_Happy boy Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is a rendering technology that uses AI-assisted upscaling techniques to boost fps with minimal impact to visual quality. It works by rendering frames at a lower resolution which reduces the stress placed on your GPU, before reconstructing the final image to your chosen output resolution. You’ll need one of best graphics cards from the GeForce RTX lineup in order to use Nvidia DLSS, as it requires team green’s Tensor Cores in order to for it to work. This is one of the key differences between DLSS and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and other methods of hardware-agnostic anti-aliasing. While Nvidia DLSS was originally created to make ray tracing more accessible by reducing the performance hit that comes with it, the technology has since taken on a more encompassing identity. It can help transform lower-spec gaming PCs into deceptively powerful machines, allowing you to more easily enjoy the best PC games at high refresh rates. As of March 25 2022, the latest version of Nvidia DLSS is 2.4.0. WHAT IS THE BEST DLSS MODE? Currently, there are four DLSS modes to choose from: Quality, Balanced, Performance, and Ultra Performance. These mostly do what they say on the tin, either prioritising detail or putting greater emphasis on the frame rate. Looking at them from a technical standpoint, they refer to the relationship between the rendered image and the upscaled version: NVIDIA DLSS QUALITY MODE Provides a small fps boost and has the least impact on image quality. With the render resolution of this preset being closer to the native resolution than other DLSS modes, it’s the most demanding of the bunch and offers the smallest performance improvement, but has the least impact on the overall quality. This is recommended if you’re running the best gaming PC but want to squeeze more frames without sacrificing your game’s detail, particularly if you’re using the best gaming monitor with a 4K resolution. This is also a good mode to try if other presets noticeably blur your game, as it’s sharper than the rest. NVIDIA DLSS BALANCED MODE Has a respectable fps boost with a slight impact on quality. You can think of Balanced as the average or ‘normal’ setting that acts as the middle-ground. It’s not quite as demanding as Quality, but it also doesn’t make the same visual sacrifices as Performance. By its very nature, Balanced suits almost everyone, sticking as close to your chosen frame rate as possible. 4K users will benefit the most, though, as DLSS generally works better with more pixels involved. NVIDIA DLSS PERFORMANCE MODE Offers the biggest fps boost, but carries more chance of blurring. Nvidia often uses its Performance setting when showcasing just how many frames a DLSS-enabled game can push. It has a wider super sampling range to cover than Balanced or Quality, which offers a higher frame rate but sometimes comes with a hit to its visuals, including a loss in fidelity. Performance mode is best for 1440p gamers, but it also comes in handy if you’re using a slower, aging system and want to get the most out of it. NVIDIA DLSS ULTRA PERFORMANCE MODE Gives the biggest frame rate jump, if you don’t mind blurry visuals. Joining the roster a little later than the other options, this mode offers the lowest resolution rendering image compared to the chosen native resolution. As a result, you get the biggest leap in frame rate but this often comes with a noticeable hit to the visual quality. This setting is geared more towards 8K users – not that many configurations can push such a high pixel count – but it also suits those wanting more frames at 4K by rendering at 720p instead of 1080p. HOW GOOD IS DLSS PERFORMANCE? DLSS performance varies depending on hardware configurations, the game you’re playing, and whether or not you’re running ray tracing, making it difficult to put a number on exactly what you can expect. It’s also something that will get better over time through machine learning as the neural network improves, meaning we’ll likely see these margins increase. Let’s take a look at some of Nvidia’s internal numbers to get an idea of what to expect (take these with a pinch of salt): DOOM DLSS makes ray tracing significantly more accessible, even when playing Doom Eternal at 4K resolution using max settings. Nvidia says DLSS accelerates frame rate by up to 60%, with nearly all RTX graphics cards reaching above 60fps. RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 Open world games are often a little more demanding than others, but Nvidia says any RTX graphics card can run Red Dead Redemption 2 at Full HD, above 60fps, on max settings with DLSS. It even lowers the barrier to entry at 4K resolution, boosting performance by up to 45%. Better yet, this extends to Red Dead Online, too. RAINBOW SIX SIEGE DLSS is particularly handy in competitive shooters, where each and every frame can mean the difference between a win and a loss. Quality mode is probably better if you’re running Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p or 1440p, but DLSS Performance mode lets you run 4K resolution without lowering your frame rate. You’ll see up to a 50% fps boost when running the game in UHD at max settings, and it even pushes the RTX 2060 into triple digits. LEGO BUILDER’S JOURNEY Some would consider Lego Builder’s Journey nearly unplayable at 4K resolution using max settings, as even the best graphics cards fail to achieve more than 20fps – unless you use DLSS. 60fps is still unachievable with these settings, but a potential 163% increase in frame rate gets close enough on the RTX 3080 Ti, while other GPUs firmly sit above 30fps. Those of you that prioritise frame rate will want to crank things down to 1080p with DLSS Quality on instead. CALL OF DUTY: WARZONE Frames matter in a game like Call of Duty: Warzone, and certainly delivers a performance hike. If you’re not willing to settle for 1080p, the green team’s AI tech can provide an FPS boost of up to 60%. Of course, if you’re playing with competitive settings, you could squeeze even more out of your gaming PC. That said, many gamers are still rocking older graphics cards thanks to shortages, which means DLSS could help your rig keep up while it waits for an RTX 3000 series upgrade. Remember, these are Nvidia’s internal figures and you should take them with a pinch of salt. It goes to show how DLSS can also compensate for questionable optimisation, however, as well as facilitate a smoother experience on polished games. HOW DOES DLSS WORK? You may have heard the term ‘upscaling’ before, which goes some way towards visualising DLSS’s magic in action, but it’s a tad more complicated. It all starts with the NGX supercomputer, where Nvidia trains its AI using machine learning. It feeds the neural network thousands of images, allowing the AI to compare ultra high-resolution stills, which are presumably 64x super sampling anti-aliased versions, with lower resolution source images that haven’t been tampered with. This allows it to reference the quality of the source image and chart a path to rebuild it into the larger version using inference. DLSS will vary from game to game – and even GPU to GPU – but Nvidia claims it “avoids the issues associated with TAA, such as screen-wide blurring, motion-based blur, ghosting and artefacts on transparencies.” This is partly thanks to its own temporal feedback techniques, which use motion vectors to calculate the movement of on-screen objects in advance, keeping DLSS one step ahead. The first generation of DLSS required the AI to train for each and every game. DLSS 2.3, however, uses a general approach that allows the feature to learn over and apply AI enhancements automatically to all compatible games through Game Ready drivers. From there, RTX graphics cards use their Tensor Cores to push the improvements in real-time. WHAT GRAPHICS CARDS SUPPORT DLSS? Nvidia’s RTX 2000 and 3000 series of graphics cards are kitted out with Tensor Cores that enable DLSS, so it’s as easy as looking for the ‘RTX’ prefix to know whether your GPU will work with the feature. Unfortunately, DLSS isn’t available on AMD graphics cards because of this hardware requirement, but don’t despair if you’re rocking a Radeon GPU, as AMD’s FSR seems like a great open-source alternative. GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce RTX 2060 Super GeForce RTX 2060 12GB GeForce RTX 2070 GeForce RTX 2070 Super GeForce RTX 2080 GeForce RTX 2080 Super GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Nvidia Titan RTX GeForce RTX 3060 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3080 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 Not all of Nvidia’s graphics cards provide the same performance increases, however, with the RTX 3000 series often outperforming RTX 2000 designated GPUs. This is because the newer graphics cards house second-generation Tensor Cores, offering greater per-core performance. WHAT GAMES SUPPORT DLSS? It’s up to developers to implement DLSS, meaning not all games support it, but Nvidia has made a concerted effort to make the process as straightforward as possible. Currently, there are three ways for developers to introduce DLSS into their games, including natively from within Unity, downloading the Unreal Engine plugin, or grabbing the newly available SDK. Support for DLSS is growing all the time, with new games getting the feature every month – a number we expect to grow exponentially with how accessible it now is. With 28 indie games joining the fray in September, 2021, Nvidia DLSS now appears in over 100 games. Here’s a breakdown of the biggest ones you can upscale: Alan Wake Remastered AMID EVIL Anatomy Of Fear Anthem Apocalypse: 2.0 Edition Aron’s Adventure Assetto Corsa Competizione AWAY: The Survival Series Back 4 Blood Baldur’s Gate 3 Battlefield 2042 Battlefield V Beyond Enemy Lines 2 BIOHAZARD VILLAGE Z Version Bodies of Water VR (Beta) Bright Memory Bright Memory: Infinite Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Call of Duty: Vanguard Call of Duty: Warzone Chernobylite Chivalry 2 Chorus ChronoTecture: The Eprologue Cions of Vega Control CRSED F.O.A.D Crysis Remastered Crysis 2 Remastered Crysis 3 Remastered Cyberpunk 2077 Deathloop Death Realm Death Stranding DeepStates (VR) Deliver Us The Moon Diablo II: Resurrected DiRT 5 DOOM Eternal Edge of Eternity Enlisted Escape From Naraka Everspace 2 Exit From F1 2020 F1 2021 F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch Fall Balance Ball Far Cry 6 Faraday Protocol Farming Simulator 22 Final Fantasy XV Fortnite Forza Horizon 5 Frozenheim Ghostrunner Godfall Grand Theft Auto III – The Definitive Edition Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Definitive Edition Gu Jian Qi Tan Online Helios Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Höll Space 5D6 Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition Hot Wheels Unleashed ICARUS INDUSTRIA Into the Radius VR Iron Conflict Jurassic World Evolution 2 Justice JX3 Online RTX version Last Hope on Earth LEGO Builder’s Journey Life Is Strange: True Colors Loverowind Marvel’s Avengers Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition Minecraft with RTX Monster Hunter World Moonlight Blade Mortal Online 2 Mortal Shell Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Myst Myth of Empires NARAKA: BLADEPOINT Necromunda: Hired Gun Nine To Five Nioh 2 The Complete Edition No Man’s Sky Observer: System Redux Outriders Poker Club Powerslide Legends Pumpkin Jack Qu Gian Qi Tan Online Quake II RTX RAZE 2070 Ready or Not Recall Red Dead Redemption 2 Redout: Space Assault REFICUL 666 Resident Evil Village Ring of Elysium Rise of the Tomb Raider Rune II Rust Scavengers Severed Steel Shadow of the Tomb Raider Soul Dossier Stay in the Light Supraland Swords of Legends Online Sword and Fairy 7 System Shock Demo The Ascent The Elder Scrolls Online The Fabled Woods The Medium The Orville Interactive Fan Experience The Persistence The Riftbreaker The Riftbreaker: Prologue To Hell With It Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Twin Stones: The Journey of Bukka Uncrashed : FPV Drone Simulator Unknown Woods Wakamarina Valley, New Zealand War Thunder Watch Dogs: Legion Wolfenstein: Youngblood World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Wrench Xuan-Yuan Sword VII Yag With Nvidia’s investment into ARM and rumours swirling about the Nintendo Switch Pro featuring a new SoC, we might eventually see DLSS appear outside of gaming PCs. For now, though, Nintendo is sticking with the current Tegra in the Switch OLED, meaning it’s only accessible on PCs rocking an RTX graphics card. NVIDIA DLSS VS AMD FSR: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? While Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD FSR help strike a balance between performance and resolution, both tools are fundamentally different from each other. The green team’s GPU tech relies on a neural network, supercomputer processing, and artificial intelligence, while FidelityFX uses algorithms to achieve similar results. DLSS also needs RTX GPUs with Tensor cores to work, while AMD’s FSR is compatible with a variety of graphics options. While this also limits DLSS compatibility to a specific list of games, Nvidia has a six-tap spatial upscaling alternative to FSR that’s works with any game, and it can be enabled within GeForce Experience. https://www.pcgamesn.com/nvidia/dlss-graphics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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