DLSS 2.0 with Control – Nvidia’s new killer feature

DLSS On VS DLSS Off  

DLSS promises two things, a notable performance boost and the potential of achieving sharper visuals than native resolution rendering. That’s the power of Nvidia’s AL algorithms, and those claims hold true in Control. 

In Control, DLSS has there modes, lining up with the Performance, Balanced and Quality modes from MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. For 4K, these resolutions are 1080p (Performance), 1260p (Balanced) and 1440p (Quality). These resolutions are what acts as Nvidia’s baseline for DLSS, images which are upscaled to the user’s desired resolution. 

As you can see based on the images below, even DLSS with a baseline resolution of 1080p can achieve pleasing results. Both 4K DLSS and true 4K images are comparable, but in all cases, the images rendered using Nvidia’s DLSS tools are sharper. 

Like Mechwarrior before it, 4K DLSS with a 1080p base resolution can look a little grainy, but overall the image is sharper than Control’s native 4K presentation, which is a worthwhile tradeoff given the boost in framerate that DLSS provides. 

As we move to higher base resolutions for DLSS, we can see that image quality continues to increase, and graphical downsides like grainy image features become less noticeable. In this regard, DLSS doesn’t look worse, it just looks different than Control’s native presentation. 

  
Hair was an area where Nvidia’s original DLSS implementation for Control fell flat. Hair would look blurry and would become pixilated when Jesse ran across the game world, especially with a low baseline resolution. In a 3rd person game, this was a huge trade-off. 

Now with DLSS 2.0, Nvidia’s AI technology now knows how to properly render Jesse’s hair, making details appear much sharper, even at a baseline resolution of 1080p. Yes, the 1080p image is a little grainy, but when running Control at high framerates, you will not notice the graininess of individual frames. 

At higher base resolutions DLSS starts to present a much clearer image than Native 4K resolution renders, as Nvidia’s algorithm starts to add extra details to areas which as Jesse’s leather jacket. This makes DLSS appear clearer than Control at a native 4K resolution. 
  
  

When looking at this noticeboard, we can see that DLSS can still be a mixed bag at lower base resolutions. Yes, while some areas of the image are sharper than a native 4K, DLSS’ performance setting is unable to generate the same levels of image quality in others. Even so, this is still much better than other upsampling techniques from 1080p to 4K. 

As we increase the baseline resolution of DLSS, the items on the noticeboard become a lot easier to read, with DLSS’ Balanced (1260p) and Quality (1440p) modes being a lot easier to read then Control’s native 4K mode. This highlights the ability for AI to enhance the quality of rendered graphics while also offering gamers a performance boost.