PS5 Pro's PSSR AI upscaling is significantly better than AMD FSR 3.1, new deep dive shows

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The tech gurus at Digital Foundry have gone hands-on with the PlayStation 5 Pro's AI-powered PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) upscaling in the visually impressive first-party title Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. And based on the results, it looks like PSSR will be the PS5 Pro's secret weapon and deliver an NVIDIA DLSS moment to console gamers.

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PS5 Pro's PSSR delivers a cleaner and more detailed image than AMD FSR 3.1, image credit: YouTube/Digital Foundry.

With direct access to the game and hardware, we have an in-depth head-to-head breakdown of the visual differences between Sony's PSSR, AMD's FSR 3.1, and NVIDIA DLSS 3.7. Like all upscaling methods, PSSR takes a lower-resolution image to generate a 4K image to present overall image quality that is on par with or close to native rendering.

Digital Foundry went to great lengths to match graphics settings, internal rendering resolutions, and upscale quality settings to ensure a like-for-like comparison between PSSR, FSR, and DLSS was possible. You might be surprised by just how much improvement PSSR delivers compared to AMD's FSR.

PSSR dramatically reduces artifacts like shimmering and effects that look overly noisy while also removing ghosting. In one dramatic example, FSR fails to deal with confetti on the screen in the game's celebratory introduction sequence, creating a jumbled mess of ghosting and hard-to-track particles. With PSSR, ghosting is not an issue, and the image quality looks notably better.

Granted, we're only looking at a single game and one that AMD's FSR has issues with. However, even in the updated FSR 3.1 form, Sony's PSSR is much closer to DLSS regarding image quality than FSR. The difference between PSSR and DLSS comes down to DLSS delivering more detailed textures and other finer details.

Ultimately, PSSR in Version 1.0 form is impressive, transforming console image quality with AI-powered upscaling. As an alternative to FSR, available to console developers, it's a big win for the PlayStation 5 Pro and will ensure that games look crisper and more detailed on Sony's upcoming supped-up console.

Watch the full deep dive and analysis below.