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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Short answer: Choose DLSS 2 Super Resolution for the best average image-quality and performance balance on a supported RTX card, FSR 2 for broad hardware compatibility and open-source distribution, and TSR when you are developing in Unreal Engine and want an engine-native, vendor-neutral solution. None is universally superior: output resolution, internal resolution, motion data, renderer, engine version, and implementation quality can reverse the result.
What this comparison actually covers
This is a comparison of AMD FSR 2, the NVIDIA DLSS 2.x Super Resolution family, and Unreal Engine Temporal Super Resolution (TSR). They are temporal reconstruction systems, not simple one-frame enlargers.
- FSR 1 is a spatial upscaler and is not an equivalent comparison.
- FSR 2 combines temporal reconstruction with anti-aliasing and replaces the game’s usual temporal anti-aliasing path. AMD documents it as open source under the MIT license. AMD GPUOpen FSR 2 documentation
- DLSS 2.0 is commonly used to describe the DLSS 2.x generation; later 2.x revisions changed quality and artifact handling, so a game’s integration matters.
- TSR is integrated into Unreal Engine rather than tied to one GPU vendor.
Epic groups TSR, DLSS 2+, FSR 2+, and XeSS as temporal upscalers that combine current-frame data with historical frames. Epic’s temporal-upscaler overview
How temporal upscaling works
- The game renders a frame below the display resolution.
- The renderer supplies color, depth, exposure, and motion-vector buffers. FSR 2 can also use reactive and transparency masks.
- The upscaler reprojects information from previous frames into the current view.
- Current and historical samples are combined to reconstruct detail at the output resolution.
- Anti-aliasing, disocclusion handling, sharpening, and rejection of bad history are performed as part of reconstruction.
This temporal history is why these methods can deliver a much sharper result than a purely spatial scaler at the same internal resolution. It is also why they can fail in motion. Newly revealed surfaces have no valid history, and incorrect vectors can drag old pixels behind moving objects.
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At-a-glance differences
| Technology | Primary strength | Main restriction | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| DLSS 2 Super Resolution | Usually the strongest quality/performance balance in mature RTX integrations | Requires a supported NVIDIA RTX GPU and game integration | PC games targeting NVIDIA hardware |
| FSR 2 | Broad hardware reach, open source, and cross-platform flexibility | Quality varies sharply with motion vectors, masks, sharpening, and tuning | Games that need AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, or console reach |
| TSR | Unreal-native, vendor-agnostic temporal reconstruction | Performance and artifacts depend on Unreal version and project settings | Unreal Engine PC and console projects |
Hardware and platform compatibility
DLSS 2
DLSS Super Resolution requires supported NVIDIA RTX hardware. It is not available to AMD, Intel, or older non-RTX GPUs. A game normally needs NVIDIA’s integration, an official plugin, or a clearly supported implementation; it is not a universal driver-level mode. NVIDIA maintains DLSS documentation and Unreal Engine plugin archives at NVIDIA DLSS Developer. Plugin availability depends on the Unreal Engine version.
FSR 2
FSR 2 does not require dedicated machine-learning hardware. AMD documents support for DirectX 12, Vulkan, Unreal Engine 4.26 and 4.27, and Unreal Engine 5. Its broad compatibility includes AMD and selected competing GPUs, although performance and visual quality are not identical across every device. The code and integration material are available under the MIT license through GPUOpen.
TSR
TSR is platform agnostic within Unreal Engine. Epic documents support for Windows D3D11 and D3D12, Vulkan, Linux Vulkan, Mac Metal, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X, subject to renderer and shader-model requirements. TSR is optimized for the AMD RDNA architectures used in current consoles, but it is not AMD-exclusive. Epic’s TSR platform documentation
Image quality: what you see in motion matters most
For well-integrated historical implementations, a reasonable generalization is:
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- DLSS 2 often provides the most stable reconstructed image and best quality-per-performance result on RTX hardware.
- TSR can match or exceed competing solutions in particular Unreal scenes when screen percentage, history, and renderer settings are tuned for that project.
- FSR 2 can be highly competitive, but its result is especially sensitive to the quality of the game’s integration.
That is a tendency, not a universal ranking. Compare the same output resolution, actual internal resolution, sharpening, anti-aliasing path, frame pacing, and game build. A still screenshot can hide trails, crawling edges, and reflection instability that become obvious during camera movement.
Quality characteristics to inspect
- Static detail: distant geometry, texture lettering, and fine surface patterns.
- Motion stability: whether detail remains coherent during panning and character movement.
- Thin geometry: wires, fences, hair, foliage, and branches.
- Specular and reflections: highlights and ray-traced or screen-space reflections can change rapidly and challenge history rejection.
- Transparency and particles: smoke, sparks, glass, and rain need correct reactive handling.
- HUD and text: interfaces rendered before upscaling can become soft; output-resolution UI is usually preferable.
- Disocclusion recovery: newly exposed surfaces cannot be reconstructed reliably from history alone.
Artifact comparison
The following matrix describes common tendencies in competent integrations, not a controlled benchmark.
| Artifact or scene | DLSS 2 | FSR 2 | TSR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghosting | Often well controlled in mature integrations; still game-dependent | Can be pronounced when vectors or reactive data are wrong | Can appear while history accumulates or during fast motion |
| Thin geometry | Usually stable at suitable input resolutions | May shimmer or break with poor tuning | Can be strong but is sensitive to screen percentage and history settings |
| Foliage and hair | Often good with accurate vectors and tuning | Needs careful reactive-mask and material handling | Can show temporal accumulation or instability |
| Reflections | Depends on the game’s reflection method and motion data | Difficult in noisy or rapidly changing reflections | Affected by Unreal history and renderer configuration |
| Particles and transparency | Requires correct vectors and integration | Reactive masks are particularly important | Depends on correct Unreal material and temporal setup |
| Aggressive low-resolution input | Softness and instability increase | Often becomes visibly soft or unstable | Can retain detail but may cost more, depending on settings |
Performance and frame-time behavior
Lowering internal resolution saves the largest amount of GPU rendering time. The upscaler then adds its own GPU work, memory traffic, and—on DLSS—use of dedicated acceleration hardware. FSR 2 costs more than a spatial method such as FSR 1 because it performs temporal reconstruction, even though it is designed for a wide range of GPUs. AMD’s FSR 2 performance notes
Measure GPU frame time and consistency, not only an average FPS counter. A mode can raise FPS while producing distracting latency, uneven pacing, or unstable detail. Dynamic resolution also means that a named preset may change its internal resolution over time.
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Quality modes and internal resolution
Preset names are not universal. In AMD’s Unreal Engine FSR guide, the approximate scales are:
| Mode | Approximate scale factor | Approximate input as output percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Native AA | 1.0× | 100% |
| Quality | 1.5× | 66.7% |
| Balanced | 1.7× | About 59% |
| Performance | 2.0× | 50% |
| Ultra Performance | 3.0× | About 33% |
These values are specific to that plugin guide, not a guarantee for every game or FSR implementation. TSR commonly uses screen percentage, while DLSS and FSR may expose named modes with different scaling rules. Always record both output and input resolution. A 4K image reconstructed from 1080p has more source information than a 1080p image reconstructed from a very low internal resolution.
Unreal Engine TSR: controls and trade-offs
TSR occupies the temporal-upscaling stage of Unreal’s rendering pipeline. Unreal exposes rendering resolution consistently through screen percentage and dynamic resolution. Epic’s temporal-upscaler documentation
Settings developers commonly evaluate
r.ScreenPercentagecontrols the internal render percentage.- Dynamic resolution changes that percentage to maintain a frame-time target.
r.TSR.UpdateHistorycontrols history updates.r.TSR.History.ScreenPercentagecontrols history resolution behavior.r.TSR.Velocity.WeightClampingSampleCountaffects motion sharpness versus stability.r.TemporalAA.Upsamplingandr.AntiAliasingMethodselect temporal paths.- The Anti-Aliasing scalability setting can change the active method or quality.
- Nanite, Lumen, post-process materials, and their placement before or after TSR can materially change the result.
Epic gives an example in which reducing r.TSR.Velocity.WeightClampingSampleCount from the default 4.0 to 2.0 can improve movement sharpness for competitive games at the cost of stability. Treat that as a tuning example, not a universal recommendation. Epic also reports a sample in which GPU frame time fell from 57.50 ms at native 4K to 33.37 ms when rendering at 1080p and reconstructing to 4K; those are Epic’s measurements for its sample case, not a general benchmark.
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Adding FSR 2 to an Unreal project
- Open Edit > Plugins.
- Search for FSR and enable the AMD FSR plugin.
- Restart Unreal Engine.
- Open Edit > Project Settings > Rendering, enable temporal upsampling, and select Temporal Super-Resolution where the project’s pipeline requires it.
- Enable FSR in the plugin settings or with
r.FidelityFX.FSR.Enabled.
AMD warns that changing FSR at runtime is not guaranteed to be safe when multiple third-party upscalers are enabled simultaneously. FSR 2 also needs correct render-resolution depth, color, and velocity buffers; reactive masks and exposure improve difficult content such as particles and transparency. AMD’s Unreal Engine FSR guide
Implementation quality is often more important than the name
An algorithm cannot recover information that the renderer supplies incorrectly. Developers should verify:
- camera and per-object motion vectors;
- depth at the correct render resolution;
- exposure and camera jitter;
- reactive masks for particles, smoke, foliage, and transparencies;
- disoccluded-pixel handling;
- sharpening that does not exaggerate ringing or shimmer;
- post-processing and UI order;
- animated-object velocity data.
A poorly integrated FSR 2 build can look worse than a tuned TSR build, and a misconfigured TSR project can look worse than careful DLSS integration. This is why comparisons between games, or even between patches of the same game, do not establish a universal winner.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which should a gamer choose?
| Your situation | Best starting point | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supported RTX GPU, mature game integration, priority on image stability | DLSS 2 Quality or Balanced | Often the strongest quality/performance balance at 1440p and 4K |
| AMD, Intel, older NVIDIA, or mixed hardware target | FSR 2 | Does not require dedicated ML hardware and is broadly deployable |
| Unreal Engine game with a well-tuned TSR implementation | TSR | Engine-native and vendor-neutral |
| Game already meets the target frame rate | Native resolution or native anti-aliasing | Avoids reconstruction artifacts when extra performance is unnecessary |
At 1080p output, temporal methods have less source information and may look worse than expected. Ultra Performance modes can be useful for demanding 4K workloads but are commonly soft or unstable. Fast camera movement, foliage, water, hair, particles, and reflections are the scenes most likely to expose weaknesses.
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Which should a developer choose?
Choose DLSS 2 when
- the target audience is primarily RTX owners;
- the project can support NVIDIA’s SDK and integration testing;
- image stability at 1440p or 4K is a priority;
- the team can validate motion vectors, transparency, foliage, and reflections.
Choose FSR 2 when
- AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, and other platforms must share one solution;
- open-source MIT-licensed code is valuable;
- cross-platform deployment or console reach matters;
- the renderer can provide accurate vectors, depth, exposure, and reactive masks.
Choose TSR when
- the project is built in Unreal Engine;
- PC and console rendering parity is important;
- the team prefers an engine-native path without a separate vendor SDK;
- developers can tune screen percentage, history, velocities, scalability, Nanite, and Lumen together.
How to test these upscalers fairly
- Use the same output resolution and, where possible, the same GPU and game scene.
- Record the actual internal resolution for every mode; do not rely only on “Quality” labels.
- Disable frame generation for the base-upscaling comparison.
- Use the same sharpening policy and note anti-aliasing settings.
- Capture both still scenes and camera movement.
- Include foliage, wires, hair, water, particles, reflections, distant geometry, and text.
- Measure average FPS, 1% lows, GPU frame time, latency, and frame pacing.
- Identify the game build, driver, Unreal version, and upscaler/plugin version.
- Use lossless captures and distinguish official integrations from DLL swaps or unofficial injectors.
Do not confuse upscaling with frame generation
Upscaling reconstructs a rendered frame at a higher resolution. Frame generation creates additional intermediate frames. Report native rendered FPS, upscaled rendered FPS, generated or displayed FPS, latency, and frame pacing separately. AMD’s current FSR family treats upscaling and frame generation as separate features. AMD FSR technologies
Historical verdict and the 2026 context
For the original FSR 2 versus DLSS 2.x versus TSR question, DLSS 2 is usually the first choice for an RTX owner who values image quality and performance, FSR 2 is the practical choice when hardware reach and open licensing matter, and TSR is the natural choice for an Unreal project seeking engine integration and platform neutrality.
That conclusion should not be applied unchanged to current branding. AMD FSR and NVIDIA DLSS are now broader technology families with newer machine-learning, frame-generation, and other features beyond the historical versions discussed here. AMD’s current compatibility and feature descriptions are at AMD FSR technologies, while NVIDIA’s current developer offerings are listed at NVIDIA DLSS Developer. Compare the specific version shipped by the game, not just the logo in its settings menu.
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