DLSS Tested – Is it worth it in Crysis Remastered?

DLSS Image Quality

In Crysis Remastered, DLSS’ quality mode has a visual impact that’s mostly positive. In direct comparisons, DLSS can make Crysis Remastered slightly blurrier than the game’s SMAA 2TX Anti-Aliasing solution, but it also produces fewer jagged edges and a more stable final result.     

Looking at Nomad’s weapon, we can see that DLSS delivers a blurrier final result, but we can also see that the distant buildings are clearer and much less grainy/aliased. As always, DLSS has positives and negatives, but the performance boost offered by DLSS and its minimal visual downsides makes it a clear win for RTX users. 

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Quality)
    

With DLSS in quality mode, you will be hard-pressed to see any major differences between having DLSS turned on and DLSS turned off, aside from the framerate boost that DLSS will offer in GPU-limited scenarios.  

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Quality)
    

DLSS’ balanced mode delivers a small decrease in sharpness when compared to DLSS’ quality mode, as is typical for all DLSS-enabled games. That said, the shift can be very hard to spot outside of direct comparisons. 

In terms of performance and quality, DLSS’ balanced mode is a sweet-spot between DLSS’ potential to boost framerates and offering gamers a high-fidelity experience. I guess that’s why it is called balanced mode. You will barely notice a change in graphical quality when DLSS is set to balanced mode, but you will notice your system’s higher framerates when Crysis is GPU-limited. 

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Balanced)
    

Below we can also see practically no decrease in image quality with DLSS set to balanced mode. With DLSS, Crysis players can expect higher framerates, assuming the game isn’t CPU-limited.  

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Balanced)
    

When DLSS is set to Performance and Ultra Performance mode, Crysis Remasterd’s shadow quality decreases, changing the look of the game. This is especially true for distant foliage. We do not know why this happens, but because of this, we do not recommend setting DLSS to anything below Balanced mode. While both images look similar outside of these shadow issues, this compromise to graphics quality is unacceptable. DLSS should not impact other graphics settings.  

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Performance)
    

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Performance)
    

Like performance mode, DLSS’ Ultra Performance mode also impacts Crysis Remastered’s shadow settings, lowering the game’s graphical fidelity. This is not a good look for Nvidia’s DLSS technology or Crysis Remastered’s implementation, but the performance impact of this mode is limited thanks to Crysis Remastered’s CPU-limited performance. 

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Ultra Performance)
    

(DLSS Off VS DLSS Ultra Performance)