AMD-Sponsored Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Gets Surprising DLSS 3 Update and Game Optimizations

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
(Image credit: YouTube - EA Star Wars)

Seemingly out of nowhere, Respawn just released a brand new performance patch for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor that (reportedly) greatly enhances the game's performance on console and PC. Perhaps more importantly for PC users, the update also includes the official integration of DLSS 2 upscaling and DLSS 3 frame generation into the game.

According to the EA patch notes and official post on X (Twitter), the game has gone through a serious rework to provide a smooth 60FPS on consoles specifically. The console patch notes reveal that the game's performance mode has been "completely reworked" to provide a substantially better gaming experience. Respawn says it has implemented a number of CPU and GPU optimizations, along with disabling ray tracing to enable a solid 60 FPS in performance mode.

Quality mode got some optimizations to reduce FPS fluctuations and has received additional visual improvements as well. Variable refresh rate support has also been implemented on the PS5 for variable refresh rate TVs and monitors.

For the PC, additional performance optimizations have been made, along with full official integration of DLSS. (For the past several months, DLSS has been unofficially available via a PureDark mod.) Respawn also fixed several game crashes and other bugs affecting save game corruption and visual bugs.

Did Modders Push Respawn to Include DLSS?

By far the most surprising addition to Jedi: Survivor is DLSS support, which was previously absent from the game. Since launch, GeForce RTX gamers have only had access to AMD's FSR 2 technology, which many consider to be visually inferior to Nvidia's AI-powered DLSS upscaling solution. It can also be less performant in some cases.

Prior to this latest update, the only way to get DLSS capabilities in Jedi: Survivor was through mods, more specifically the DLSS 2 and DLSS 3 mod made by PureDark. His work on Jedi: Survivor was one of the first demonstrations of how DLSS could be modded into games. His original DLSS 3 frame generation mod made major headlines back in May when it allowed RTX 40-series graphics cards to almost double the game's frame rate. This was a big deal at the time, due to the fact the game ran very poorly on all PC hardware during its initial launch, and running DLSS 3 frame generation allowed the game to hit 60 FPS. Later, he added DLSS 2 upscaling support for Nvidia gamers who wanted even more performance without relying on FSR 2.

One key lesson that we learned from PureDark's DLSS mods was that it apparently takes very little time or effort to implement DLSS alongside FSR 2, assuming the latter is already supported. Both technologies rely on the same inputs to run, so if a development team goes through the effort of integrating one upscaling solution, it can easily integrate the others as well. This applies to Intel's XeSS upscaling solution as well, if you were wondering.

From a technical standpoint, there was very little reason for Respawn to not implement DLSS support. Many people originally thought that Respawn wasn't including DLSS due to the fact Jedi: Survivor is an AMD-sponsored title. However, AMD says that it does not block DLSS integration with its sponsored titles — AMD technologies are merely prioritized.

With the huge success of PureDark's free and paywalled DLSS mods (just check his Discord server memberships), it seems likely that PureDark gave Respawn an incentive to officially implement DLSS into the game. However, Respawn's development resources are tight, even though Jedi: Survivor has been out for several months. EA currently has them working on a previous generation console port of the game for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, for some bewildering reason.

DLSS Performance and Image Quality in Jedi: Survivor

We captured the above photos and videos of Jedi Survivor with its new official DLSS implementation, with comparisons to native rendering and FSR 2 upscaling. What we found is that DLSS 2 image upscaling generally provides the best image quality overall, with less ghosting compared to FSR 2 and slightly sharper image quality compared to the game's native TAA implementation (at native resolution). However, FSR 2 does have some potential advantages over DLSS — it's down to personal preference more than anything else.

If you check the full size images we posted, the FSR 2 photo is arguably the best-looking image while the camera is not moving. Textures and objects are sharper than DLSS or native resolution. In motion, however, we feel the DLSS implementation looks better. You can check the above videos, though of course YouTube's compression makes meaningful comparisons using those all but impossible.

Performance is basically identical between DLSS 2 image upscaling and FSR 2 upscaling, and both in their Quality mode provided the same level of performance. (Don't look at the overlay as a true indication of performance, as that tends to fluctuate wildly, plus we were capturing the videos and that can also impact performance.) DLSS 3 frame generation unsurprisingly provides a massive boost in frame rate. I did not test it for long enough to know if the hit to input latency was worth the additional smoothness offered by frame generation.

Our limited testing was done with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, GeForce RTX 4070, and a 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor. Game settings were at Epic settings, RT enabled, vsync off, and the Quality upscaling setting for both DLSS 2 upscaling and FSR 2 upscaling.

Worth mention here is that support for XeSS was not included, even though that would presumably be pretty straightforward at this point. (Cue Obi Wan: "I felt a very tiny disturbance in the Force, as if dozens of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were ignored.") Maybe that will come in the future, though at this stage we suspect FSR 2 and DLSS 3 will prove sufficient for Remedy's purposes.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

With contributions from
  • -Fran-
    Well, no matter what modders do, you can never ever equate development from Companies to small "guerrilla" coders pushing out something (at times) that just works for very specific hardware configs with very quirky behaviours.

    Generally speaking, mods are most welcome (hello Beat Saber!), but also understood they're not something you can expect to work flawlessly and without quirks. Simplest thing to say is UI integration and the more complex would be alignment to the artists vision of the game (mods that increase light conditions or gamma, for instance). When building any new tech into a game, you not just have to take into account the time it takes to, say, "slap it into the engine", but also the time it takes to re-work the menu, the interactions and, more importantly, the validation/testing. PC, fortunately, can get away with shorter cycles, possibly, unlike consoles and in the particular case of DLSS, maybe even less, but you still have a sizable overhead modders do not have, including expectations.

    All in all, people want these new techs to be included in the "vanilla" experience first and that just takes time.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    I don't think this has anything to do with modders pushing them. On the sponsored title there looks to be a delay on purpose and once that is up the other tech will get implemented. The same with happen for Starfield.
    Reply
  • pf100
    -Fran- said:
    Well, no matter what modders do, you can never ever equate development from Companies to small "guerrilla" coders pushing out something (at times) that just works for very specific hardware configs with very quirky behaviours.

    Generally speaking, mods are most welcome (hello Beat Saber!), but also understood they're not something you can expect to work flawlessly and without quirks. Simplest thing to say is UI integration and the more complex would be alignment to the artists vision of the game (mods that increase light conditions or gamma, for instance). When building any new tech into a game, you not just have to take into account the time it takes to, say, "slap it into the engine", but also the time it takes to re-work the menu, the interactions and, more importantly, the validation/testing. PC, fortunately, can get away with shorter cycles, possibly, unlike consoles and in the particular case of DLSS, maybe even less, but you still have a sizable overhead modders do not have, including expectations.

    All in all, people want these new techs to be included in the "vanilla" experience first and that just takes time.

    Regards.
    PureDark has proven over and over that if the game already has fsr2 it takes one person one day to add dlss3. Stop defending lazy devs.
    Reply
  • NeoMorpheus
    I’m still amazed as to how we are now turning our backs on tech that works on as many devices as possible and instead demand a lock-in tech that limits us to whichever excuses are used to justify the already short list of devices that can support it.

    If intel can pull a dlss tech, AMD should simply close shop, because they wont have a chance in hell of getting anything that’s open and opposite to it that will be acceptable by todays dumb consumers.
    Reply
  • willis9829
    dang, I feel like fool having purchased Pure Dark's DLSS mod yesterday seeing today news Respawn released update with official support.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    Makaveli said:
    I don't think this has anything to do with modders pushing them. On the sponsored title there looks to be a delay on purpose and once that is up the other tech will get implemented. The same with happen for Starfield.
    Which Nvidia game this year didn't launch with at least FSR implemented next to DLSS? If they can do it, then holy AMD surely can as well? Why wouldn't their devs do it if they had a choice?

    NeoMorpheus said:
    I’m still amazed as to how we are now turning our backs on tech that works on as many devices as possible and instead demand a lock-in tech that limits us to whichever excuses are used to justify the already short list of devices that can support it.

    If intel can pull a dlss tech, AMD should simply close shop, because they wont have a chance in hell of getting anything that’s open and opposite to it that will be acceptable by todays dumb consumers.
    I'm still amazed at how we are now turning our backs on choice and get complacent with only having a single piece of tech implemented instead of all three, so that people can actually choose the one that works best with their system. The only dumb people are the one who support this anti-consumer practice. You gys are literally the only ones not demanding to have a choice. Now what does that tell us, huh.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    pf100 said:
    PureDark has proven over and over that if the game already has fsr2 it takes one person one day to add dlss3. Stop defending lazy devs.
    You completely missed the point, but that's ok.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • NeoMorpheus
    KyaraM said:
    I'm still amazed at how we are now turning our backs on choice and get complacent with only having a single piece of tech implemented instead of all three, so that people can actually choose the one that works best with their system. The only dumb people are the one who support this anti-consumer practice. You gys are literally the only ones not demanding to have a choice. Now what does that tell us, huh.
    Some people have an amazing capacity for mental gymnastics that defy logic.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    NeoMorpheus said:
    Some people have an amazing capacity for mental gymnastics that defy logic.
    Tell me where I'm wrong. You are the one clamoring for having only FSR in a game, not me. I want to have a choice. What is your justification against said choice?
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    KyaraM said:
    Tell me where I'm wrong. You are the one clamoring for having only FSR in a game, not me. I want to have a choice. What is your justification against said choice?
    You're not wrong in the sentiment, but your portrayal is a tad flawed, I'd say.

    Think about it from this perspective: why do games only release on Windows and not on all major OS'es (PC-wise; let's ignore consoles for now)? Have you ever got angry at* Developers for not releasing on Linux (a flavour of it), MacOS and Windows consistently and all the time? Have you ever questioned why most developers use the Intel Compiler instead of other alternatives like LLVM or GCC? Why some software uses DirectX exclusively instead of also using Vulkan, OpenGL and Metal? And there's so many more examples of this where the answer is often simple: time and money.

    I wholeheartedly agree AMD imposing exclusivity is crap and must not be, but they have come out and said they don't and only use "priority". They're taking a book form how "exclusives" work in the gaming industry which, like it or not, seems to be accepted practice and I don't see any outrages against the EPIC store*, Sony or Nintendo about it? Or at least, there may be a sentiment of discomfort and annoyance, but it doesn't get coverage in the tech media or consumer backing to have enough momentum to generate noise and/or impact. This has told all major Corps "it's ok to by scummy to this level" and they're running with it.

    As I said, it's a different ball game if AMD was confirmed to exclude DLSS (or any other tech) from any given title, but they have cleared the waters (late, yes; annoying as it is) so now it's a matter of accepting it as the trend unless there's backlash of some kind. As stated before: there won't be as it's an "accepted" practice.

    Regards.
    Reply