Dying Light 2: DLSS or FSR, which is better for budget GPU?

Dying Light 2 is a beautiful follow-up to the 2015 original, adding new traversal choices for even more parkour action to the game's fantastic gameplay cycle. However, it's tremendously sad that Techland's storyline and open world promises in the lead-up to the launch were not fulfilled.

This game is a modern open-world game with dense metropolitan areas, large draw distances, a lot of greenery, and more. Even yet, at the highest standard settings, both AMD's lowest RDNA 2 card and Nvidia's most basic Ampere GPU can deliver playable frame rates.

Using the upscaling technology created by the respective companies is the easiest way to get gaming frame rates out of these two graphics cards. Dying Light 2 also includes DLSS and FSR and its own linear upscaling.

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Dying Light 2: DLSS or FSR?

If players want to play Dying Light 2 on the lowest-end Radeon GPU, they'll need to enable FSR, at the very least, if they're going to play on the 'High' preset at a playable frame rate.

The game is eminently playable at 51 frames per second in 1080p, even though it falls short of the commonly sought 60 frames per second standard.

The game runs well at 60 fps (Image via YouTube - zWORMz Gaming)

At 60 frames per second, the game runs well. However, as players enter the main open world region, with all of its zombie-punchy parkour-y awesomeness, they may find that they require a higher frame rate.

As a result, the RTX 3050 requires upscaling to play at High 1080p settings. It was good at 52 frames per second, to begin with, but enabling either DLSS or FSR boosts that figure to 67 frames per second. Players will receive a great-looking game with a solid frame rate that won't leave them hanging off a ledge due to a random slowdown at that level.

Given that this is a $250 GPU, the fact that it can run Dying Light 2 at 44 fps (Image via YouTube - zWORMz Gaming)

If gamers are willing to drop below 60 frames per second, DLSS also allows ray tracing. Given that this is a $250 GPU, the fact that it can run Dying Light 2 at 44 frames per second on the highest High-Quality Raytracing level is fantastic. Unfortunately, FSR will not be the RX 6500 XT's silver ray tracing bullet.

The RDNA 2 card from AMD is not powerful enough to handle both rasterized rendering and ray traced lighting. On a Radeon GPU, what AMD says about the architecture's ray tracing technology feels like an afterthought. Even with a Radeon RX 6900 XT, a $999 card at launch, we generally wouldn't bother with ray tracing, so players can guess how we feel about a $199 card attempting it.

FSR and DLSS, on the other hand, give the same critical frame rates to the budget GeForce card when running at ordinary settings. Then it's just a matter of personal taste regarding how things seem.

FSR on the Nvidia card simply seems better, crisper, and more detailed (Image via YouTube - zWORMz Gaming)

Although DLSS performs some things well, the image with Nvidia's upscale has a muddiness in motion that reminds of the first-gen iteration in games like Metro Exodus. On occasion, FSR on the Nvidia card seems better, crisper, and more detailed.

There are a lot of high buildings in Dying Light 2, and those tall buildings have sharp lines and straight edges, but neither upscale appears to mind. With either DLSS or FSR, players get very evident graphical glitches even when using the maximum anti-aliasing settings, and they're worse with AMD's method.

DLSS remains upscale to choose. It doesn't bother me when the game is running, but some of the players may enjoy how the Nvidia more upscale appears in general. When they all put on the same show, it becomes a subjective experience.