Cyberpunk 2077 DLSS Quality Comparison vs. Native, Benchmarks, & Blind Test
In spite of NVIDIA's best efforts to coerce media into talking about DLSS and Ray Tracing, we're doing it because we actually want to. Bad timing from NVIDIA. This is #Cyberpunk2077's DLSS.
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Watch our Cyberpunk 2077 GPU benchmarks: • Cyberpunk 2077 PC GPU ...
Watch our #Cyberpunk 2077 CPU benchmarks: • Cyberpunk 2077 CPU Ben...
In this content, we're comparing the many types of DLSS for Cyberpunk 2077, using both an RTX 3080 and an RTX 2060 KO. We'll also briefly talk about FidelityFX and CAS. The goal of DLSS isn't to increase the quality past native resolution, but rather to get to a point of "good enough" that it's actually viable to run higher settings elsewhere. In some cases, the quality does actually exceed native resolution, and impressively so; at the same time, we also found a few spots where DLSS makes things worse in Cyberpunk's Night City. Overall, it's improved significantly since the Battlefield V vaseline smear and the Final Fantasy XV flickering mess, and DLSS is actually a usable feature that provides meaningful uplift. In this content, our objective is to show you the actual qualitative differences. We also propose a few blind tests.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - If Steve Blinks, NVIDIA is Holding Him Hostage
05:21 - Blind Comparisons
06:34 - Methodology
07:16 - Detail Loss & Upscaling Amounts
08:54 - Comparison Shots & Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain, DOF
09:54 - Shot 1 - DLSS Performance, Ultra Performance, Quality, vs. Off
10:40 - Broken DLSS in Some Areas Useful for Validation
11:10 - Pixel Counting to Prove the Resolution
12:10 - NVIDIA's Unfortunate Email Timing
13:53 - Shot 2 - Subtle Differences, On vs. Off Comparisons
14:19 - DLSS Sometimes is Better Than Native Resolution, But...
15:52 - Ghosting Caused by Temporal Anti-Aliasing
16:31 - Shot 3 - Broken Lighting Bug, Texture Detail Loss
17:54 - Shot 4 & 5 - DLSS Easily Noticed in Flora
18:31 - Shot 6 & 7 - On vs. Off Flickering & Unexpected Bonuses
19:07 - Shot 8 - Final DLSS Impact
19:25 - The NVIDIA Money Hand
20:00 - Conclusion, Our Thoughts, & Blind Comparison Recap
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Host, Additional Reporting: Steve Burke
Editorial, Testing: Patrick Lathan
Video: Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman
Watch our Cyberpunk 2077 GPU benchmarks: kzhead.info/sun/qpirl6ZqsZRtl58/bejne.html Watch our #Cyberpunk 2077 CPU benchmarks: kzhead.info/sun/YNSLeZuuj5pmfY0/bejne.html
LOL I'm watching for the blinks! Love from New Zealand Steve & Team
If you keep going with DLSS and skip the nonsense rasterization benchmarks in the future you and your team will get a nice 88" 8K LG OLED by Santa Clause or NVIDIA ^^.
Interesting thing about DLSS to me, is it's ability to be improved with training. theoretically possible we can see continuously improving performance on all existing semi-modern hardware from this point forward, purely because of AI advances.
Damn! Thats a lot of fire you shot at them feet!
Can you point me to some unbiased benchmarks for comparison please? I'm keen to see what $4 buys you. :)
"Surface of the garbage bins, where NVIDIA left its ethics" Stop, they're already dead. Actually no get the MSI shovel out.
@Texsic They were allowing their own RTX 3000 series cards to be scalped by "their partners" that would just resell them on eBay untill they got caught. Check GN's history too, MSI isn't all butterfly and unicorns.
@Texsic CEO of MSI suicide killed himself by jumping from building a few months ago
MSI also tried to blackmail a British tech tuber site over favourable reviews in a similar way to NVIDIA and Hardware Unboxed earlier this year.
@@JeffNoel not just partners, their subsidiary.
@@williampinnock2256 earlier this year? That was just when the 3060ti launched, not very long ago.
13:30 "...and the surfaces of the garbage bins, which is where NVIDIA left its ethics." --👑 GNSteve 👑
"the surface of the garbage bins which is where Nvidia left its ethics" - I loled.
Definitely my favorite quote.
I love the delivery most - if you weren’t listening carefully you could be forgiven for missing the cutting critique as he doesn’t miss a beat 😂
I continually come back to watch this video for its amazing and funny shade it throws towards nvidia lmfao
Timestamp?
@@dragontales1999 around @13:29
I enjoyed the content and the "puns" :D
specially the puns *lol* - they were well served n deserved!
Nvidia: "I'm confused if we should be proud or angry at this guy?!" Pure gold GN. Transparent, analytical and ethical as always.
Engineers are happy, corpos are the angry ones
Nothing hits more accurate than good satire.
they will always be angry and truth be told GN!
just like the foil tshirt
Loved this review. Steve got some balls lol
Absolutely golden intro, didn't expect anything less.
I loved it. Nvidia got so much bad publicity from that asshole move.
Just rewatched the 8K video. It was a perfect primer for this video. Great job Steve. Laughed and learned 🤣
@@BrawndoQC but they also drew attention to their tech in the middle of getting an amd beat down. I think it was a calculated move. But then again, I'm a cynic
Anything dless?
@@moccaloto an amd beat down? Amd 6000 series has no ray tracing, dlss. Cyberpunk, control, metro, battlefield and any other game with Ray tracing is pretty much Nvidia exclusive. Wtf r u smoking bud?
I love how dedicated Steve is to getting stuff right, and that passion is soooo apparent. What I love even more, is when Steven get's furious. All of you guys, keep doing what you're doing. Even if it might end up resulting in me never hearing about any nvidia products again.
hahah 7:36 I somehow chose the identical place to check DLSS...
I love seeing my favorite KZheadrs watching each other's content.
I may not agree with you in all aspects @acg , but I appreciate the honesty. This put things into perspective. More people should know about this.
My man ACG showing up under a GN video? \m/
blink if you need help my guy
"and the surfaces of the garbage bin which is where Nvidia left it's ethics." - Steve I am dead.
That was the best one!
Sick burn lol
Love that one!
13:31
@@artemaung5274 cheers :)
The commentary trolling Nividia in between the bits of praise is fantastic.
"bad PR is still PR"
Great video GN! Really loved that you pointed out the things like the font on the building will not change in resolution even with DLSS. That's something I would've never looked at or guessed. Even though it doesn't make a big difference in the big picture, it's still interesting to see what's going on with the implementation of DLSS here. Also really liked the side punches against NVIDIA, made the video very entertaining to watch
I said this yesterday on one of your other videos, you have a lot of integrity, and that makes you, your team, and your channel the most trustworthy and informative. Love you guys, thank you!
There's some ray-traced shade being thrown around here.
Denzel_BOOM.gif
This deserves a GN heart.
The digs kept coming and I kept laughing
This is genius
Intro......well played my man....well played.
That was fantastic. I wasn't ready.....
Nvidia won’t mess with this Steve trust me
Intro? He did it even better through the whole video.. do people stop at 3min?
Great intro, just giving props where props is due!🔥 The whole episode analysis is even more🔥🔥🔥 Great content
Hilarious!
Guess which one is DLSS. Me watching in 480p: YES
@Waldel Martell i disable AA in every single game. it just looks blurry - no wonder edges are "more smooth" the whole sharpness of the image is gone 🤣
@@royalrumble7185I don't care sharpness that much, I rather choose Anti-Aliasing and DLSS Quality even at 4K instead of dancing fences, flickering objects.
@@cansahin7278 yes that is a big bonus of dlss. the flickering disappers. that has been very annoying i admit
Love the dry humor Steve randomly threw in. Some of these longer deep dive reviews fail to hold my attention but the small amount of comic relief kept me completely engaged. Keep up the good work GN crew.
Waiting for Steve to get the shovel out
He blinked over 5 times in the first couple of seconds, I'm pretty sure he needs help...
Blinking is healthy to your eyes.
@@reav3rtm Blinking is caused by totally loving raytracing and DLSS. Steve is just expressing his enthusiasm.
@@andersjjensen He's blinking in morse code through the whole video, "I'm trapped in Jen-Hsun Huangs oven, please rescue me"
Think that's an issue w having dlss performance on. Steve wants good fps, ok.
@Bronze HD I don't know the specifics but that's what my eye-morse-code expert told me (he's certified so I believe him)
Even when praising Nvidia's technology, Steve is desperately trying to get himself blacklisted
Beeing on nvidia blacklist is probably the next viewers and patreon boost. I don't believe nvidia imagined the amount of shitstorm
Hes giveing nvidia what they deserve!! And i have a rtx 2080🙄
@@dannyd4339 ok im a amd clown because i have a amd cpu 2700x but im still happy with my rtx 2080 and not happy with the way nvidia treated the lads downunder ,even if i love the way dlss gives my 2080 a massive fps plus in cyberpunk, they should stay fair!!
@@dannyd4339 whos the fanboy here lol
"Four dollars is my biggest payday!"
@@theholypopechodeii4367 Actually polish laws force a +50% extra for overtime work and +100% for night time overtime So it'd atleast be 6
I always knew Keanu Reeves is just a poorly rendered Steve with Quality mode disabled.
Wake up samurai, we got DLSS to burn.
“When all the palm trees turned to liquid” So THATS how they make palm oil!
That was such a weird day 1 bug
@@InvictusRed1911 Not a bug. There are no real trees in Night City. It was just a malfunctioning projection that was intended to make the world more realistic.
Unbelievable glitch.... it's like some devs at CDPR were pissed for some reason and sabotaged the game before release.....
Thank you for always going in depth and not showing bias!
Loved the intro XD love everything from you guys.
This is 50% review and 50% roasting NVidia and I'm here for both!
Ok nerd
bit sad that bro, get out more
Nvidia's DLSS is awesome. It's a shame they chose the evil corpo route.
Roasting Nvidia with the fire they lit. Lovie it
@Shield Wall lamooo
"Four Dollars, that's my biggest payday" Steve says, as he remembers early KZhead Ad Revenues before the GN Store
Excuse my ignorance, but this is a store?! They sell PC parts or repair services?
@@Marauder1981 they sell channel branded merch, more or less, for those who want to support the channel.
@@randommcranderson5155 Oooh, got it.
I really appreciate the effort you guys put in to make your videos not just strictly true but accurate and with integrity. I swear it actually helps me cope with the propaganda and misinformation I have to deal with in almost every other part of my life. Really, it does. Thanks for you guys' hard work.
Oh man. Thank you Steve and GN for this. I got some damn good laughs here. Though, I did just pick up an AMD 6800 XT because I was coerced by a feet shooting gun.
"Now unfortunately Nvidia has taken the gun that AMD uses to shoot itself in the feet. And it then shot its own feet with that - that feet shooting gun." Steve really has a way with words.
Skookum as frig
when does he say that i missed it
@@rellosapostolos2266 2:52
@@nemureru_tanuki ty
("Nvidia has taken the gun that AMD uses to shoot itself in the feet, and it then, shot its own feet with that feet-shooting gun") 👌
I need the AMD reference... What happened?
@@ComputersAre8ad AMD’s Radeon division have been notorious in the past for shooting themselves in the foot.
@@ComputersAre8ad while amd has never outright tried to ban someone, they have been known to bully people with loaner cards, like "we will give you a card for review but only if you test these games"
You don't get jokes like these over with Jay or Linus, folks!
@@james2042 Oh boo hoo, they tell you what to do with their loaner cards, so evil
I only recent started watching some of your vids, This video was exceptional and hilarious. Just now Subscribed Man!
Mad respect Steve! I wish I could like your videos more than just once
“Feetshooting gun” - gamers nexus, 2020
"Surfaces of the garbage bins, where Nvidia left its ethics" LOL
Lol
When does he say that?
@@karlfranz310 13:30 ;)
@@ZILLION4EVER I love you. Thank you 😁
Its the most viscous burn leveled at Nvidia yet over 'The Ethics Debacle"
Interesting comparison at the end there. I was looking for quality, but under the wrong pretense. I guessed C having the best quality, which supports your claims, I assumed DLSS upscaling would have improved graphics quality but I was wrong. Was interesting for me to actually see the quality difference. I wasn't expecting that much from my observation.
Love the wordplay in the opening...well done GN!
Some Nvidia marketing guy doing his job at the intro. LMAO.
The shade in this video is so good, you'd almost think it was ray traced.
Flawless
YOU WIN
Even better in a VA panel.
Nah, its running at a normal framerate.
Brilliant!
The amount of detail in GN's videos gives me a nerdgasm. Thanks Steve & team!
Love the integrity of the Gamers Nexus team and actually a lot of key PC/Gamer channels (Jay, Hardware Unboxed etc.). It's a good community we got going on here guys let's keep at it!
19:25 Nvidia buying Steve's opinion for 4 dollars hahaha
- How much you want to get paid, Steve? -More than three fiddy
I would give him 5 for the truth :D
Liked the Hardware Unboxed reference in the beginning. 🤣🤣🤣
Hey where is Steve - Steve Nvidia on hardware unBoxed review video from this channel?
More like "throughout the entire video". Steve fuckin' HAMMERS Nvidia for their bullshit with HUB.
@@coredumperror yeah but I wrote the comment after the first 5 seconds. :D
Great explanation! I loved all the digs you got in, both spoken and otherwise at Nvidia during this video!!! Tons of DIGS!!
Great intro 🤣🤣🤣! Info also top notch as always 👍!
"Hey Nvidia, I dare you to not send us cards." -GN Steve
"Not even a Christmas card!" -Salty Nvidia
Even if they did, he'd still have to buy every one of them to do his job (and he would).
@@c.j.1089 Jay would just send his cards over after he benchmarked them just because he doesnt want to do the teardown videos or have to make THAT many charts.
Nvidia acted like that to Harbor Unboxed only cause in some region like his founder edition is not available/doesn't ship. Nvidia will act differently for murica and maple tree guys. Some corpo shit strategy
@@lonegamerfrombd3197 HARBOR ???
Giving fair and accurate reporting of DLSS while clowning on Nvidia. Love it.
Great analysis, explanation and information, as always.
@Gamers Nexus, One key detail is missing here in this tests, and that's nVidia sharpen filter (can be applied via nVidia overlay or in nVidia control panel if overlay is disabled), what i found out is that with Sharpen at 35% and 15% ignore grain at 1440p, you cannot distinguish the native image from DLSS, (quality or balanced mode) i did couple of comparison screenshot, and i really can't tell the difference there. So for those who are using DLSS, don't forget the sharpen filter.
Interesting, will have to try this in Control! Thank you
This does not make much sense. DLSS already uses a sharpening filter that goes after the TAA it also uses.. Even the game has a slider for this sharpening i believe. Either way, nvidia sharpening is very poor. Install Reshade and try AMD FCAS filter, the best sharpening.. I use it even if i own a nvidia graphic card and my monitor already has sharpening filters.. it is just much better and produces way less artifacts......
I could be wrong, but I get this slight feeling that Steve is dissatisfied with Nvidia's behaviour
Yeah, he felt kinda sus...
He was expecting five bucks.
Its cus of hardware unboxed where Nvidia was being cunts to them cus they didn't say what Nvidia wanted them to say
The off-camera man should've worn a leather jacket...
Nah, black suit, leather gloves.
@@matasa7463 he's talking about the Nvidia CEO
Yes. That would be real attention to detail.
@@just_buka Hah! As if leather jacket man will show up personally for this. What use are henchmen if you can’t even get them to keep some pesky reviewers in line!
@@matasa7463 Nah, you just dont get it.
u guys never cease to amaze! thank you .
Great video! Love the part there you were taking shots at Nvidia, funny AF lol. Btw there's a tool for increasing FPS featured by Gamer Meld, and together with your suggested settings, I am not playing the game 3060ti 👉 in 4K 45FPS with Ray Tracing and DLSS Performance. 60up with Ultra and Ray Tracing off, and probably more, but I use a 60hz 4K monitor only. Great game, will enjoy it further as the updates, fixes, and eventual DLCs come in.
Nvidia exec 1: Hmmm, these reviews are getting awfully pointed Exec 2: This is bad, it was only a little threat. Maybe if we threaten them again?
the threats will continue until reviews improve
Other Steve from HUB stated that there is a person in PR who has a vendetta or personal problem with them so the threats would originate from PR and signed by executives. Sad really.
@@EXG21 hopefully that person has been instructed to cease their behavior in regards to said vendetta if they want to retain their job.
@@Polyh3dron Hopefully but it'll most likely be some kind of warning only and they can continue but more low key. It sucks but most likely true.
"feet shooting gun" Nobody tell them about the head shooting one
Feet shooting gun is pure gold
Good job Steve! Loved this video xD
Gorgeous intro XD ... and the whole video material in general.
"Wow, 4 dollars... my biggest payday yet!"
Nvidia: Wait, there's 2 Steve's? Always has been
could it be they got the steves wrong?
Such a great channel! Again, great video. Nice humor also!
Nice to have you! Great thumbnail 😁 thx.
13:30 Oh wow, caught me off guard with that line. Absolute madman :D
Such elegant savagery. I turned gay for the following seven seconds.
Steve blinked, nvidia are definitely holding him hostage
Great video, thanks! I run this at DLSS balanced usually, with 1440p RT-on (2080ti). Keeps me really close to 60FPS with RT, and still looks really good. I do wish I could get 60FPS at Quality DLSS, but 'hoping' the 3080ti will be able to handle that.
You did an extraordinary analysis which is fair and informative.
Thumbnail is really cool, good job this one
I'm glad GN were so fast keeping up with the trends in the industry and change their editorial opinion to match the one of us, gamers.
LOL
Thanks for the extremely detailed analysis and your points on why/why not to use it and what options are the best / where they might even benefits :) Also .... maybe, because I'm German, I love your type of humor and in this video it was just SO on point and enjoyable (the part in the beginning and the dollars - even though you maybe shouldn't have used dollar bills ^^ that .... paints a slight strange picture thinking about who normally gets handed them compared to bribes which would have been highlighted better with 5's or 10's :D ;) .... but .... yeah. Also the picture the 1's paint is .... fitting to what seems to happen with NVIdia or those who try to please them ;) :D )
What a wonderful game and a great time to be alive. Got a 3080 and I've bounced between RT off no DLSS and RT on with DLSS quality during my play through thus far (1440p). I can only stand the later with sharpening added through Geforce experience. I favored no RT and the sharper image initially but I think ultimately those RT reflections and reasonable DLSS experience are going to win the day. I think my enjoyment of the game is about 30% playing with the settings and 70% the actual game. My biggest gripe with DLSS is the ghosting. Glad you mentioned it. Great video.
Respect. I haven’t seen any other outlet call it like they see it the way you do. And in a genuinely funny way at that. More power to you guys.
You should watch last week's WAN Show (Linus Tech Tips podcast). Linus LAYS INTO Nvidia for that email. He just goes straight up righteous, rage-fueled rampage on them. It's so cathartic.
@@coredumperror Those moments when Linus just looses his shit are always pure gold, all the scripted, targeted, produced control that he maintains is an asset when he simply doesn't give a flying fuck anymore and has thoroughly thought it through many times but never had the excuse to drop it. That being said... As satisfyingly as the asshole tearing was though, honestly got super serious right off, you could tell the dude was almost on the verge of tears... I don't think I've ever seen him like that before, rightfully so, but still, wow. Guess AUS-Steve is gonna be the PC down and under Rossmann now that he leveled up to both permanent eyeshadow level and large cooperate mortal enemy status... As for TJ Steve... god bless your perfect balance in dry passive and openly surgical aggression... Snowflake has taught you well, and it's a sorely under utilized skill in those masterful balances that weaponize it to both a factual and detrimental degree. :-) Please don't open any bottles of thermal paste laying inconspicuously near your bicycle… (just kick that shit down the gutter, gators gottch back on this one brother)
I absolutely love all the shade Steve throws at Nvidia.
It's raytraced shade
@@razorblade7108 specifically the unbranded RT shade instead of the proprietary RTX.
Thank you Steve just thank you! Pure gold
What a great video! So much useful information! Good Job!!!!!!!
Epic. Epic!.. EPIC!!!! I don't know how else to describe the intro and thumbnail, GN is my favorite Tech-KZhead channel by a long shot.
*Palm tree turns into wavy gravy* Me: "Am I on f**kin' acid?"
...if you have to ask.
😂 another awesome review, honest as always. Loved the receiving money scene, I shouldn't eat when I watch Steve. Thanks for your hard work and amazing content.
Thank you Steve! This was the best dig at nVidia I've seen.
"You should not run your games at 4k to run them at 4k" I just can't wrap my head around the idea.
The game textures don’t hold up at native 4k, but the machine-learning up scaling makes it look good at 4k. That’s how I saw it, at least with some testing of my own
I agree , Cold war looked better with Dlss quality than native , Cyberpunk is unplayable at native 4k so yeah Dlss quality looks better there to haha
@@blueversace4447 You're probably right, when playing at native 4K, to me the game still doesn't look as crisp and clear as those game with real 4K textures.
@@colinpeng4560 Most new games are 60gb+ before tacking on a 20gb+ 4k texture pack. Cyberpunk is 70gb all together with a massive world. Kind of surprised the game doesn’t seem to be made to ever look great in native 4k
I could be wrong but it seems like DLSS is doing a better job at anti-aliasing than other implementations and this is leading to apparent graphical improvements in some scenarios.
The ethics in the garbage bins had me laughing so hard 😂
Love your humor! 🤣 Amazing video as always.
All the jabs at nvidia during this were absolutely amazing and a joy to watch.
19:50 - Steve goes full Corpo Path 😆👍
Those are counterstrike noises .... dont ask
USPS cock and then grenade switching.... interesting choice
The blind test at start end was awesome. I wasnt totally off but not totally right either. Love that
This was an awesome video, loved the jabs.
Props for nic pronunciation of CD Projekt. The "j" is pronounced like "y" in Polish. Also awesome snips at nvidia.
In German too actually
@@mrle0719 All Germanic languages
@@isaacx593 except english is germanic but yeah XD
Yeah, but Projekt is from English and not a Polish term far as I know? So unless you meant "speaking English with a Polish accent", I am a bit lost.
@@thrace_bot1012 far as i know its from latin ;-)
Steve, here in 2020, there has been way too many videos that has put me into tears at one point. The level of savagery jokes put out this year were at an all time high!
"And the surfaces of the garbage bin, which is where Nvidia left its ethics." ROFL. Pure Gold and saucier then ever in this video Steve. Bravo!
God, I love steve, those little stabs at Nvidia all video long were absolutely worth watching (again) for. Thanks for keeping things somewhat lighthearted my guy.
"4 dollars thats my biggest payday" laughed hard at that haha love the content steve keep it up!
12:00 the casual nVidia burn :D ah, Steve, GN, please never change.
Hey, Great video! It would be interesting to have a follow-up update video with the new versions of DLSS and what has improved in 2 years of development of Cyberpunk 2077.
Excellent video! From my experience after hours of testing the best settings on an RTX 3090 and 1440p screen, I achieved the best performance vs quality results using 4K DSR + DLSS Balanced :). 1440P + DLSS Quality flattened texture details way too much, setting to native 1440p + No DLSS the games runs too slowly, but bumping to 4K DSR + DLSS Balanced resolves both of these issues.
I have 3070 play 1440p should I also do balanced?
Hi Steve, I loved the intro!
Great start
Did Steve do a hardware unBoxed video? 😬
The Intro hooked me instantly.
I got A and V correct; however, the difference between the others was nearly impossible to tell. I love DLSS. I look forward to future improvements.
13:30 You'll need LN2 for that burn
Everytime I watch one of these videos, Steve's dry humor always gets a laugh out of me.
Great video. Learned something.