NVIDIA DLSS 3 Surpasses DLSS 2 In Adoption Rate While More Popular AAA Titles Utilize DLSS 2 Vs AMD FSR 2

Gaming GPUs were the main point of discussion back in the day but with an ever-changing PC ecosystem, the technology and features that these GPUs offer have become the newest talking point, and companies like NVIDIA & AMD are trying their best to offer the best to a large pool of gamers using their products.

The recent advent of upscaling technologies has changed the PC gaming segment as a whole. NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR are now considered vital tech & it's not just gamers who benefit from these but also game developers who are trying to make sure to get their latest titles to support the new technology. Recently, we saw NVIDIA and AMD talk about the adoption rate of the newest upscaling technologies so we decided to take a look at what that really means and which one of the two has a definitive edge over the other.

NVIDIA has had a head start in the upscaling tech segment with its DLSS technology which first made its debut in 2018. Although the actual prospect of the technology won't be realized until the second generation of the technology, aptly named DLSS 2, there were signs that the tech would be a game changer. A game changer was when DLSS 2 hit the street, prompting rival AMD to release its very own upscaling tech known as FSR.

The main difference between the two technologies was that NVIDIA's DLSS used a more AI-driven approach that leveraged its Tensor Core technology to upscale and enhance the frame over the native resolution while AMD used a more standardized GPU-driven approach with a focus on being more open-source and friendlier to devs. This was done to catch up with DLSS's adoption rate which had the aforementioned head start. FSR also introduce a hardware-agnostic path which made GTX and RTX GPUs utilize the technology too.

Since then, NVIDIA's DLSS 2 and AMD's FSR 2 have become mainstream technologies that play are very important to gamers. One might see them as simple frame-boosting algorithms but the overall principle is more than that. Recently, both NVIDIA & AMD have thrown away numbers showcasing the adoption of their upscaling technologies. NVIDIA states that they have 270+ applications that support DLSS (All Formats 1/2/3) while AMD has touted up to 250+ applications that support FSR (All Formats 1/2).

Once again, FSR is easy to integrate but the specific version that is is the first generation of FSR (FSR 1) which is predominately legacy spatial upscaling. Similarly, NVIDIA's NIS spatial upscaling can be injected across all games via their Control Panel. So that leads us to the next point of comparison which is also the main reason for this comparative article.

The number that AMD has put out of 110 games supporting FSR 2 includes available and upcoming titles whereas the actual number of games that support the technology is 68 (Full list available here). Meanwhile, NVIDIA DLSS 2 is released in over 260 games. That's almost 4x the DLSS 2 titles compared to AMD's FSR 2. As opposed to the first generation, the second generation of each tech is pretty similar when it comes to the work required to integrate within games.

There's more though, we took upon Steam to see the list of Top Played and also Top-Selling games and what kind of upscaling technologies they have on offer. To our surprise, the vast majority use NVIDIA's DLSS 2 versus AMD's FSR 2. Following is the comparison:

Top played games on Steam (3/13/23):

DLSS is in 5 of the top 15:

FSR in 2 of the top 15:

Top-selling games on Steam (3/13/23):

NVIDIA DLSS is in 4 of the top 10

AMD FSR 2.0 is in 2

Besides Steam, we can also take a look at some of the most popular titles that are used for GPU performance benchmarks. These benchmarks are not only used by the gaming community but independent testers are also widely using the following titles and a similar story can be seen in those titles where DLSS integration far exceeds FSR.

*If you want to make image quality and/or performance comparisons, there are 11 games that have both DLSS and FSR 2  --- DLSS is supported in every FSR 2 game on the list

DLSS 2 and FSR 2 offer mostly similar performance increments and visual fidelity modes. Each tech has its ups and downs with most of the tech community favoring NVIDIA in terms of visual quality & highlighting AMD's friendlier & open-source approach with FSR.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Both NVIDIA and AMD are gearing up to further heat up the competition this year, especially during GDC 2023 where both companies will be presenting their latest integrations of DLSS and FSR technologies in upcoming titles and game engines. What we have seen so far shows that NVIDIA is pushing DLSS 3 hard and as we have shown in our various performance analysis tests before, it is truly a game changer.

Every new generation of technology has its downsides. DLSS 3 was no different in the start but most of the issues have been rooted in the latest (updated) version of the technology that weeds out the graphical glitches associated with frame generation. There's still much more that needs to be worked on but the 4x improvement in performance over native resolution is simply stellar and something that cannot be dismissed.

It's being adopted 7x faster than the DLSS 2 version and there's no stopping it. AMD on the other hand is clear that their non-AI FSR 2 and the upcoming FSR 3 approach is going to be a major boost for the open-source nature of the PC platform.

Both companies are promising big and gamers are definitely going to reap the benefits that these upscaling technologies provide in the near future. It however remains a fact that NVIDIA's DLSS is the benchmark for all upscaling technologies, starting off first and then further refining with game optimizations and brand-new features such as Frame-Generation support. It's amazing to see how far the technology has come and we can't wait to see its future applications.