Did Nvidia fix DLSS? DLSS 2.0 Analysis with MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

DLSS 2.0 – Performance Upgrades

The main draw of Nvidia’s DLSS technology is its promise of increased game performance, and in MechWarrior 5 it is clear that DLSS has the ability to deliver some incredible increases to the available framerates on Geforce RTX graphics cards. 

We tested Nvidia’s RTX 2060 and RTX 2080 Ti at 4K in MechWarrior 5, showcasing the benefits of DLSS in Nvidia’s highest-end and lowest-cost RTX series graphics cards, revealing some staggering performance increases. 

Hangar Performance

In MechWarrior 5’s Hangar, the game’s framerates can be a fraction of what it is in some missions. This factor makes this area an ideal place to test Nvidia’s DLSS 2.0 technology at extremely low framerates. 

With Nvidia’s RTX 2060, turning DLSS on will result in average framerates almost doubling, from 24.6 FPS to 43.7 FPS, and that’s with DLSS set to its Quality mode. Setting DLSS to Performance on out RTX 2060 resulted in performance levels which were better than our RTX 2080 Ti with DLSS disabled. 

With DLSS set to Performance, we achieved better framerates than when we had DLSS disabled when using the same settings at a resolution of 1440p. Given the almost negligible quality downsides delivered by DLSS, these performance gains are nothing short of incredible. To be completely honest, DLSS improved image quality in many instances, making these performance gains almost unfathomable. 
  

  
Mission Performance

In most missions, the performance benefits of DLSS are nowhere near as large as they are in MechWarrior 5’s Hangar. Even so, the performance gains offered by DLSS are significant. 

When the RTX 2060 is running the game at 4K with DLSS set to performance, the graphics card can achieve performance levels that are functionally equivalent to an RTX 2080 Ti at the same resolution with DLSS disabled. This means that DLSS can get a £300 graphics card to perform similarly to a £1000 graphics card. That’s insane.

With our RTX 2060, DLSS can get MechWarrior 5 to run at a constant 60 FPS in missions. With the RTX 2080 Ti, we start pushing higher than 144 FPS average framerates, which is great for anyone with a 120Hz monitor.  

DLSS is delivering some incredible performance increased within MechWarrior 5, which when combined with the feature’s graphical upsides and minimal downsides, is a huge win for Nvidia.