I tested DLSS 4.5 against FSR Redstone and I don't believe anyone who says they can tell the difference

For the better part of the past few years, Nvidia’s DLSS has been the gold standard for AI-based upscaling. When launched with the RTX 20 series, it was a rough proof of concept that was not appreciated by anyone, but with DLSS 2.0, it became a real game changer, with sharper output, better temporal stability and a meaningful performance increase without the visual changes that traditional upscaling methods require. Every generation has since further improved the formulaand DLSS 4.5 represents the most polished version yet.

AMD’s FSR took a different path. The original FSR was rough around the edges like DLSS, but it didn’t evolve at the same rate as DLSS. For most of FSR’s life, the general consensus was that it was good, open, and available on more hardware because it didn’t rely on special hardware. (so far)but it isn’t pretty much DLSS and Nvidia have always held the image quality advantage over the Red Team. Going into this comparison, I expected this story to continue, but I was shocked at how good the FSR was.

DLSS 4.5 is expensive, but it’s the best thing to happen to my aging RTX PC

The advantage is remarkable, but the cost is not the same for everyone.

FSR had some work to do

The DLSS package just got more impressive

For the better part of the 2020s, FSR and XeSS played second fiddle to DLSS in terms of pure upscaling, and that’s largely thanks to the head start Nvidia got. They were the first to introduce the technology, and while it was rather unimpressive to begin with, it has become something Nvidia says. 92% of players have activated itsome do it out of absolute necessity.

FSR has really been something that users have turned on when they don’t have an Nvidia card, and FSR has been worse in terms of image quality up until 3, where the lag has been reduced the most by far. It still wasn’t DLSS-level, but it did see a slightly bigger performance boost in generally GPU-bound scenarios at the expense of slightly worse image quality.

Screenshot comparing FSR 4 and DLSS 4.5 in Battlefield 6

I compared FSR 3 to DLSS 4.5 running on the RTX 5080 and you can see some clear differences in the leaves. Battlefield 6. The middle of the tree is less defined with the FSR 3, and while it still looks decent in action, you can absolutely tell the difference during stationary scenes.

Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 is a big visual improvement, but there’s a catch

This is an expense that not everyone can comfortably afford.

Head-to-head performance gains are similar

Both upgrade solutions offer significant performance gains

A photo of the two GPU cases on top of the PC build

I tested both upgraders with quality mode upscaling in a realistic apple-apple scenario at 4K on several titles, using the same test bench for both, only changing the GPU between tests, and the numbers are almost identical. I tried it Battlefield 6, Cyberpunk 2077, GTA V Enhanced Edition, and ARC Raiders. The RX 9070 XT and RTX 5080 perform differently in terms of average FPS, but I wasn’t comparing each card’s performance to each other, just to its own performance with upscaling and off. I also did not enable framing on both cards.

	ARC Raiders	Cyberpunk 2077	Battlefield 6 (Online Multiplayer, Blackwell Fields Conquest)	GTA V Enhanced Edition
Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 5080 DLSS 4.5 Quality / DLSS 4.5 Off, TAA Only	109 FPS / 88 FPS (+20%)	119 FPS / 80 FPS (+40%)	130 FPS / 104 FPS (+25%)	120 FPS / 86 FPS (+39%)
Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RX 9070 XT FSR 4 Quality / FSR 4 Off, TAA Only	84 FPS / 61 FPS (+37%)	90 FPS / 67 FPS (+34%)	146 FPS / 119 FPS (+22%)	90 FPS / 65 FPS (+38%)

This is a real-world use case: download games, turn on FSR or DLSS in quality mode, and play. Both delivered about a 20% increase over native 4K rendering with TAA in the titles I tested. Neither solution had a consistent advantage over the other in raw frame rate. In some titles, the DLSS went a little further, in others the FSR did, and the margins were small enough that they were within the noise of the normal benchmark difference. The performance comparison is mostly for curiosity and what I’m really interested in is image quality.

AMD’s FSR 4 beats DLSS 4 surprisingly

For the first time, AMD’s FSR 4 can properly compete with DLSS 4.

Image quality varies between the two

But it does not differ in action

Screenshot comparing DLSS 4.5 vs FSR 4 in GTA V Enhanced Edition

I was really shocked at how close the image quality was between the two upgrades. In motion, you won’t be able to tell the difference between them. Standing still on the scene reveals very slight differences in clarity, and these are most visible in foliage and trees—entities that ascenders in the past have historically struggled with.

in the year GTA V Enhanced Edition in the example above, you can see that the trees are a bit clearer at the edges, and this is also the case in motion. Overall, both do a really solid job.

A screenshot showing the comparison between FSR 4 and DLSS 4.5

In Cyberpunk 2077the two ascendants are not separated by a single star. In my setup, the blur created by FSR 4 is more noticeable during fast motion periods than the blur seen with DLSS 4.5. It was really only noticeable when driving fast on the streets, but it wasn’t something I experienced GTA V.

During online play Battlefield 6and ARC Raiders, It was really hard to see the difference between DLSS 4.5 and FSR 4. This screenshot isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison of the same scene, but I think it shows that each upgrade is particularly powerful. An FSR 4 image retains foliage fairly well when the background is cleared of debris, but quality drops slightly with background smoke. DLSS, on the other hand, does a good job despite the smoke behind the tree, but the sharpness filter’s play with the ground surface makes it appear a bit. too sharp for my liking. FSR does a better job of preserving the original quality of the terrain in this particular example.

And that’s a good microcosm of the general conclusion I got from this exercise: one riser is consistently no worse than another in quality across all samples. They render a slightly different image depending on the game, and while you can’t use FSR 4 on Nvidia hardware or DLSS 4.5 on AMD hardware, I wouldn’t feel out of place if I was in either camp.

Comparison of games with and without DLSS 4

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DLSS works like magic, but actually makes your games worse

The gap has been closed in terms of ascendants

There is AMD to upgrade the space It has reached parity with Nvidia in the ways that matter most. Image quality doesn’t differ during gameplay, the performance boost is comparable, and the visual artifacts that used to clearly separate the two are no longer a factor. This is not to say that the broader technology stack is comparable; DLSS and FSR Redstone are still separated in terms of framing artifacts, ecosystem reception, and ray recovery. AMD is still there to grow up to do on those fronts, however, at least in terms of pure upside, they’ve held up nicely.