A tech-minded user on social media who calls himself NikTek, posted a very new-age comparison of three rendering modes in Cyberpunk 2077: the classic TAA, NVIDIA’s DLSS 4.5, and AMD’s FSR 4 Redstone. The same game settings and graphics card were utilized for the comparison to physically show the difference in visuals caused by such an ascending 1080p to 4K. This, in turn, has produced a large and pronounced debate on the part of PC gamers over the issue of the trade-offs between image quality and performance. It is a debate that depicts the technological advancements made in the field of upscaling that have gradually become a major factor in deciding visual fidelity for the gaming demand of titles like Cyberpunk 2077.

Another day, another tech comparison posted online—which is the common route in this scenario. However, this particular one does matter if you do not want to go through the freezing of your graphics card and at the same time losing quality in your games. The user of this social media platform – NikTek introduces a video in which he depicts Cyberpunk 2077 in its most colorful way, but through three different processes. The very first is the native 1080p with TAA anti-aliasing. The second one, magic! DLSS 4.5 takes the 1080p image and uses its AI to upscale it to 4K. AMD is next with FSR 4 Redstone, which has the same process but lacks the AI hardware that is dedicated to it.

And what was the gamer community’s feedback? It was just brawl, the floodgates opened and the entire gamer community was joining in. To start with, let me remind you that very strong opinions are expressed regarding the use of TAA, some people just cannot tolerate it. User Bartosz says “TAA sucks, makes games blurry. I prefer not to use it.” Well, that’s a fair point. At times TAA can be quite a smearing mess, it exchanges the sharp edges for a softer, sometimes blurrier image. On the other hand, there is SoliTaire who is all about DLSS and claims: “DLSS has come a long way. It’s surpassing native resolution while making the games run smoother.” That’s the kind of thing we all want, right? Better performance AND better image quality? Sounds too good to be true.

A number of people even wondered if there was a point at all. User ‘naja’ just wants to know “Why would I zoom in 6x at 1080p? What’s the point?” And Rasheeda Burke hits the nail on the head with her observation about these social media clips: “Y’all gotta stop uploading comparison videos on here like we can see wtf is happening. The compression in this app is crazy.” She is totally right. You are trying to see minute pixel-level details on a video that has been heavily compressed, most likely watched on a phone screen and so forth.

The debate comes down to the point that there is nothing new under the sun. Gamers who are knowledgeable are having their replies with a whole thread going about the use of TAA as the standard for “native” baseline. User Sebq95 says, “Use DLAA as NATIVE not TAA.” DLAA is NVIDIA’s anti-aliasing which employs the same AI technology as DLSS but doesn’t upscale, so it is often sharper than TAA. And Ubertag90210 supports that with: “Native looks like crap with TAA… Generally DLSS 4 and 4.5 on quality will look superior to native TAA.” Hence, the very premise of the test is being questioned even before we get to the results!

Then, we have the fierce competition between DLSS and FSR. It is like NVIDIA vs AMD all over again. User disclaimer2234 simply says: “dlss lookin better than FSRR.” But then Pampa raises the question “fsr redstone wins ?” And the discussion starts. Rashimotosan responds, “Biggest issue with fsr redstone isn’t so much the image quality… it’s mostly the frame pacing. It causes a lot of stutter unfortunately.” So it might be that still images look equally good, but in motion, it might feel worse. That is a huge issue for gameplay indeed.

And of course, someone had to mention input lag. Flame6_SPEX (whose reply seems to have been lost but is alluded to) allegedly accused DLSS of causing input lag, and the community jumped on it. Darthshadow25 and SoliTaire are two who are quick to offer corrections saying, “DLSS doesn’t introduce input lag 😂 You’re talking about FG” – that is Frame Generation, a different feature. This confusion, often seen in discussions about PlayStation and Xbox platforms as well, highlights how technical details can get mixed up in online debates.