Ada Lovelace: Nvidia DLSS 3 is said to offer up to 4x more FPS than the original

Nvidia introduced the next generation GeForce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards with 12 and 16 GB of VRAM based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture. Not surprisingly, the company’s DLSS shorthand technology has also taken it a step further. Above all, DLSS 3 should provide more FPS than DLSS 2. But RTX 40 is mandatory.

DLSS 3 vs DLSS 2

DLSS 3 is based on DLSS 2. The approach looks identical at first: with the help of so-called motion vectors, the motions of pixels in several previous frames are determined, and then this information is used for the current frame. This makes it possible using DLSS 2 or other temporal resampling methods to correctly display objects that are not actually being rendered correctly – because the information required for this is not available in the current frames, but in the aggregated previous frames.

Better combination of DLSS 1 and DLSS 2

But DLSS 3 goes further and, with the help of a neural network, creates several future frames (multi-frame optical generation) using the previously collected information temporarily, thus representing something like a mixture of DLSS 1 and DLSS 2. – called “DLSS Frame Generation Convolutional Autoencoder Creates additional frames by analyzing four previous frames (the current frame plus three previous frames) and game data such as geometry and motion vectors. There is also an “Optical Stream Accelerator” analysis that captures the movement of other pixels between different frames that are not included in the motion vectors. The process used by DLSS allows reconstructing up to seven-eighths of the displayed pixels, which significantly reduces performance costs.

Requires DLSS 3 RTX 4000

According to Nvidia, the neural network should make significant use of new 4th generation tensor cores on Ada Lovelace – and also require new tensor cores. This means that DLSS 3 will only be available on GeForce RTX 4000 graphics cards.

Additionally, DLSS 3 also integrates Reflex to reduce game input lag. Nvidia talks about up to half the latency.

Up to 4 x performance in GPU and 2 x in CPU limit

In an early version of Cyberpunk 2077, DLSS 3 is said to increase frame rate by a factor of 4 compared to the original rendering while at the same time halving input lag. Without more details like display resolution, the specs are impressive, but ultimately not very meaningful. In addition, it is unclear how the image quality will turn out. Although there is a video with DLSS 3 in Cyberpunk 2077, it is too short and YouTube compression is unhelpful for an initial analysis.

Since DLSS frame generation acts just as a post-processing effect on the GPU, DLSS 3 can also increase the frame rate in completely CPU-limited scenarios. Of course, DLSS 3 can no longer work with the new data from the CPU, but it can certainly generate new frames based on the old data and thus increase the frame rate – even if the input lag does not improve in this case despite the higher frame rate. In a pre-release version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, DLSS 3 is said to run twice as fast as the original resolution in a CPU-limited scenario. But here, too, another detail is missing so that we can evaluate the result.

35 matches announced, and things will start in October

Nvidia has announced DLSS 3 for over 35 games and apps. Aside from the already mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 and Microsoft Flight Simulator, Plague Tale Requiem, Dying Light 2, F1 22, Hitman 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Stalker 2, and The Witcher 3 will be present, among others. In addition, DLSS 3 is integrated into the Unreal and Unity engines. DLSS 3 will be integrated into the first game later in October.