The Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod, explained

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is getting ripped to shreds for its poor performance upon launch across the board. In what’s becoming a sad tradition, PC players are getting the most spoiled piece of the pie. One of the many points of contention is Jedi: Survivor’s lack of DLSS upscaling. PC gaming’s lords and saviors from the modding community are ready to jump in and save the day once again with a Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was destined to be a shipwreck at launch. In an unprecedented move, publisher EA declared it will be releasing performance-related patches for weeks after launch, before Jedi: Survivor had even hit store shelves. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the game was released in a barely functioning state. It contends with The Last of Us Part 1 for the worst PC port in 2023, and that’s a bar as high as the Empire State Building.

While EA is supposedly hard at work to bring performance up to standard and has already released a major post-launch patch, the modding community is on a mission to fix Jedi: Survivor with its own methods.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s main issue is performance, not the game itself, so the in-game absence of a DLSS upscaling option that could help with performance a lot is mind-boggling. Said absence can be explained easily by the fact that Jedi: Survivor is an AMD-sponsored title, and DLSS is an NVIDIA technology. Brand competition or not, it’s clear that having DLSS could have alleviated some of the performance pressure Jedi: Survivor is going through. If EA won’t put DLSS in Jedi: Survivor, modders will, and they did.

Modder PureDark, who specializes in DLSS 3 implementation in modern games, has developed a Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod that could allow many people who can’t currently enjoy the game finally get a taste of Cal Kestis’ new adventures without their screen having a seizure every 10 seconds.

Does the Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod improve FPS?

PureDark’s DLSS 3 mod could and most likely will improve your FPS in Jedi: Survivor. There are, however, some caveats. In its current state at least, the mod makes Jedi: Survivor run smoother at the expense of image quality, ghosting, and visible artifacts.

Sacrificing some image sharpness when you literally can’t play the game otherwise is an obvious choice, but if you simply want some extra frames over an already acceptable experience, then the Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod is a tougher sell.

The other, much clearer obstacle to this mod improving your FPS, is that DLSS 3 does not work with all GPUs. This version of NVIDIA’s upscaling technology is only compatible with the newest, shiniest, and not least of all, expensive 40-series of NVIDIA graphics cards. In other words, the Star Wars Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod, even if working flawlessly, will be useful to the select few who have bought a new NVIDIA GPU in the last six months.

Can you play the Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod?

No, you cannot play the Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod right now. As mentioned, the mod has some notable issues in its current state. Creator PureDark is not hiding the difficulties he’s experiencing in properly implementing DLSS 3 in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. For that reason, the mod is not publicly available, at least for now.

Unfortunately, despite the modder’s best intentions, the final statement in his Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod video description does not inspire much hope that this mod will improve in the future.

Here’s what PureDark wrote on the future development of the mod: “Currently only for showcasing, I might release this version very soon, cuz I have no intention of polishing it further. I might just drop this as is and then get back to Elden Ring and Fallout 4.”

It looks like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will make place for Elden Ring and Fallout 4 in the modder’s schedule pretty soon and the current, sub-optimized version of the Jedi: Survivor DLSS 3 mod is the best we will get. Better than nothing for sure, but a far cry from the miracle solution many probably hoped for.