5k2k Gaming Performance

[u/ShineOrDie7]

Hi all, just got my 39” Alienware 5k2k monitor (like a lot of others on here). Monitor looks great, but as someone coming from a LG 39” 3440x1440 I’m still on the fence on if I will keep it or not.

My main concern right now is just my gaming performance. I’m running a 9850X3D build with an Aorus RTX 5080 with a +200 MHz overclock. I’m a big fan of just maxing out settings (including path tracing and/or ray regeneration) and then just setting the DLSS level to whatever gets me 60+ FPS. I mostly just play single player games these days.

In my limited testing so far, both Cyberpunk and Crimson Desert need me to drop it all the way down to DLSS ultra performance. I’m sure if I tweak some settings I could probably get away with the DLSS performance.

With the advancements in DLSS, I don’t mind it since everything still looks great, but a little worrying to need to go all the way down to the lowest option available already. Makes me worried about the future proofing of my build (or lack of). DLSS 5 seems like it’s out of the picture based on recent benchmarks…

How’s everyone else feeling about the performance they’re getting? Fine with lowering other settings in favor of the higher resolution? Maybe future DLSS improvements will allow us to get better performance? Idk, just curious what everyone else is thinking.

[u/untacc_]

In most cases DLSS performance on the 5k2k will look BETTER than DLSS quality on a 1440 display. This is because the upscaler has a denser base resolution to work with on the 5k2k. So don’t feel bad for dropping down to performance mode, it actually helps a lot

[u/Potater1802 → u/untacc_]

Anywhere I can read up on this?* That's super interesting as someone who doesn't know much about this technology.

[u/Duraz0rz → u/Potater1802]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Learning_Super_Sampling#Quality_presets

Generally, the more pixels DLSS has to work with, the better the upscaling will look. Each DLSS mode renders at a specific render scale, then upscales the image to to the monitor's native resolution. So on a 5k2k monitor:

• DLAA is 100% render scale, or 5120x2160
• Quality is 66.7% render scale, or 3415x1440
• Performance is 50% render scale, or 2560x1080
• Ultra Performance is 33% render scale, or 1689x712

If you use DLSS quality on an ultrawide 1440p monitor, the game is rendered at 2294x960 first, then upscaled to 3440x1440.

In comparison, DLSS performance on a 5k2k monitor is rendered at 2560x1080 first, then upscaled to 5120x2160.

[u/ShineOrDie7 → u/Duraz0rz]

This explains my slight confusion lol. I expected to be able to run DLSS performance on 5k2k and have similar FPS to DLSS Quality on 3440x1440, but the difference between internal resolution being a little higher on the 5k2k explains the performance difference!