Keeping in mind my bias against upscaling, so feel free to disagree with my points. But upscaling technologies like DLSS/FSR are not inherently better image quality, over native (i.e. without them). Though I do agree, it does obviously provide a performance boost over native and that is precisely what it exists for.
DLSS and FSR help games get better FPS and frametime performance, by rendering the game assets at a lower internal resolution, then 'upscaling' them back to the output resolution. Of course there is usually loss of some image quality as a result, but 4k with DLSS/FSR is not the same/comparable to 4k without them. The different updates get better at reducing the loss of visual quality.
As much as I might dislike them, even I can't deny that these technologies can be useful, especially in the right scenarios. Amongst the best case is for lower end GPUs, to help them keep up or with older GPUs, so folks can hang on a bit longer without having to upgrade.
What annoys me the most regarding DLSS (and especially framegen), is how companies are using it as a crutch to make their GPUs look better than what they actually are. Or rather using them as an excuse to sell us inferior products. I.e. look at this 5070ti, it's twice as better as previous gen! When really it's only 10-15% better and most of those 'gains' are from better upscaling/framegen technologies. Or worse, Nvidia expecting people to pay more for software and get less actual hardware for their money. If we got good raw performance improvements, in addition to things like DLSS/FSR, I wouldn't be moaning about these technologies as much.
Ray-tracing on the other hand is a completely different can of worms. It's a different way of rendering graphics, that improves image quality more than just plain rasterisation.
The only issue with ray-tracing currently, is that most games don't use it and of those that do, the ones which use ray-tracing properly, are hard to run with good performance, even with the most powerful hardware. There's no doubt, that as time goes on, we'll probably see more ray-tracing and GPUs will have more hardware dedicated to it. But for now, it's not as prevalent for it to weigh in too much for GPU purchasing decisions. I guess the only exception is if folks want to keep their GPU for a longer time, without upgrading.
videocardz.com
