Unlike DLSS, DLAA never seemed worth it in the AAA games I played. The whole appeal of DLSS is that it delivers higher frame rates while looking almost as good as native resolution. DLAA, on the other hand, expects you to give up a little more performance for a little better image quality. Given that native 4K is required even on high-end GPUs like the RTX 4090 and 5090, especially in the new open-world AAA titles, this felt like an unnecessary trade-off.
But when I spent the last weekend playing 007 First LightI finally had a reason to give DLAA a fair shot. The game forces TAA at native resolution, and while that’s hardly unusual for a modern AAA title, it didn’t take long for me to notice some issues with this anti-aliasing method that have always bothered me. On the bright side, since the game still doesn’t support ray tracing, I was getting an average of 70FPS in native 4K on the 4090, so I was willing to sacrifice some performance in exchange for better image quality.
TAA ruins native resolution for me
The famous TAA blur is hard to ignore
TAA has been around for over a decade now, and I can understand why many developers still use it. It does a decent job of cleaning up jagged edges and reducing glare without sacrificing performance as much as MSAA. However, the trade-off is that it softens the image, so I’d argue that it’s dated by today’s standards. Anyone chasing native 4K expects the best visual quality possible, but TAA doesn’t quite deliver. I prefer not to use any AA, especially on a 27-inch 4K panel where the pixel density is high enough to minimize visible aliasing.
with 007 First Light forcing TAA for native rendering, I had no real alternative. If I wanted a cleaner image without the “darkness” that comes with TAA, DLAA was my best bet. Of course, you could argue that turning on DLSS would achieve a similar result while also improving performance, but that would defeat the entire purpose of running the game at native 4K in the first place. After running the whole story on DLAA, I finally figured out why Nvidia is confident enough to say that DLSS 4.5 looks better than native resolution.
DLAA returns the sharpness that native 4K deserves
Fine details finally look like I’ve come to expect in native 4K
TAA in 007 First Light it’s not so bad when you’re playing with a closed mission or standing still and taking in the scenery. But the moment you step outside, its spotty look is easy to spot. I noticed the biggest difference when switching between TAA and DLAA during the Vietnam mission. The area is densely vegetated, making it a perfect showcase for DLAA. When using TAA, fine details at distance were missing Definition and stability provided by DLAA.
When moving, leaves retained more detail with DLAA, while TAA smoothed out some of it. Admittedly, the improvement isn’t dramatic enough unless you’re actively looking for it, but given that I’m constantly switching between the two, the extra detail wasn’t easy for me to ignore. The best part? I barely sacrificed my framerates, which was enough to convince me to stick with DLAA for the rest of the game. Since I was already averaging over 60 FPS, prioritizing image quality made more sense.
Most of you are better off using DLSS
I only used DLAA because there was room for it
Most people aren’t running this game on an RTX 4090 or 5090, so they probably won’t have the luxury of taking DLAA as a free image quality upgrade. If you’re not getting 60 FPS at 4K in the first place, the extra 2-5% FPS hit isn’t worth it. But you can avoid TAA entirely by simply turning on DLSS, and the image quality will still look a touch better than native 4K with TAA. You can either use DLSS Quality or Balanced with DLSS Preset L for best results it also gains an FPS boost.
But in my case, there was a leeway to prioritize image quality without prioritizing performance. And that’s partly because the game doesn’t yet support hardware-accelerated ray tracing. I’m sure when this tracking update arrives I’ll be forced to switch to DLSS or even frame generation to get the same framerates. So far I’m getting around 70 FPS, so a 2-5% performance hit won’t meaningfully change the feel of the game, especially since it’s slow-paced.
This is the native 4K experience I’m after
For the longest time, my position on DLAA has been that the image quality isn’t worth the performance hit when most AAA games are already pretty demanding at native 4K. After all, why not just use DLSS and get FPS boost to make sure the image looks just as good? But in 007 First LightI was already getting the FPS I wanted, giving me a rare opportunity to focus entirely on image quality, especially since ray tracing was not possible. It showed me how far behind native rendering TAA is, and why DLAA deserves more attention from gamers with high-end GPUs. I still think DLSS is the better choice for most gamers, but now that I’ve encountered DLAA, I’ll always make sure to test it instead of ignoring it outright.
