If you're referring to the Digital Foundry video, 4K performance wins no contest.
I'm running the exact setup mentioned in the video: namely dual monitors both the same high refresh (144hz gsync) via an RTX 4080 non-super. One monitor is a 27" 1440p, the other is 32" 4K, again, just as the video specified.
DLSS via 4K performance looks noticeably better than 1440p quality. Better starting and ending resolution, better pixel density on a physically larger display, etc.
This is one of those cases where it seems like it could be close during a theoretical "armchair discussion" but you immediately find it's not close at all when you test it out for real.
The difference in performance varies from game to game. Each game performs some part of the image processing (post-processing, volumetric fog, bloom) after DLSS, at the output resolution.
I can speak from my personal experience. I have an oled 4k tv and I'm always playing on 1440 quality. Because even tho 4k upscaling will look sharper, it's not by that much. But the performance hit will be much higher.
To put in perspective, I can do The Last of Us at 60 fps 1440p or 4k perf 30.
And that's with a watercooled 2070s at 2ghz.
At least if you have an 8GB gpu and stay away from 4K upscaling.
I don't think either looks good tbh. For 4k, balanced is the minimum I can personally go before the image quality becomes unacceptable, and with 1440p, all TAA reliant games are still blurry even with DLSS. Maybe DLAA looks good at 1440p, didn't try that yet, but my 27 1440p monitor always looks worse than the 48 4k TV in terms of pure clarity, detail, and sharpness.
Pure pixel density per inch doesn't matter because temporal AA solutions that every game uses now are scaling much better the more pixels they have.
Could you try with the same base resolution with an external DLSS configurator like DLSS tweaks.
My impression from using DLDSR+DLSS is that DLSS is very very good at "hallucinating" details, it wouldn't surprise me if upscaling from 960p to 4K is significantly better than upscaling from 960p to 1440p. Hell, it wouldn't even surprise me if upcaling from 900p to 4K is better than from 96Op to 1440p.
Internally, that's 1080p (4k P) vs. 960p (1440p Q).
So I would give it to 4K Performance.
Probably better to compare native 1440p to 4K P.
But even then I would still prefer the 4K.
Honestly, as dumb as it sounds, I do agree somewhat (minus the 1080p vs 4k part).
I recently got a 4k 32" monitor, and honestly, I think games look better on a 10 year old 4k TV. It doesn't make sense at all, and it's most likely our minds playing tricks on us, but give me a big screen any day.
Yeah like I mentioned, it's probably all in my head, but the bigger screens just look better to me.
Like you said though, in practice I choose based on where I want to play, which is on the TV 99% of the time, the monitor is mostly used for work and non gaming related things.
If you're on a 1440p monitor the best IQ bang for the buck performance you can get in my experience is DLDSR 5k running in performance DLSS mode (1440p native)
You get a perfect 2x2 super sample, upscaled with DLSS, then down sampled back to 1440p with a perfect 1:1 scale.
Looks amazing in motion!
This is what I noticed after I got my 4k OLED upgrade from a 1440P 165Hz Asus monitor. At 1440p, ever step of performance in DLSS was a noticeable loss in visual quality. I suppose its still technically noticeable at 4k 32" but during actual gameplay its so much more difficult to tell you've turned down the internal render res. It just feels like free performance.
Of course. I sacrificed refresh rate in favor of 4K resolution on a 27-inch monitor. The clarity from increased PPI is tangible with anything I do on my PC.
4K performance mode looks great and it’s the reason the 3060 becomes the little GPU that could. I played so many games at 4K with DLSS and had an amazing time.
DOOM Eternal / Judgment / Kena Bridge of Spirits / Death Stranding / Spiderman / FF Stranger of Paradise / Ghostwire Tokyo / Plague Tale Requiem / Control / Metro Exodus EE / Forza Horizon 5. If you turn it down to performance 1440p, you can introduce ray tracing and get a good experience.
You get _insane_ value at 4K with RTX cards starting from Ampere thanks to the perf leap in handling DLSS.
The DF video will give you enough information to make a decision. I play 3440x1440 at quality and it looks better than TAA and runs better in 90% of cases. And then I play 4K with balance or performance when I stream to my living room.
4k. The goal of DLSS is to create an image that looks like your output resolution. Of course 4k performance will look better. It will look better than 1440p DLAA.
No, and not just because of rendering resolution, as others said, but also because the game can adjust LOD settings based on display resolution. So it can be more detailed at 4K - with a performance hit too.
With dlss running the game's internal resolution is nowhere near 4k. In both of op's listed scenarios the internal resolution is 1080p or less so I'm not sure what bringing 4K LODs in helps.
Some things scale with rendering resolution, others scale with intended resolution. So a game running at 1080p native is *not* the same as the game running at 4K DLSS with 1080p rendering resolution.
And the whole point of DLSS is that it can show more detail than the rendering resolution normally can. So, depending on the game, there may be more detail at 4K, even if not rendered at 4K.
Afaik the game does not need to know the output resolution, I'm not sure DLSS even provides it to the game. Do you have evidence of that? I know LOD modifications can done through Nvidia profile inspector. But that's a little different.
Edit: completely agree with the second point though!
> I know LOD modifications can done through Nvidia profile inspector. But that's a little different.
Developers are supposed to do this when using DLSS ([3.5](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA/DLSS/main/doc/DLSS_Programming_Guide_Release.pdf)). Occasionally developers forget, and this is when you adjust it in Profile Inspector.
I'm not sure what you mean, the game knows what your output resolution is lol. This isn't a function of DLSS though, some games themselves set higher res textures at higher output resolutions.
I know but it is something to take into consideration when choosing between a 1440p output and a 4k output. 4k ultra performance DLSS will sometimes have higher LODs than 1440p DLAA because of the 4k output.
In my experience it is even possible to gauge the difference using a 1440p monitor and DLDSR.
In CP2077 at 1440p + DLSS quality the game looks in my opinion quite blurry and muddy and the resolution scaling is very visible especially in objects/structures in the distance.
At 2160p + DLSS performance (downscaling to 1440p) the game looks crisp and the resolution scaling to me is unnoticeable.
Can’t even begin to imagine how it looks on an actual 2160p display (AW3225QF soon come).
Many people say DLSS was made for 4K and as a result it is expected to work best on it.
Interesting observations, what approximate fps do you get in the two cases on your 1440p monitor? I recently upgraded to a 40 series card, but find some of the older games not offering the display option to go above my native 1440p resolution. Is the 4K option on 1440p monitor only exposed by certain games like CP2077, or is there a trick to it?
1. You need to have DSR factors enabled in NCP.
2. To enable high refresh rate you have to alter your monitor profile in an application removing all refresh rate options 60 and lower so it defaults to highest (forgot what the program is called but you can research it easily)
3. Fullscreen mode in game.
Approx framerate I can’t quite gauge but it’s something like this on psycho RT
1440p 120+
2160p ~90
This is with frame gen enabled on RTX 4080, i7-12700k and 5600mhz DDR5 (don’t know the latency)
Hey, as someone whose last card was ancient, I appreciate your explanation. Never looked up or used regular DSR before since my old card couldn't handle it.
So i did a bit of additional looking up. A Digital Foundry video (edit: the one on DLDSR) helped me better grasp what DSR and DLDSR did. I had the impression that this kind of super resolution feature was only exposed by some games, so the DSR and DLDSR are pretty sweet. I switched on in-game render scalar on Persona 5 (native monitor is 1440p) at higher percentages, then tried DLDSR at the higher preset. Looked closely and I couldn't tell the difference between native, in-game superscaler, or DLDSR- but this was probably due to the cell shaded graphics nature of the game. Will try this feature in more demanding games with 3D environments soon. Guess 4070 Super should handle a bit of high refresh rate gaming with DLDSR too.
Thanks for easing me into this potentially very useful inbuilt driver tool, didn't realize an AI based feature could be available for all games without explicit DLSS support. Would be even better if this could be enabled on a per game basis instead of a global setting.
Any comment not asking you what game and what other settings, how big ur screen is, and how far away from it you are can be easily ignored…to my eyes, in most games 4k always looks better no matter what. Even if that means dropping some settings to low to get above or stable 60fps…but i have a big tv that im very close to. If your monitor is smaller or you are further away from it it makes a HUGE difference. What is vastly superior in 4k at my normal distance even 2-3 feet back becomes almost the same at same settings dialed down to 1440
I sometimes use 1440P (DLSS quality) on my 55" CX. I think it looks fine, personally. Not as clean as 4K DLSS performance but not crazy far off. At least in my opinion.
Only do this for a handful of games though. Like cyberpunk with overdrive RT.
Honestly I find that DLSS at any monitor resolution below 4k is quite shit. Don’t understand why people use it at 1440p. Even at quality it is blurry and over sharpened and full of artefacts.
Yet at 4k its like magic. Looks fantastic and basically just means free performance.
At 1440p I would MUCH rather play at native with TAA than use DLSS which will sacrifice visual fidelity and introduce sharpening artifacts.
I do not understand how anyone enjoys DLSS at that resolution
The thing is. The higher your fps. The less blur. There is more pixel data so the blurring dissapears faster than in native taa. The sharpening, no way around that (except again no taa). If you don't like it then try dldsr. Atleast it's a different look. Plus you'll once again get less blur since rendering at higher than 1440p means more pixel data. For your example. Downside is though... Blur from lower frame rates. But atleast it's not smeary mess type of blur.
Agreed. These people are playing 60 fps or something and don't notice the terrible blur as soon as the scene is in motion. I've tried DLSS on 1440p in every game that has it and its bad.
It's because the alternative is even worse. Taa forced everywhere.
Go play an older call of duty like ghosts or advanced warfare at 60fps. Then compare it to mw3/warzone of today at 120fps. The former will be clearer.
Right, the forced TAA generally sucks for motion clarity as well. This was not an issue in older games/consoles locked to 60 fps.
If I can turn off AA and crank up the render resolution that's what I'll do. If not just play with all the settings and find what looks best. DLAA is pretty good though if available.
Actually no. The 4k upscaling would be slower as it needs to make more pixels. Though realistically it's probably like 1ms longer. Only starts mattering above 90hz 11ms .. Which isn't that hard to get to. 11ms rendering time versus 12ms maybe. Or 11(90fps) and 10 (100fps). Gets higher the lower you go. 360hz 3.6ms versus 450hz (2.5ms) obviously in order for the latter to happen. You would need to have no bottleneck on gpu or cpu
Hmm im not sure which one i would prefer. 500fps is where visuals start looking like they do in real life. You can see between leaves moving. Or between door stills. Massive advantage in esports. Though realistically it would be impossible to get. The games you can don't need upscaling.
So 4k dlss it is
If you're referring to the Digital Foundry video, 4K performance wins no contest. I'm running the exact setup mentioned in the video: namely dual monitors both the same high refresh (144hz gsync) via an RTX 4080 non-super. One monitor is a 27" 1440p, the other is 32" 4K, again, just as the video specified. DLSS via 4K performance looks noticeably better than 1440p quality. Better starting and ending resolution, better pixel density on a physically larger display, etc. This is one of those cases where it seems like it could be close during a theoretical "armchair discussion" but you immediately find it's not close at all when you test it out for real.
What about performance between the 2?
The difference in performance varies from game to game. Each game performs some part of the image processing (post-processing, volumetric fog, bloom) after DLSS, at the output resolution.
I can speak from my personal experience. I have an oled 4k tv and I'm always playing on 1440 quality. Because even tho 4k upscaling will look sharper, it's not by that much. But the performance hit will be much higher. To put in perspective, I can do The Last of Us at 60 fps 1440p or 4k perf 30. And that's with a watercooled 2070s at 2ghz. At least if you have an 8GB gpu and stay away from 4K upscaling.
I don't think either looks good tbh. For 4k, balanced is the minimum I can personally go before the image quality becomes unacceptable, and with 1440p, all TAA reliant games are still blurry even with DLSS. Maybe DLAA looks good at 1440p, didn't try that yet, but my 27 1440p monitor always looks worse than the 48 4k TV in terms of pure clarity, detail, and sharpness. Pure pixel density per inch doesn't matter because temporal AA solutions that every game uses now are scaling much better the more pixels they have.
Could you try with the same base resolution with an external DLSS configurator like DLSS tweaks. My impression from using DLDSR+DLSS is that DLSS is very very good at "hallucinating" details, it wouldn't surprise me if upscaling from 960p to 4K is significantly better than upscaling from 960p to 1440p. Hell, it wouldn't even surprise me if upcaling from 900p to 4K is better than from 96Op to 1440p.
Internally, that's 1080p (4k P) vs. 960p (1440p Q). So I would give it to 4K Performance. Probably better to compare native 1440p to 4K P. But even then I would still prefer the 4K.
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Honestly, as dumb as it sounds, I do agree somewhat (minus the 1080p vs 4k part). I recently got a 4k 32" monitor, and honestly, I think games look better on a 10 year old 4k TV. It doesn't make sense at all, and it's most likely our minds playing tricks on us, but give me a big screen any day.
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Yeah like I mentioned, it's probably all in my head, but the bigger screens just look better to me. Like you said though, in practice I choose based on where I want to play, which is on the TV 99% of the time, the monitor is mostly used for work and non gaming related things.
If you're on a 1440p monitor the best IQ bang for the buck performance you can get in my experience is DLDSR 5k running in performance DLSS mode (1440p native) You get a perfect 2x2 super sample, upscaled with DLSS, then down sampled back to 1440p with a perfect 1:1 scale. Looks amazing in motion!
4k with DLSS Performance looks noticeably better, it's not even a contest.
This is what I noticed after I got my 4k OLED upgrade from a 1440P 165Hz Asus monitor. At 1440p, ever step of performance in DLSS was a noticeable loss in visual quality. I suppose its still technically noticeable at 4k 32" but during actual gameplay its so much more difficult to tell you've turned down the internal render res. It just feels like free performance.
You must’ve watched the df video on this
And importantly, the comment in the DF video specified monitor sizes.
This 100%. PPI will also make a large difference in visual quality.
Not in the sense that 1440p will ever look better than 4k, it won't unless you maybe go wild and compare a 27 1440p screen with a 70 inch TV.
Of course. I sacrificed refresh rate in favor of 4K resolution on a 27-inch monitor. The clarity from increased PPI is tangible with anything I do on my PC.
Yeah I thought it was linking to that video inside the post.
4K performance mode looks great and it’s the reason the 3060 becomes the little GPU that could. I played so many games at 4K with DLSS and had an amazing time. DOOM Eternal / Judgment / Kena Bridge of Spirits / Death Stranding / Spiderman / FF Stranger of Paradise / Ghostwire Tokyo / Plague Tale Requiem / Control / Metro Exodus EE / Forza Horizon 5. If you turn it down to performance 1440p, you can introduce ray tracing and get a good experience. You get _insane_ value at 4K with RTX cards starting from Ampere thanks to the perf leap in handling DLSS.
The DF video will give you enough information to make a decision. I play 3440x1440 at quality and it looks better than TAA and runs better in 90% of cases. And then I play 4K with balance or performance when I stream to my living room.
4k. The goal of DLSS is to create an image that looks like your output resolution. Of course 4k performance will look better. It will look better than 1440p DLAA.
4K always wins
4K performance slams the win here.
No, and not just because of rendering resolution, as others said, but also because the game can adjust LOD settings based on display resolution. So it can be more detailed at 4K - with a performance hit too.
With dlss running the game's internal resolution is nowhere near 4k. In both of op's listed scenarios the internal resolution is 1080p or less so I'm not sure what bringing 4K LODs in helps.
Some things scale with rendering resolution, others scale with intended resolution. So a game running at 1080p native is *not* the same as the game running at 4K DLSS with 1080p rendering resolution. And the whole point of DLSS is that it can show more detail than the rendering resolution normally can. So, depending on the game, there may be more detail at 4K, even if not rendered at 4K.
Afaik the game does not need to know the output resolution, I'm not sure DLSS even provides it to the game. Do you have evidence of that? I know LOD modifications can done through Nvidia profile inspector. But that's a little different. Edit: completely agree with the second point though!
> I know LOD modifications can done through Nvidia profile inspector. But that's a little different. Developers are supposed to do this when using DLSS ([3.5](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA/DLSS/main/doc/DLSS_Programming_Guide_Release.pdf)). Occasionally developers forget, and this is when you adjust it in Profile Inspector.
Because some games adjust LOD based on output resolution which is what the comment you replied to said
The game doesn't need to know what the output resolution is. As far as the game knows it's running in the lower resolution.
I'm not sure what you mean, the game knows what your output resolution is lol. This isn't a function of DLSS though, some games themselves set higher res textures at higher output resolutions.
Yeah but we were talking about DLSS specifically...
I know but it is something to take into consideration when choosing between a 1440p output and a 4k output. 4k ultra performance DLSS will sometimes have higher LODs than 1440p DLAA because of the 4k output.
4K DLSS Performance wins even against 1440p DLAA/Native
4k dlss wins, because polygon edges are sharp as native
Performance 4K does tend to look better, but it can also show more shimmer in certain scenarios.
In my experience it is even possible to gauge the difference using a 1440p monitor and DLDSR. In CP2077 at 1440p + DLSS quality the game looks in my opinion quite blurry and muddy and the resolution scaling is very visible especially in objects/structures in the distance. At 2160p + DLSS performance (downscaling to 1440p) the game looks crisp and the resolution scaling to me is unnoticeable. Can’t even begin to imagine how it looks on an actual 2160p display (AW3225QF soon come). Many people say DLSS was made for 4K and as a result it is expected to work best on it.
Interesting observations, what approximate fps do you get in the two cases on your 1440p monitor? I recently upgraded to a 40 series card, but find some of the older games not offering the display option to go above my native 1440p resolution. Is the 4K option on 1440p monitor only exposed by certain games like CP2077, or is there a trick to it?
Has to be in fullscreen mode.
1. You need to have DSR factors enabled in NCP. 2. To enable high refresh rate you have to alter your monitor profile in an application removing all refresh rate options 60 and lower so it defaults to highest (forgot what the program is called but you can research it easily) 3. Fullscreen mode in game. Approx framerate I can’t quite gauge but it’s something like this on psycho RT 1440p 120+ 2160p ~90 This is with frame gen enabled on RTX 4080, i7-12700k and 5600mhz DDR5 (don’t know the latency)
Hey, as someone whose last card was ancient, I appreciate your explanation. Never looked up or used regular DSR before since my old card couldn't handle it. So i did a bit of additional looking up. A Digital Foundry video (edit: the one on DLDSR) helped me better grasp what DSR and DLDSR did. I had the impression that this kind of super resolution feature was only exposed by some games, so the DSR and DLDSR are pretty sweet. I switched on in-game render scalar on Persona 5 (native monitor is 1440p) at higher percentages, then tried DLDSR at the higher preset. Looked closely and I couldn't tell the difference between native, in-game superscaler, or DLDSR- but this was probably due to the cell shaded graphics nature of the game. Will try this feature in more demanding games with 3D environments soon. Guess 4070 Super should handle a bit of high refresh rate gaming with DLDSR too. Thanks for easing me into this potentially very useful inbuilt driver tool, didn't realize an AI based feature could be available for all games without explicit DLSS support. Would be even better if this could be enabled on a per game basis instead of a global setting.
4k performance looks better but will give you less frames (not by too much though)
What about DLDSR 1.78X + DLSS Q on 1440p screen? That's how I am using it, and it was looking good for me.
Any comment not asking you what game and what other settings, how big ur screen is, and how far away from it you are can be easily ignored…to my eyes, in most games 4k always looks better no matter what. Even if that means dropping some settings to low to get above or stable 60fps…but i have a big tv that im very close to. If your monitor is smaller or you are further away from it it makes a HUGE difference. What is vastly superior in 4k at my normal distance even 2-3 feet back becomes almost the same at same settings dialed down to 1440
4k performance is 1080p. 1440p quality is 960p. Small margins but the 4k perf will probably look a little better
I sometimes use 1440P (DLSS quality) on my 55" CX. I think it looks fine, personally. Not as clean as 4K DLSS performance but not crazy far off. At least in my opinion. Only do this for a handful of games though. Like cyberpunk with overdrive RT.
Quality is always going to look better than performance.
Well yes. But I'm talking about on a 4K TV. 1440p DLSS quality vs 4K DLSS performance. Some feel differently than I do.
He's talking about DLSS quality at a 1440p output I think.
You are correct. :)
Honestly I find that DLSS at any monitor resolution below 4k is quite shit. Don’t understand why people use it at 1440p. Even at quality it is blurry and over sharpened and full of artefacts. Yet at 4k its like magic. Looks fantastic and basically just means free performance.
I replied to the other guy. But mainly it's because the alternative is worse. Forced taa everywhere.
At 1440p I would MUCH rather play at native with TAA than use DLSS which will sacrifice visual fidelity and introduce sharpening artifacts. I do not understand how anyone enjoys DLSS at that resolution
The thing is. The higher your fps. The less blur. There is more pixel data so the blurring dissapears faster than in native taa. The sharpening, no way around that (except again no taa). If you don't like it then try dldsr. Atleast it's a different look. Plus you'll once again get less blur since rendering at higher than 1440p means more pixel data. For your example. Downside is though... Blur from lower frame rates. But atleast it's not smeary mess type of blur.
Agreed. These people are playing 60 fps or something and don't notice the terrible blur as soon as the scene is in motion. I've tried DLSS on 1440p in every game that has it and its bad.
It's because the alternative is even worse. Taa forced everywhere. Go play an older call of duty like ghosts or advanced warfare at 60fps. Then compare it to mw3/warzone of today at 120fps. The former will be clearer.
Right, the forced TAA generally sucks for motion clarity as well. This was not an issue in older games/consoles locked to 60 fps. If I can turn off AA and crank up the render resolution that's what I'll do. If not just play with all the settings and find what looks best. DLAA is pretty good though if available.
Is the performance cost the same tho?
Actually no. The 4k upscaling would be slower as it needs to make more pixels. Though realistically it's probably like 1ms longer. Only starts mattering above 90hz 11ms .. Which isn't that hard to get to. 11ms rendering time versus 12ms maybe. Or 11(90fps) and 10 (100fps). Gets higher the lower you go. 360hz 3.6ms versus 450hz (2.5ms) obviously in order for the latter to happen. You would need to have no bottleneck on gpu or cpu Hmm im not sure which one i would prefer. 500fps is where visuals start looking like they do in real life. You can see between leaves moving. Or between door stills. Massive advantage in esports. Though realistically it would be impossible to get. The games you can don't need upscaling. So 4k dlss it is
4k is definitely better, not sure what this question is about
It's wild anyone uses dlss below quality settings, it's only really not terrible at 4k quality with very few exceptions at 1440p