The PlayStation 5 Pro AI-powered PSSR upscaler is definitely superior to AMD FSR 3.1 but lags behind NVIDIA DLSS in certain scenarios, according to a very early comparison.
A couple of days back, Digital Foundry shared a face-off video between the three upscalers based on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart using approximate quality settings, as getting a perfect match proved to not be possible. In addition, the PC version of the game by Insomniac uses a different implementation of Dynamic Resolution Scaling than the console version. Using this approximate recreation of the same visual quality settings, the early comparison highlighted how PSSR is superior to AMD FSR 3.1 in anti-aliasing newly revealed detail and in movement. On the other hand, the upscaler lags behind NVIDIA DLSS in certain scenarios, as PSSR returns a softer image and DLSS resolves geometry with less aliasing. Still, NVIDIA had over six years to improve its upscaler, while PSSR is just at the beginning, so things will surely improve in the future.
Interestingly enough, there’s an area where the PlayStation 5 PSSR upscaler delivers better results than NVIDIA DLSS, at least in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. With ray-traced reflections, the Sony upscaler does a better job delivering better image stability, although this could be a result of Insomniac using a custom sampling pattern for PSSR. On lower quality settings, the Sony upscaler merges the checkerboard correctly, delivering a higher resolution output, while checkerboard artifacts are clearly visible with NVIDIA DLSS.
As Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has a high internal resolution, it is not surprising to see the PlayStation 5 Pro upscaler doing a fairly good job even in its first iteration. However, the true test, as Digital Foundry highlighted, will be in games with low internal resolution, such as Alan Wake 2, whose internal res on PlayStation 5 is 864p.
Thankfully, it won’t take longer to know what the PlayStation 5 Pro PSSR upscaler will be able to do in many other games, as the system launches on November 7th worldwide.
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