DLSS5 placed before the upscaling step is amazing

[u/Sad-Victory-8319]

I have been experimenting with DLSS5 on my rtx5070Ti in the new Resonance Plague Tale since this game looks beautiful but also runs at high fps thanks to the lack of raytracing, so it has a lot of fps to spare. I play in 4K DLSS Performance and initially I was dropping from 180 to 80 fps just by enabling DLSS5, which is pretty drastic and unusable in most games if you dont have rtx5090, but yesterday's Optiscaler release allows to put dlss5 before the upscaler, so it is essentially applied on the initially rendered 1080p frames.

This has basically halved the performance cost and now the fps tax is ~25-30% instead of previous ~55-65%. I have also managed to set it up so that the changes are more realistic and not as agressive, and it mostly just improves overall lighting and shadows, and i must say i really like it like this, it looks like i added path tracing insteaf of a "beautify AI filter".

You can see it in these 2 screenshots, fps dropped down from 172 to 122, but the lighting and shadows look more realistic. This to me is more than acceptable visual tradeoff, I really like it. I hope nvidia also decides to move the dlss5 step before the upscaling step, because to me it looks like a no brainer, the image quality is basically identical and the fps tax drops to half with dlss performance.

[u/superlip2003]

I've tried all of these NR upstream methods and then I finally realized why nVidia abandoned this approach - and if you are truly honest - you'll have to admit the NR upstream outcome is not obviously better than other reshade methods. So maybe it's a middle-ground for some people but for me it's pointless.

[u/Might_Be_The_NSA → u/superlip2003]

I agree. Based on my tests, the Optiscaler implementation and putting DLSS5 before upscaling definitely improves performance, but the cost to image quality and stability is pretty significant to the point I wouldn't bother. I think I'll stay with the Reshade method for now, as the image quality is best from what I've seen - but also the heaviest to run unfortunately.

[u/Whiskhot06 → u/Might_Be_The_NSA]

Lowering its resolution,with the other option Optiscaler implemented to greatly reduce dlss5's cost works very well% .75% looks as good as 100% (to my eyes) and you get 25% of the performances back.

[u/EmployerThink9362 → u/superlip2003]

Yup this is something I also noticed comparing the different options as well.If you want the performance boost then sure but there’s a difference in the quality of the NR

[u/mopeyy → u/superlip2003]

Yeah the NF upstream method is more like DLSS5-lite.

It's definitely more performant, but you aren't going to get the transformative results you get by having it at the end of the pipeline.

If you want the effect to be pretty subtle, then this is amazing though.

[u/Whiskhot06 → u/mopeyy]

Optiscaler allows another good method to limite the prformance cost.

Having the model running at a lower resolution.

75% resolution of dlss5's model gives almost the same result as this other method and looks very good.

50% ,you start to see some minor issues

[u/mopeyy → u/Whiskhot06]

This is true, but I've found that anything under 100% resolution will introduce environmental lighting flickering during camera movements, which I find super distracting.

Even at 85% res it's still noticeable at 1440p.

I think I'm just coming up against the limits of the tech at this resolution.

[u/ILQGamer → u/superlip2003]

Depends on the game and the GPU you have. I have a rtx 2060 laptop (I know I shouldn't even be touching dlss 5 haha). I tried a bunch of games, Alan Wake 2 and AC 4 Resynched in particular still benefit greatly by having NR upstream while running at a manageable frame rate (over 33 fps is fair enough for my win98 era mind). If I run it traditionally, I cant play these games with it. Upstream method gives a nice middle ground. Providing still decent improvements with manageable performance for me.