DLSS, it's complicated.
Published: 20th September 2022 | Source: Nvidia | Author: Mark Campbell
Nvidia's DLSS 3.0 technology will not work on the company's RTX 20 series or RTX 30 series GPUs
While revealing their RTX 40 series of graphics cards ( more details here ) Nvidia also revealed their new DLSS 3.0 technology, a new iteration of the company's AI super resolution technology that can utilise new techniques to increase the framerates of supported games. This new technology is enabled by the huge boost in AI performance that if offered by Nvidia's new RTX 4.0 series graphics cards and their 4th generation Tensor cores.
With DLSS 3.0 comes a new feature called DLSS Frame Generation, which when combined with Nvidia Reflex can deliver gamers a 2x framerate boost by creating and displaying AI generated intermediate frames. 60 FPS game content can be transformed into 120 FPS content, giving gamers an effective 2x performance boost.
DLSS 3.0 can deliver up to a 4x performance boost over brute-force rendering
Nvidia's DLSS Frame Generation technology is separate from Nvidia's existing DLSS 2.0 AI upscaling techniques, allowing both to be utilised simultaneously using the AI performance of the company's RTX 40 series of graphics cards. This allows DLSS 3.0 to deliver up to a 4x performance boost over native resolution rendering, thanks to DLSS 3.0's framerate doubling potential and DLSS 2.0's AI upscaling.
DLSS Frame Generation utilises a new feature that's within Nvidia's RTX 40 series graphics cards. This feature is Nvidia's "Optical Flow Accelerator", which Nvidia uses to ensure that AI generated frames are accurate.
Latency - It's Complicated
With Nvidia using currently rendered frames and AI generated frames to effectively double a gamer's framerate, we are concerned at the latency implications of Nvidia's DLSS 3.0 technology. AI generated intermediate frames need to be displayed before a game's current frame, implying that DLSS 3.0 has a latency penalty. With this in mind, it makes sense why DLSS 3.0 also integrated Nvidia's Reflex low latency technology, as this would counteract the latency impact of DLSS' Frame Generation feature.
If you want lower latencies in-game, you may not want to enable Nvidia's DLSS Frame Generation technology. DLSS AI Frame Generation may had an on/off option in games for this reason.
Supported Games and Engine
Nvidia has confirmed that DLSS 3.0 will be supported by over 35 games and apps, with the list below including popular engines like Frostbite and Unreal Engine 4/5 and upcoming games like Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, Portal with RTX, and Atomic Heart.
DLSS 3.0 is expected to be just as popular as DLSS 2.0, which can already be found in over 200 games.
DLSS 3.0 Support
- A Plague Tale: Requiem
- Atomic Heart
- Black Myth: Wukong
- Bright Memory: Infinite
- Chernobylite
- Conqueror’s Blade
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Dakar Rally
- Deliver Us Mars
- Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed
- Dying Light 2 Stay Human
- F1 22
- F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch
- Frostbite Engine
- HITMAN 3
- Hogwarts Legacy
- ICARUS
- Jurassic World Evolution 2
- Justice
- Loopmancer
- Marauders
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Midnight Ghost Hunt
- Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
- Naraka: Bladepoint
- NVIDIA Omniverse
- NVIDIA Racer RTX
- PERISH
- Portal with RTX
- Ripout
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Scathe
- Sword and Fairy 7
- SYNCED
- The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- THRONE AND LIBERTY
- Tower of Fantasy
- Unity
- Unreal Engine 4 & 5
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
Nvidia's DLSS 3.0 technology will become available in games alongside the company's RTX 40 series of products. Sadly, the feature will not be supported by RTX 30 series or RTX 20 series graphics cards.
You can join the discussion on DLSS 3.0 on the OC3D Forums .