDIA's RTX cards and uses a trained model to reconstruct the image. It is the most widely supported of the three and is generally regarded as the strongest on image quality. It only works on NVIDIA RTX cards.

Its newer versions also include frame generation, and some include multi frame generation on the newest cards. Both depend on game support and on the card generation.

FSR started as a technique that runs on almost any card, which made it the most accessible. Its latest version, FSR 4, uses a trained model like DLSS and needs a recent AMD card to run. Earlier versions still work widely, including on cards from other companies, with lower image quality.

That makes FSR useful in two ways: as the best option on current AMD hardware, and as a fallback on cards that lack their own vendor's technology.

XeSS also uses a trained model and works best on Intel's own Arc cards, which have dedicated hardware for it. It has a fallback path that runs on other vendors' cards at lower quality, so it can serve as a third option where a game supports it.

On Intel hardware it is the natural choice, and on other cards it is worth testing against what the game offers.

Frame generation inserts extra frames between the ones the card renders. It makes motion look smoother and raises the displayed frame rate, but it does not make the game respond faster, and it needs a reasonable base frame rate to feel right.

Treat it as a smoothness feature, not a way to rescue a card that struggles. Upscaling and frame generation can be combined, and the result depends heavily on the game.

If you plan to lean on upscaling, check that the card supports the technology the games you play use. DLSS is the broadest, FSR is the most universal and XeSS is strongest on Arc. A card with current support is often a better purchase than an older card with a little more raw speed.

Upscaling is not free. It can introduce artefacts such as softness or ghosting in motion, and quality varies by game and setting. Use it to extend a card that is already capable, not to excuse one that is not.

Every upscaler offers modes that trade image quality for speed. A quality mode renders at a higher internal resolution and looks closest to native. Balanced and performance modes render fewer pixels, give a larger frame-rate gain and show more softness, shimmer or ghosting, particularly around fine detail and fast motion.

As a rule, use the highest-quality mode that reaches your target frame rate. Going lower than you need only costs image quality, and at 4K the gap between modes is far less visible than at 1080p, where the internal resolution is small to begin with.

Upscaling lowers latency by raising the real frame rate, because each frame takes less time to render. Frame generation does the opposite in one respect: it displays more frames but does not respond to your input faster, and it can add a little delay on top, because the card holds a frame back to build the one in between.

That is why frame generation suits slower single-player games and is a poor fit for competitive ones. Vendors also offer latency-reduction features that trim the delay in the rendering pipeline, and they are worth enabling alongside frame generation when a game supports them.