First look: Nvidia DLSS 3 - AI upscaling enters a new dimension

Two key PC technologies started to emerge towards the end of 2018 – hardware-accelerated ray tracing and machine learning based super-sampling. Forming the basis of Nvidia’s brand change from GTX to RTX, the technologies have continued to be refined across the years. With the arrival of the new RTX 4000 graphics line, we have a new innovation in performance-boosting technology. DLSS 3 adds AI frame generation to its existing DLSS 2-based spatial upscaling. We’ve been putting the technology through its paces for the last ten days and we’re impressed by the results.

Nvidia supplied us with a GeForce RTX 4090 ahead of time, along with incomplete preview builds of three DLSS 3-enabled titles: the path-traced Portal RTX, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Cyberpunk 2077. The latter shouldn’t be confused with the new RT Overdrive version and has more in common with the existing retail version, just with DLSS 3 added. Even running maxed, RTX 4090 and DLSS 3 allows these games to run nigh-on flawlessly on a 4K 120Hz screen. Nvidia is talking about DLSS 3 as an enabler for next generation experiences, showing its highly impressive Racer RTX, Portal RTX and the Overdrive RT version of Cyberpunk – which, believe it or not, is effectively a path-traced rendition of the game. Marvel’s Spider-Man? Nvidia has shown a promotion video with RTX 4090 running the game at 200fps. Unfortunately, we are not able to show our own frame-rate numbers in this content – only performance multipliers.

At the nuts and bolts level, DLSS 3 is actually a suite of three different technologies Nvidia has spent years developing. It starts with the existing, highly successful DLSS 2 – currently our top pick for image-reconstruction based upscaling (though Intel XeSS and AMD FSR 2.x are getting closer). This is joined by DLSS frame generation. Essentially, the GPU renders two frames and then inserts a new frame between the two, generated via a mixture of game data such as motion vectors along with optical flow analysis, delivered by a revised fixed function block in the new Ada Lovelace architecture – which Nvidia says is three times faster than the last-gen Ampere.