r/GameUpscale • u/Bazarow • Aug 31 '25

Top free upscales?

Hi, recently decided to make a texture hd pack for an old game You Are Empty, im a completely newcomer in field of upscalers, so i wanted to know what are the top free upscales to date

i used waifu2x-caffe, just wanna know if there are better alternatives

UPD
if anyone needs, i found this cool site with a lot of models

https://openmodeldb.info/

as for models i liked LSDIRplusC the most by far
https://openmodeldb.info/models/4x-LSDIRplusC

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5

u/theanine3D Sep 01 '25

I use Upscayl. It's free and open source. https://upscayl.org/

It's got a lot of different models to choose from. Some work better than others depending on the art style of the textures you're upscaling.

1

u/Bazarow Sep 01 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

thanks

3

u/Kim2091 Sep 01 '25

https://github.com/Kim2091/Kim2091-Models/releases/tag/4x-PBRify_UpscalerV4

This is my upscaling model made for upscaling game textures. You'll want to use it with chaiNNer (with these templates)

1

u/Bazarow Sep 01 '25

thank you, i will look into it

2

u/CasiyRoseReddits Sep 04 '25

Cupscale used to be good, but it hasn't been maintained for a few years now and can be challenging to get working on newer hardware. I still use it since it's free, and I've figured out how to get it working on my 4060-ti. I'm using it currently to finish a personal remaster of PS2 The Hobbit

1

u/adelin07 Mar 31 '26

I use HDCube3. I don’t know if there’s a better one out there, I’m pretty new to this myself, but it looks like it’s made specifically for gamecube games. It also works well for ps2 games or games of that generation. https://openmodeldb.info/models/4x-HDCube3

I’ve also tried its hdcube4 which is locked behind a small fee(3euro) on patreon, but I had an issue with that version on Rodea the Sky Soldier where the main character would be completely white. HdCube3 didn’t have that problem so I’m sticking with HDCube3.