DLSS: understand all about the Nvidia technology revolutionizing video games

Video games are an art form inherently connected to technology, and new terms are regularly added to the lexicon of the medium. Ray tracing, water cooling and other cel shading are an area where video games have no shortage of English and abbreviations, often at risk of losing fans. But in recent years, a new entry into the video game lexicon has gained a lot of attention: upgrade.

Originally limited to television in the early 2000s, upscaling has slowly made its way to the video game industry as well, aided largely by advances in artificial intelligence. If more than one solution exists, the most advanced one to date DLSSIt was developed by Nvidia. As it becomes increasingly adopted by developers and console manufacturers, it’s time to take a closer look at what DLSS is and why you should pay attention to it from now on.

????What is DLSS?

stands for DLSS Deep Learning Super Sampling. This technology, created by graphics card manufacturer Nvidia, first appeared in the GeForce RTX 20XX in 2018. Since then, DLSS has gone through various evolutions until it reached its current form. DLSS3.5This pushes the boundaries of video game performance even further. Now facing many competitors like FSR on AMD and XeSS on Intel, DLSS is undoubtedly the best upgrade solution with benchmarks currently supporting it.

For this base. So, in concrete terms, what does this technology hide with this archaic name? DLSS is a solution for thisupgrade. In other words, it has the ability to increase the definition of an image without degrading its quality. Essentially, an image can switch from 1080p to 4K without getting your hands dirty and risking damaging your machine.

As the name suggests, DLSS is a based upscaling technology. artificial intelligence. There are actually 4 upgrade techniques:

• base upgradeConsisting of multiplying the pixels on the screen until the desired definition is achieved (at the risk of obtaining a blurry image)
• Scaling by interpolation“predicts” which pixels to include based on the pixels next to them
• Super resolution upgradewhich analyzes multiple images of the same shot to determine which pixels to add
• Scale with AItherefore it has the capacity to create an entire image from advanced algorithms

????What is DLSS used for?

So we get to the heart of DLSS’s interest: performance gain. As mentioned above, AI scaling not only adds pixels to an image, increasing its definition, but also produces entirely new images to be added in post-processing. In other words, the player finds himself with a much smoother game because The number of FPS (frames per second) has been increased. This is what is greatly improved in DLSS 3.0, allowing the performance of compatible games to be doubled.

In simpler terms, DLSS allows a computer equipped with a graphics card and an outdated processor to display the game at 4K/60 FPS. Therefore, DLSS is a gift from heaven for gamers who cannot afford to regularly update their setups to take advantage of the latest components, the prices of which have literally exploded in recent years. In other words, DLSS allows you to enjoy the game in the best possible conditionsIn accordance with current standards, without the need for the latest graphics card.

This makes sense: since the GPU only needs to render an image at a lower resolution, say 1080p, and DLSS does the rest to render it in 4K, much less effort is required for the PC, which has some breathing room. . The icing on the cake: Since DLSS is based on a deep learning algorithm, it constantly learns and trains. This ensures that it improves with each use..

Finally, it should be noted that DLSS has many more advantages. For example, it can: fix visual imperfections in an imagefeatures like artifacts and even random textures, as well as allowing players to enable certain advanced graphics options. ray tracing or greater depth of field.

????Where can we find DLSS?

Since DLSS is a proprietary technology from Nvidia, you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s only available on graphics cards. GeForce RTX – at least on PC, but we’ll get back to that. If you have an AMD or Intel graphics card, you will have to make do with their respective solutions. Currently only the latest generation GPUs support DLSS 3.0, namely the RTX 40XX. Here is the full list:

• RTX 4060
• RTX 4060 Ti
• RTX4070
• RTX 4070 Ti
• RTX 4080
• RTX 4090

On consoles, things are a bit complicated. But some portable consoles like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally can benefit greatly from this. Yes, but: Currently, AMD largely dominates the console market with the PS5 and Xbox Series X equipped with both their CPUs and GPUs. The same goes for consoles from Valve and Asus. The only exception to the rule is the Nintendo Switch and its Nvidia components.

And sure enough: according to recent rumors, Nintendo Switch 2, currently scheduled for release in 2024, may benefit from DLSSThis will allow it to achieve a display similar to that of the PS5 and Xbox Series with less powerful hardware. But be careful, these are all still at the rumor stage, so this should be taken with caution.

???? How to enable DLSS on your PC?

Contrary to what you might think, DLSS is not an option you can enable from your Nvidia graphics card driver, instead directly in the game. In fact, this means that not every game will offer you this option in its settings. So you’ll need to look at the latest games released in the last 5 years to hope to benefit from the technology. Otherwise you can always trust mods that regularly add DLSS support to older games.

As an example, here is a non-exhaustive list of games that support DLSS 3.0:

• A Plague Story: Requiem
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Dying Light 2 Stay Human
• Hitman 3
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Witcher 3

Therefore, the method to enable DLSS differs from one game to another. We can still bring out the main points. First you will need to go to: settings your game, mostly since its release. home page. Once inside, go to the private section graphics options. Here, for Cyberpunk 2077, you will just need to find and enable DLSS as shown in the image below.

In most cases, you can choose between several upgrade options: Quality, Balanced, Performance, Ultra Performance. These options allow your graphics card to determine which baseline definition will be rendered before applying DLSS upscaling. Simply put, the further you go down to Ultra Performance, the lower the definition of the base image will be. Therefore you will greatly benefit from fluidity but lose in graphics quality.. It’s up to you to determine what’s most important to maximize your gaming experience.