Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 appears to skip DLSS for AMD’s 2021 upscaler

The Nintendo Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time appears to use AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 (FSR 1.0) for upscaling and SMAA for anti-aliasing, rather than Nvidia’s DLSS. The detail comes from the game’s Intellectual Property Notices for version 1.0.0, which surfaced online days before the title launches on November 5.

A clip posted on X by SuperMetalDave64 opens the game’s software menu and scrolls through its third-party licenses. One entry lists “FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 (FSR)” with a 2021 copyright line for Advanced Micro Devices. Another covers an “optimized AMD FSR’s EASU implementation for Mobiles," a reference to Edge Adaptive Spatial Upsampling, the pass in FSR 1.0 that enlarges the image. An SMAA entry appears further down, while none of the notices shown mention DLSS.

FSR 1.0 is a spatial upscaler. It takes each frame rendered at a lower resolution and enlarges it in isolation, without drawing on information from earlier frames. The method is cheap to run but recovers less fine detail, and the shortfall tends to show on thin geometry such as grass and leaves. DLSS reconstructs the image with a machine-learning model that also uses data from previous frames, and it runs on the Tensor cores built into the Switch 2’s custom Nvidia chip.

Players on the Switch 2 subreddit have questioned the choice, with some pointing to shimmering foliage in the remake’s trailers. A license notice confirms only that the code ships with the game. It does not show when the upscaler runs or at what resolution the game renders, and proprietary tools do not always require such notices, so the missing DLSS entry is not conclusive on its own. Nintendo has not commented on the remake’s upscaling.

Donkey Kong Bananza uses the same combination. Digital Foundry’s technical review of the July 2025 platformer found FSR 1.0 and SMAA in place of DLSS, with resolution ranging from 1080p to 1200p when docked. Mario Kart World also shipped without DLSS. The Bananza team has said the game was originally designed for the first Switch, which lacks the hardware for DLSS, and the same analysts have pointed to engine limitations as another likely reason Nintendo’s early Switch 2 releases skipped the tech.

Third-party studios have used DLSS on the console since its June 2025 launch. CD Projekt Red confirmed DLSS across all four handheld and docked modes of Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2, while Hogwarts Legacy uses a lighter DLSS model to output at 1440p.

Ocarina of Time is a full remake of the 1998 Nintendo 64 game and a Switch 2 exclusive. Nintendo showed its first gameplay at the Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct on September 8, and the remake adds overhauled visuals, full voice acting, orchestral music, and an ocarina played through the console’s microphone. It costs $59.99 digitally and $69.99 for the physical edition in the US.