Computer equipment, especially gaming equipment, is very expensive. This was a quick, easy way to increase my performance while spending less than $10.
My laptop is showing its age
The laptop I’m working with is now a bit older. It is the Ryzen variant of the Surface Laptop 4. It comes with 16GB of RAM, the CPU is the AMD Ryzen 5 Microsoft Surface Edition (a six-core), and the integrated GPU is based on Radeon Vega.
It boasts a resolution of 2256×1504—great for office work, but rough on a GPU that was never all that powerful to begin with.
I’ve moved to Linux for my daily office work, but sometimes gaming is still easier on Windows, even though Proton has improved in leaps and bounds over the last few years.
With everything in the background shut down, it still struggles to play even some modern, undemanding games. Even some of my favorite older games, like Skyrim, make it work.
I found myself wishing for DLSS and Frame Gen, but those aren’t available unless you have a specific GPU.
Fortunately, there is a third-party option that is surprisingly close.
Lossless Scaling is DLSS and Frame GeneratioProton has improved in leaps and boundsn for everyone
Typically, DLSS and Frame Gen are restricted to NVIDIA GPUs, since they use specially designed hardware on the graphics card to function optimally.
However, that isn’t strictly necessary. You can do the same kind of AI workloads on any GPU made in the last decade, it just won’t be as efficient.
That is where Lossless Scaling comes in. Lossless Scaling is a program available on Steam that does something very similar to DLSS, in that it uses machine learning to upscale a game from a lower resolution to a higher one.
DLSS vs. XeSS vs. FSR: Which Upscaling Technology Should You Choose?
Ready for a crash course in all things upscaling?
If the game is GPU-limited, there is a very good chance that it could help performance.
Similarly, Lossless Scaling also has its own version of frame generation, LSFG. The algorithm is proprietary, so we can’t be sure, but I would expect that it works along the same principals as NVIDIA’s frame generation.
Anyone can use either technology. You don’t need an RTX card or one of AMD’s cards that technically supports modern FSR—even a GTX 1070 or an integrated GPU would do.
When Lossless Scaling will not help
Lossless Scaling helps when your GPU is having trouble keeping up with a game. In that scenario, your GPU is the bottleneck.
However, if your CPU is the problem, then Lossless Scaling can’t help you. It may even make things worse. For example, if your CPU is struggling to keep up, and you enable frame generation, you might actually see 60 generated frames per second. The problem is that they’re not “real,” and the game isn’t actually running at 60 FPS. That creates a very aggravating kind of input lag that will ruin your gaming experience.
Setting up Lossless Scaling
Once you purchase Lossless Scaling and install it, there is a bit of a setup process first.
First, create a new profile by clicking the plus button in the bottom-left. I named mine Skyrim because that is what I’m going to be playing with this profile.
Now, you have to actually configure your profile. In my case, I want upscaling enabled but frame generation off.
I normally opt for FSR or LS1 for the games I play. Ultimately, it is a matter of personal preference. Lossless Scaling comes with multiple upscaling options and some are designed with specific art styles in mind. For example, xBR and Integer Scaling are recommended by the developer for pixel art games. The anime upscaler, as you would expect, does best with anime-style games.
I’d recommend testing out a few different options to see which you like.
If you have multiple GPUs or multiple monitors, you may need to tweak some other settings at the bottom to ensure Lossless Scaling works correctly. Since I’m using it on a laptop, the defaults are my only options.
I ran Skyrim at a native resolution of 1440×900 and configured Lossless Upscaling to match the resolution of my laptop’s screen, which is 2256×1504. That is very roughly 2.5 times more pixels than the native rendering resolution.
After running around Markath for a while, I found that my FPS running at 1400×900 ran anywhere between 20 and 35 FPS, and in rare moments it could reach 40. That is playing in a relatively small window. While I flipped on Lossless Scaling, the window expanded to the full size of my screen and the FPS stayed exactly the same.
That may make it seem like it didn’t do anything at all, but it is really quite impressive. With only a minor quality hit, I was able to get identical performance running at 1440p instead of 900p.
It has made a large enough difference in my laptop’s gaming performance that I rarely launch a game without it these days. Some games respond well to frame generation, while others, like Skyrim, do not.
Lossless Scaling is not going to magically make your PC perform like you have the latest and great hardware, but there is a very good chance it will make games you struggle to run playable. I’d certainly recommend you give it a try before spending hundreds on new hardware.
