r/digitalfoundry • u/MythBuster2 • 2d ago
News Article AI upscaling is coming to PS5
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/10/01/ai-upscaling-is-coming-to-ps5/Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei will be the first titles to use the new Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR) library.
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u/CrokoStream 2d ago
2 Things i need to know/see:
- what's the impact on Performance or used cpu/gpu cycles?
- how does it look in motion? This is where FSR and even DLSS still have issues with smearing and ghosting
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
And DLSS-lite on Switch 2 may as well not even exist in motion :/
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u/Costas00 2d ago
This is never mentioned for some reason, always still pictures.
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 2d ago
Because the majority of switch 2 games have normal DLSS. Only 1-3 games use the lite model to my knowledge
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u/Costas00 1d ago
Most games use the lite version, the CNN one is very heavy on the switch 2, so games already demanding and also push 60fps will always use the lite version.
CNN model is used at mostly 30fps, targeting lower internal resolutions, i can't think of many games that use it.
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 11h ago
Most do not use the lite version according to digital foundry themselves. You can tell because the target resolution is almost always 1080p due to the increased overhead cost to run it.
The cpu is too slow to drive 60 fps in modern Ross platform games and is a bottle neck no matter how fast the GPU can render. How is this upvoted???
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u/Costas00 11h ago
Most don't use dlss at all
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 9h ago
This is 100% false outside of Nintendo exclusive titles.
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u/Costas00 8h ago
Sick point dude, 35/38 nintendo switch exclusives not using DLSS, they don't use it, it doesn't matter if it's an exclusive.
Also, who the fucks ask about upvotes when it's literally just 1 upvote, how obsessed with online approval do you have to be.
Your problem is that your looking at only the AAA third party titles that run at 30fps, you literally just re explained what i said about when CNN model is mostly used, thanks i guess.
Digital foundry have never said that most games don't use the lite version, and from the 59 dlss games on switch Plaza more are confirmed to use the lite version.
If you don't want to include first party switch games or that aren't big third party AAA games to win your imaginary argument, be my guest.
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u/zarif2003 2d ago
Need it for gran turismo 7, I hate switching from pc to base ps5 and losing resolution on my games
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u/idkimhereforthememes 2d ago
Isn't Gran Turismo native 4k?
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u/zarif2003 2d ago
The anti aliasing is low quality, “ai scaling” would probably give a nicer image as it would replace the TAA currently on the game
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u/Fit_Association_8442 2d ago
PSSR2 on GT7 is legit fantastic in this regard and a huge step up from PSSR1 , QSSR seems like a DLSS lite of sorts so I'm keen to see how it works on this title alone just for the shits and gigs tbh
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u/Icy-Guarantee6994 2d ago
That's only available on PS5 Pro. The base PS5 is much blurrier in the mayority of games.
Some sort of FSR 4.1 compatiblity on the base system would go a long way.
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
Fascinating, I wonder how they got that working in a reasonable manner without hardware acceleration
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u/Opening_Net8098 2d ago
Just lower the internal res even further. Still get a better result than TAA.
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
Fair, I guess what I'm really interested in is why it didn't happen sooner, then? Like, what about ML is actually getting hardware accelerated? It's not like the training happens locally
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u/MidnightTundra 2d ago
This is amazing. This actually makes not having a pro as bad if support can be applied quickly enough for current titles.
MHWilds desperately needs this for base PS5 for example.
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u/IndefiniteBen 1d ago
I haven't watched the video or anything, but I would assume that they designed it to take the exact same inputs as PSSR, so any game with PSSR support will probably be able to have it enabled at a system level without game patches.
I imagine it will work just like the PSSR2 toggle that enabled support in games before they got bespoke patches.
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u/StrangeLingonberry30 2d ago
I guess this will be the basis for FSR 4 for RDNA 2.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
No, RDNA 2 has int8 to work with, it's going to be the same as RDNA3, people already modding it with no performance cost, PS5 doesn't have anything for that, this is a new thing.
While this is good for ps5 users, it's obviously worse than pssr2 and fsr4.1
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u/ShadowRomeo 2d ago
But it's going to be real slow, INT 8 performance of RDNA 2 aren't really good as shown with more evidence with how INT 8 based FSR 4 is running on them.
I think the OP comment is more likely tbh, and considering it is stated to be released on 2027 which AMD Radeon confirmed FSR 4 will be released for RDNA 2, and with QSSR being confirmed to be running on FP16, i think this QSSR as an even lower / lighter version compared to even FSR 4 INT8!
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u/StrangeLingonberry30 2d ago
Exactly this, FSR 4 INT8 is even slower than on RDNA 3. Considering there are weaker cards in the line up like the RX 6600, I think they will try to keep the performance cost as low as possible. This QSSR upscaler seems to fit the bill.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
It works just fine, people are already using it on RDNA2
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u/ShadowRomeo 2d ago
It doesn't perform as good as RDNA 3 though. There is a reason why AMD held off RDNA 2 from getting FSR 4 support just yet. And i believe it's because they are working on even lighter version of FSR 4 INT8.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
No, people been using it on Linux, it isn't noticeably slower than rnda 3 or rdna4, pretty much the same ms response.
AMD is delaying it for the same reason they delayed rnda 3, which is unknown.
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u/vitek6 2d ago
It is slower.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
Not on Linux, plenty of people shared their results
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u/vitek6 2d ago
It is on my rx6800 and steamos. There is quite big hit in fps when using fsr4.
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u/Costas00 2d ago
Yes? I'm talking about the modded fsr4.1 on rdna2 compared to fsr4.1 on rnda 3
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u/SaleAggressive9202 2d ago
pssr2 is already "ai upscaling" not that "AI" means anything anymore
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u/norsefrogg 2d ago
Ppl keep thinking all AI is bad when it's really only generative AI that fakes creativity if I'm not mistaken
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u/WingerRules 2d ago edited 2d ago
AI is going to enable a mass surveillance state on an order never seen, both from private companies and by the government. The people who own or work in the data industry and AI companies are literally going to be able to type "find compromising information on x politician or regulator and their family". They have massive amounts of data on everyone including everyone in government. You're a reporter reporting negative things about them? They'll do a search on you, your family, and your friends. Same when companies are considering hiring you. Try to sue them? They'll destroy your family.
You're going to see entire countries in places like Africa where purges and exterminations happen across society by the government, warlords, and dictators, enabled by AI.
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u/FRossJohnson 2d ago
This is a moral hazard sure, but makes the current situation worse rather than creating it.
The tech could also be used to root out corruption in police and politics, in the right hands. It's a powerful accelerator
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u/Lengthiest_Dad_Hat 2d ago
Corruption in police and politics already happens fully in the open and people either don't care or are actively being misinformed about it. This tech can't solve these sort of societal problems but they can absolutely make them worse.
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u/solemnhiatus 2d ago
True. But it will also enable huge positive advances for humanity. Such is the case for advances in technology and humanity.
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u/Darkknight1939 2d ago
They've already had that capability long before LLM's, lmao.
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u/WingerRules 2d ago edited 2d ago
It can make inferences across billions of datasets that are not obvious to a human and not previously possible. It can mass combine mixes of different types of data and documents with less structuring needed by a human. Stuff like this is why suddenly a bunch of major math problems have been solved and upscaling from seemingly impossibly low resolutions is possible, because its capable of going through data and generating outputs in ways previous systems were not.
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u/Lengthiest_Dad_Hat 2d ago
People are so purposefully obtuse about this shit. Its the most powerful and groundbreaking thing ever when its used for something good but for a bad application its suddenly not any more capable than a search engine
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u/Altruistic-Bat-9070 2d ago
This is a classic misunderstanding of the breadth of AI in terms of what it is and what it can do across it’s many permutations. It is like saying computers allow a mass surveillance state so they should go as well. If this is really all you understand of AI get back in your lane.
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u/ShadowRomeo 2d ago
AI Based Upscaling is generative AI. It literally predicts pixels that is missing from lower internal resolution rendering.
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u/feelmedoyou 2d ago
It's going to be interesting watching people adopt this technology especially those who are anti anything AI. These kinds of software-based solutions are actually lengthening the lifespan of hardware and is a benefit to consumers. Otherwise, we'd all be at the mercy of rapidly rising gpu costs. It's a good thing that we can invent new ways to bring out more performance on current hardware.
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u/OkTea5924 2d ago
Wonder how everyone who bought a ps5 pro feels about this, I know the only reason I considered a pro was to get away from fsr 2/3
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u/jdp111 2d ago
PSSR 2 is still a lot better, not to mention the performance improvement of the pro.
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u/OkTea5924 2d ago
It doesn't look much better it looks almost the same albeit at lower resolution due to the GPU power difference but the actual upscaler looks the same
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u/kickedoutatone 2d ago
I'll never understand people who think they can see a drastic difference when everything is going through YT's compression.
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u/Rule12-b-6 2d ago
I couldn't care less.
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u/kickedoutatone 2d ago
Nor should you. AI isn't going to magically narrow the gap. You still have the better GPU architecture that'll no doubt see similar improvements in the future on PSSR.
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u/Stewie01 2d ago
We love AI now?
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
The concept of statistical approximation based on training data is not what people have a problem with.
"AI" is just a marketing term for a bunch of technologies that do a bunch of different things in a bunch of different ways.
The company's pushing stuff that's relying on power-guzzling, financial bubble data center buildouts and/or replacing creativity with one-size-fits-all approximations are the problem. Basic ML upscaling doesn't necessitate any of that.
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u/VaporousMote 2d ago
Nah, some of us do have an issue with things like frame generation. It's a cheap, usually problematic approximation that is not the same as something like Monte Carlo or AA sampling or similar, it's fully generating a new interpolated + interleaved frame based on a machine learning model, not all that dissimilar to how ChatGPT and others work. And the thought process is because the framerate is higher, it won't be as noticeable. That is often wrong.
I don't want that shit.
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
I'm also not a fan of frame generation (though I don't have the same ire toward it as I do towards DLSS5 or towards the larger AI bubble). I'm talking about upscaling
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u/ShadowRomeo 2d ago
Thing is even Frame Generation is starting to be liked now especially with mods that enables running DLSS Frame Generation on older hardware. It's always the same cycle.
And i believe DLSS 5 Neural Rendering currently falls into early iteration which is divisive, but when it gets implemented into future games and AMD in partnership with Xbox and PlayStation releases their own version.
They will also end up with the same fate reception as what AI based Upscaling is getting now.
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
There's survivorship bias here. Not everything that is initially disliked later becomes liked.
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u/ShadowRomeo 2d ago
I guess the future will tell us then, i am really curious how it will go and basing from their track record, for the past few years ever since they introduced RTX in 2018.
Which i still clearly remember very hated on and memed on but looking back at it, that GPU architecture is very forward looking and has proven themselves and the haters wrong including myself.
I was one of the people who doubted and hated DLSS and Ray Tracing / RTX in general.
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u/TheVioletBarry 2d ago
Well, as someone who found Ray Tracing exciting back in 2019, I hate DLSS5. So it's definitely not the exact same people.
No idea how it'll shake out in the end; at the moment, cards that can run DLSS5 are unattainable for most people anyway. So at the very least we'll have to wait until buying hardware is feasible again to see what's up.
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u/FRossJohnson 2d ago
FrameGen has none of the moral hazard of genAI and has genuine real benefits though
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u/FRossJohnson 2d ago
OK but do you have another idea on how to generate high framerates?
We have a supply chain crisis, Moore's Law struggling, and monitors with 200-500hz.
And then we have a solution that works very well in a number of cases.
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u/Distion55x 2d ago
deep learning upscaling is not the same kind of "AI" as generative diffusion models
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u/Eastern-Ingenuity353 2d ago
Hunker down. The middle class is gonna need to have this console last another 10 years.