Ultra performance, is only 11% of the native 4k image and you see above their difference. Sure 4k native (+dlaa mind you) is quite better, but come on, it sure as hell does not have only 11% of the initial quality. That's some black magic right there.
Also yeah, the power draw gets less than 1/3. You'd expect less after that 11% pixel count, but them tensor cores don't run on atmospheric air it seems. The motion part of this scene was not too bad either.
Upscaling is nice and definitely useful but IMO comparing still screenshots is quite deceptive, as by the nature of this tech, the image stabilizes over multiple frames. Still comparisons are a sort of the best case for DLSS / FSR.
I usually have very few issues with even DLSS Balanced at 1440p (provided a good implementation), evenscrutinizing small details usually holds up very well, while the image is relatively still. Yeah there might be some instability here and there (particularly with fine detail lines or objects far away) but it's surprisingly decent.
What I don't like
at all s how upscaling handles motion in most games. Just look at the lights / lampposts and all-around jaggies here while in motion (timestamped):
And that is with huge YT compression smoothing things over. It's definitely a lot worse in game (to me).
I know, some people apparently can't see it at all, but it's hugely distracting to me (along with LOD pop-in in other areas) . In fact I find it only borderline (barely-barely) bearable at 1440p DLSS Quality, forget lower settings. I think it would take 4K + Quality DLSS for me to not be distracted by it at all.
Another take. Take a look at the overhanging wires here, DLSS performance vs quality:
I honestly, immediately see these things, and it takes me back to running HL2 with AA off in 2004.
I guess CP2077, AW2 and other RT-heavy games are some of the worst offenders (due to a lot of denoising among other things) but these games are also the ones that require upscaling the most.