Competition drives innovation and lowers prices in almost all industries. The graphics card market is the most competitive in PC hardware. Nvidia, however, is happy to ride high on the wave of goodwill and publicity that AMD has received after the launch of FidelityFX Super Resolution's upscaling algorithm. AMD finally made upscaling accessible. This is something AMD has been working towards for some time.Nvidia could greatly benefit from this.Strength of FSRs could also be DLSSFidelityFX Super Resolution first was shown by AMD. I stated that it would be a game-changer, even if it wasn't as good as AMD claimed. It was even more impressive than we expected when we received it. The technology offered gamers a huge boost in performance and minimal image degradation even at high quality settings.FSR's real strength is its accessibility. It doesn't matter if you have a high-end 4K GPU or a card that was made five years ago. It can also be used with Nvidia cards, and some reports even suggest that it will work on Intel GPUs. FSR could also get consoles, which would give them an immediate and huge potential player base.This is very different to Nvidia's DLSS strategy. RTX 2000 cards and 3000 cards remain very popular, despite the fact that Nvidia's supporting cards have become more popular in the last three years. Nvidia's GTX 10 series cards and 16-series cards dominate Steam Hardware Survey. Nvidia has graciously allowed them to stutterly attempt ray tracing but has kept DLSS behind a paywall which has grown to ridiculous proportions in 2021.Nvidia should be grateful to AMD for launching FSR with such great success. Nvidia now faces a challenge convincing gamers that DLSS is better than FSR and that it's worth getting a new graphics card.It wants to fight because it believes it can win.FSR gives gamers a glimpse of how upscaling technology works, particularly at the lower end market, which Nvidia stubbornly refuses to serve (at least not for now). Gamers who are looking to upgrade their graphics cards will be able to better appreciate the benefits of DLSS once GPU prices stabilize and they can afford them again.Nvidia Ultra Quality More Than a NameAfter the success of FSR and the subsequent praises, Nvidia quickly responded with a retort. It stated that DLSS was now available in more and larger games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Doom Eternal.It also highlighted the overall higher image quality of DLSS. This is a claim that few would dispute. It may even improve, as rumors suggest that a new Ultra Quality mode will soon be launched. This preset was discovered in a recent Unreal Engine 5 documentation release. It uses a higher input resolution than the Quality preset. This could lead to an image quality closer to natural, but without the same performance benefits.This seems incredibly convenient, even though FSR has its own Ultra Quality setting. It is not clear if FSR's image quality surprised Nvidia, and it feels the need for improvement, or if FSR has a mode that sounds better than its DLSS Quality mode.DLSS is a more intelligent and in-depth process of upscaling. Motion vectors give it an advantage over FSR. Nvidia's technique has its own visual artifacts, but they aren't as severe as the heavy-handed sharpening FSR users experience with most settings.You could argue that DLSS today is the best upscaler. However, it is still a premium feature that gamers can afford.It's useless if it isn't used by enough peopleDLSS is a great tool. It's efficient, beautiful, provides great performance, and it keeps getting better. Nvidia is correct, and it's still not widely available. The RTX 2060 card is a very popular one, but only 15% of Steam gamers use the RTX 2000 or 3000 series.AMD would have made FSR available only to its GPUs. It didn't happen, and it still isn't. FSR can be used on all cards, even those that were not intended to benefit such as Nvidia's Maxwell GPUs in the 900-series. DLSS is available for all the latest and greatest. This is great for gamers with large wallets but it's largely useless for everyone else.FSR is not. FSR, regardless of whether you use it, or Nvidia will optimize it for it, is good for DLSS and good for Nvidia. FSR will bring upscaling to the forefront. Nvidia is well aware that FSR has the potential of leading people to its next-generation GPUs. Nvidia may need DLSS if it wants DLSS not to be lost.Digital Trends was told by Nvidia that we can expect tensor Cores in all GeForce GPUs moving ahead, and that, if we look at recent laptop developments, we can expect similar features on desktop soon. This means that desktops will soon be equipped with more affordable RTX3050 and 3050T GPUs.It's fantastic. This is exactly what DLSS should do to help the people it has the greatest potential to serve. Nvidia will, no doubt, keep the tensor core count low and provide the greatest performance benefits to its premium customers. But it's just a start. It is unlikely that Nvidia will make the same 16-series generational mistakes as it did in keeping its entry-level customers locked in the past.But should you be concerned about the upscaler wars?No. This is one case where Nvidia and AMD have taken wonderful actions that will benefit nearly every gamer. FSR is forcing Nvidia to improve DLSS's quality and inclusion. AMD will continue to search for the ideal upscaler. FSR offers a good enough solution that it looks like FSR is going to change what upscaling means for most gamers.FSR would be my choice if I had to guess which one will be most popular in the long-term. This is due to its use on consoles, open standard approach and relative simplicity. I don't think DLSS will be the same as HairWorks anytime soon. Future Nvidia enthusiasts will be able enable DLSS in all games if everything goes according to plan. This will give them a huge performance and quality boost. FSR will provide the extra frames per second that every gamer is always looking for.Recommendations of Editors
