During today’s launch of its RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 cards, Nvidia got an early look at the next version of its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) scaling technology. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says: DLSS 3 can increase performance up to four times compared to rendering only at native resolution. Nvidia says more than 35 games and applications are already integrating the technology, with the first games expected to launch in October.
In a demonstration, Nvidia showed how DLSS 3 improves the framerate of Cyberpunk 2077 from less than 30 fps to about 100 fps. With its older DLSS 2 technology, performance only ramped up to around 60 fps. At a second demonstration Microsoft Flight Simulator saw its frames increase from the mid-’50s to over 100 fps with DLSS 3. However, the exact graphics settings or resolutions of these demonstrations were not detailed.
DLSS is designed to get more performance out of games when played with Nvidia graphics cards. The result is higher frame rates at the same resolution or the appearance of higher resolutions without sacrificing performance. DLSS works by running games internally at a lower resolution before using machine learning techniques to scale them up to higher resolutions. For example, a game might give the impression that it’s running in 4K, while internally it’s only running at 1080p – a much less demanding resolution.
In addition to boosting GPU-limited titles, Nvidia says DLSS 3 can also help with CPU-limited games, boosting performance by up to 100 percent. It also integrates support with Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency and improve responsiveness, and is capable of generating entirely new frames rather than just new pixels (thanks to Optical Multi Frame Generation). Overall, Nvidia says DLSS can display up to seven-eighths of a game’s pixels, resulting in a big performance boost.
In addition to frame rate improvements, Nvidia says DLSS 3 should benefit from better picture quality. DLSS 3’s Optical Flow Accelerator feature can track objects in scenes rather than just pixels, meaning it should better understand graphical elements such as shadows, resulting in fewer stutters.
Image: Nvidia
In one slide, Nvidia listed DLSS 3 as a third-generation RTX feature, suggesting you’ll need Nvidia’s third-generation RTX hardware to take full advantage of the updated graphics technology (we’ve contacted the company for confirmation). “DLSS 3 is supported in GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs and will debut on Wednesday, October 12 with the availability of GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs,” said Nvidia. press release reads.
Nvidia was the first major player to roll out AI scaling technology; competitor AMD subsequently rolled out its own version called FidelityFX Super Resolution for its graphics cards. Meanwhile, Intel’s Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) will aim to bring similar benefits to its GPUs, and early results were positive. Competition is increasing and Nvidia is no doubt hoping that DLSS 3 will give gamers another reason to choose its hardware.
Here’s the full list of games and applications that Nvidia says support DLSS 3.
- A Plague Tale: Requiem
- Atomic Heart
- Black myth: Wukong
- Clear Memory: Infinite
- Chernobylite
- The Conqueror’s Knife
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Dakar rally
- Deliver us from Mars
- Destroy all humans! 2 – Reprobed
- Dying Light 2 Stay Human
- F1® 22
- FIST: Forged In Shadow Torch
- Frostbite motor
- HITMAN 3
- Hogwarts Legacy
- ICARUS
- Jurassic World Evolution 2
- Justice
- loopmancer
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
- looters
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Nightly Ghost Hunt
- Mount & Blade II: Banner Lord
- Naraka Bladepoint
- NVIDIA Omniverse™
- NVIDIA Racer RTX
- PERISH
- Portal with RTX
- Rip out
- STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl
- Scathe
- Sword and Fairy 7
- SYNCHRONIZED
- The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- THRONE AND FREEDOM
- Tower of Fantasy
- Unit
- Unreal Engine 4 & 5
