Warframe DLSS 4 vs FSR 3.1 (2026): Which Upscaler, Which Quality Mode, and When to Leave It Off
Last Updated on September 14, 2026
Warframe offers DLSS 4 (NVIDIA RTX only), FSR 3.1 and FSR 2.2. Use DLSS 4 on an RTX card and FSR 3.1 on anything else, at Quality for 1440p and 4K. At 1080p on a GPU that already holds your refresh rate, leave it off: the game is light enough that upscaling only softens the image. Once upscaling is on, Anti-Aliasing greys out because the upscaler does that job.
Reviewed September 14, 2026, against the current Settings menu (Update 43.5) and the official support articles; this page is re-checked after every major patch.
| Resolution | RTX card | AMD, Intel, GTX |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p, strong GPU | Off, TAA 8X | Off, TAA 8X |
| 1080p, weak GPU | DLSS 4 Quality | FSR 3.1 Quality |
| 1440p | DLSS 4 Quality | FSR 3.1 Quality |
| 4K | DLSS 4 Balanced | FSR 3.1 Balanced |
| Integrated graphics, 720p to 900p | n/a | FSR 3.1 Balanced or Performance |
Table of Contents
Setting it up
- Options, Display, Upscaling: Method, then Quality, then Sharpening around 0.4 to 0.6 so edges stay crisp without haloing.
- Turn Dynamic Resolution off; the menu will not run both.
- Anti-Aliasing greys out; that is expected.
- Check Show FPS on a busy tile: the win is in frame time, and on a CPU-limited scene it will not move at all.
CPUCores — Maximize Your FPS
If you’ve worked through the settings above and still get stutter, the bottleneck is often background processes stealing CPU time from the game. CPUCores isolates Windows and background tasks onto separate cores so your game gets the rest — it launches straight from Steam and detects your library automatically.
Tips that save runs
- Ultra Performance is for 4K on a weak card only; it is a blur at anything lower.
- FSR 3.1 in Warframe is upscaling only; there is no frame generation toggle, so latency does not rise.
Mistakes that waste runs
- Comparing DLSS on and off on the Orbiter, where nothing is heavy; test in Duviri or a Deimos bounty.