Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 Wins Blind Test, 50% of Gamers Prefer It Over Native
Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash
Fifty percent. That’s the share of gamers who, in a new blind test, preferred the look of NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 4.5 upscaling over a native resolution image, according to a report from WCCFtech.
Quick Summary
- •Fifty percent. That’s the share of gamers who, in a new blind test, preferred the look of NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 4.5 upscaling over a native resolution image, according to a report from WCCFtech.
- •Key company: Nvidia
- •Also mentioned: AMD
The blind test, conducted by German publication ComputerBase, presented over 1,000 participants with a formidable challenge: scrutinize identical gameplay footage from six major titles and vote for the option they believed offered the best picture quality. The contenders were native resolution rendering, Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5, and AMD’s FSR 4 (Redstone). The results were not just a win for Nvidia; they were a clean sweep.
In every single game tested—Anno 117, ARC Raiders, Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Forbidden West, Satisfactory, and The Last of Us Part II—DLSS 4.5 emerged as the preferred choice. According to the report from Tom's Hardware, the technology secured a dominant 48.2 percent of the total vote. This figure is particularly striking as it means DLSS was not only chosen over its direct competitor, AMD's FSR, but also over the traditional benchmark of image fidelity: a native 4K image without any upscaling at all.
The victory was most pronounced in the game Satisfactory, where DLSS’s AI-reconstructed image was decisively favored. The test conditions were standardized, with all upscaling technologies set to their "Quality" mode, pitting them against native rendering that used TAA anti-aliasing. This setup was designed to isolate the visual characteristics of each rendering method, asking participants to judge purely on what looked best, free from any brand allegiance or performance considerations.
This outcome marks a significant moment in the long-running debate over image quality in PC gaming. For years, "native resolution" has been the gold standard, the presumed pinnacle of visual clarity that upscaling technologies attempted to approximate, often with tell-tale artifacts or a loss of fine detail. The idea that a reconstructed image could not only match but be preferred to a native one was largely theoretical. This blind test suggests that theory is now a demonstrable reality for a large segment of the gaming audience.
The implications for gamers and the industry are substantial. DLSS and technologies like it were originally conceived as a performance booster, a clever trick to maintain high frame rates at demanding resolutions by rendering fewer pixels and using AI to fill in the gaps. This test indicates the technology has evolved into something more: a feature that can actually enhance perceived image quality, offering sharper details, more stable edges, and cleaner visuals than the conventional rendering pipeline it was designed to augment.
While Nvidia celebrates a clear victory in this particular image quality face-off, the competitive landscape remains fierce. Separate industry developments, like the news from Reuters that cloud provider Vultr plans a major investment in AMD-powered AI infrastructure, underscore that the underlying technology is a critical battleground for the entire sector. The pursuit of rendering efficiency through AI is far from over.
Ultimately, the ComputerBase blind test is a powerful data point in a larger conversation. It demonstrates that the line between artificial intelligence and authentic visual experience is not just blurring—it’s potentially being redrawn. For a technology once dismissed as a compromise, being chosen by half of all viewers over the native image is the strongest rebuttal yet. The best picture, it seems, might not be the one with the most pixels, but the smartest ones.
This article was created using AI technology and reviewed by the SectorHQ editorial team for accuracy and quality.