TechRadar’s blind test put DLSS 4.5 against FSR 4 on an RTX 4070 Ti Super and a Radeon RX 9070 XT at 1440p. The result was not a rout, and that matters for PC buyers who have been told one upscaler always wins.
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Preset M
The writer played a single mission twice in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 without knowing which upscaler was active. DLSS 4.5 on Nvidia’s newer Preset M came out sharper, crisper, cleaner, and more detailed than the FSR 4 run. The FSR 4 image looked softer, and fine geometry in the cityscape carried a blur.
Hogwarts Legacy at 1440p
Both rigs used matched quality presets at 1440p and were capped to the same frame rate. That setup keeps the comparison focused on image reconstruction instead of on raw speed or different settings. It also makes the result more useful for anyone choosing between AMD and Nvidia on a real PC build.
In Hogwarts Legacy, both upscalers handled the gothic geometry and drifting particle effects well for long stretches. The rain became the tie-breaker, which shows how narrow the gap was when the scene got harder to render cleanly.
AMD and Nvidia buying choices
The broader backdrop is the long-running claim that DLSS has sat decisively ahead of FSR for most of the 2020 to 2026 period. This blind test complicates that story because FSR 4 could stay in the fight when both sides were used on the hardware they were tuned for. DLSS 4.5 still pulled ahead where sharpness was the deciding factor, and that is exactly the kind of detail buyers notice in motion.
The unanswered piece is the full Hogwarts Legacy verdict after the rain sequence, which is the one comparison point that would show whether the edge held or flipped. For now, the safer reading is simple: the gap is real, but it is smaller than the loudest online arguments suggest.
