Yesterday, IO Interactive released the Path Tracing Patch for 007 First Light. We’ve already covered it and shared some benchmarks, which you can find here. However, I’ve also decided to compare its Path Tracing effects with DLSS 5. Can DLSS 5 fill the gap between Path Tracing and Rasterization? And is it heavier than it? Let’s find out.
007 First Light does not natively support DLSS 5. To test it, I used the DLSS eXtended Loader. This mod appeared to offer better results than DLSS Unlocked. My PC system featured an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. I also used Windows 10 64-bit and the GeForce 616.92 driver.
For the DLSS 5 Mod, I used the default settings with the Standard/Default profile. These offered great results from the get-go. I should also note that I did not use any of its performance tweaks. You can reduce the render scale of DLSS 5 to gain some performance. However, that comes with a visual degradation.
Let’s start with some comparisons. On the left, we have the Path Tracing version with DLSS 5. In the middle, we have the vanilla Path Tracing. And finally, on the right, we have the rasterized version with DLSS 5.
Visually, Path Tracing with DLSS 5 offers the best quality. There is no doubt here. In all of our comparisons, Path Tracing with DLSS 5 looks way better than anything else. It’s also unplayable on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. At 4K with DLSS Performance Mode, we’re getting 20-28 FPS.
To get a minimum of 40FPS, I had to drop the resolution to 1080p (with DLSS Quality) on the NVIDIA RTX 5080. At that resolution, the game was fully enjoyable with Path Tracing High and DLSS 5. You can also use a 50% render scale at 1440p to get better performance. Both of these have an impact on the image quality, though.
But what about Path Tracing versus DLSS 5? On the NVIDIA RTX 5080, both seem to have a similar performance hit. When it comes to the in-game characters, the DLSS 5 shots look better. However, DLSS 5 does not fix the issues found in rasterized lighting. Path Tracing offers better lighting, better shadows, better reflections, and everything feels more coherent. Take the last two comparisons, for example. The path-traced version looks miles better in almost every way.
Since Path Tracing and DLSS 5 have a similar performance hit, the choice is up to you. In my opinion, Path Tracing offers better image quality than DLSS 5. Ideally, you should use both Path Tracing and DLSS 5. However, if you have to choose one, I would go with Path Tracing.
Finally, it’s clear that using DLSS 5 with Path Tracing will be a real challenge on anything other than the NVIDIA RTX 5090. As we can see, the NVIDIA RTX 5080 can only deliver playable frame rates at 1080p in its current state.
We should also remember that this is a mod, not an official implementation. Still, this shows that NVIDIA has a lot of work to do. It needs to optimize DLSS 5 and make it run faster than it does right now!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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