Well maybe 8 sample noise makes it look more detailed.

The problem still exists in 2.83.3

In T77699#950191, @Tyler (ghfujianbin) wrote:

Actually this is a feature change in 2.83. If you wanna bake, you have to go to Cache --> Type, then choose Modular instead of Replay. Then Blender should behave the same way as 2.82. You can also try Final, which gives you the option to Bake All.

In T70906#802937, @Clément Foucault (fclem) wrote:

@Shamimur Rahman (shamimurrahman19)

The Clip end distance needs to be way lower. Try 100 and you will see what I'm talking about.

In T70906#802889, @Clément Foucault (fclem) wrote:

What you might experience is lower shadowmap resolution due to camera having much lower far clip distance than the default viewport camera.

The sun shadow map uses near and far clip distance to calculate shadowmap projection that contain the whole viewable scene. If near - far distance is much higher there is less shadowmap resolution per unit distance, resulting in less precise shadows.

In T70906#802755, @Clément Foucault (fclem) wrote:

@Shamimur Rahman (shamimurrahman19) what precise version hash are you comparing against?

Shadows have had an overhaul during the 2.81 development which got rid of pre-filtered shadowmaps (VSM & ESM). This might be what you are interpreting as less good.

first one is from 2.81
second one is from 2.82

In T70906#797776, @Demeter Dzadik (Mets) wrote:

Please provide a blend file that the devs can open in 2.81 and 2.82 to compare the results.