Early DLSS 4 test showcases cleaner images and multiplied framerates

Through the Looking Glass: Users are eagerly waiting to see if real-world performance tests back up the big promises Nvidia made when it unveiled its latest AI-powered game rendering technology at CES. While those reviews are likely weeks away, Digital Foundry has provided an early third-party trial showing how DLSS 4 fixes upscaling glitches and adds new AI-generated frames.

Eurogamer has released a preview demo of Nvidia’s recently announced DLSS 4 and multi-frame rendering feature. The results indicate significant improvements over what is currently available on RTX graphics cards, but the full extent of the associated costs remains unclear.

Multi-frame rendering, exclusive to the upcoming RTX 50 series GPUs generate extra frames to multiply the effect of frame generation technology introduced by Nvidia in the 40 series. By inserting two or three extra frames, multi-frame rendering can triple or quadruple the perceived frame rate of a game.

However, frame generation increases input lag, and users are concerned that multi-frame rendering may make the problem worse. Digital Foundry’s test shows that while added frames are not free, they cost less than the initial application of frame generation.

IN TechSpot test from 2022The introduction of frame generation in Cyberpunk 2077 in DLSS performance mode added about 10 milliseconds of latency. However, the accompanying 60 percent increase in frame rate easily outweighed the lag.

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Digital Foundry ran an updated build of the game with similar DLSS settings on an engineering sample of the upcoming GeForce RTX 5080 and received a lower penalty for multi-frame rendering. On top of the previous added latency, the second AI-generated frame added about four milliseconds, and the third frame added about two—the cost of a 71 percent frame rate increase.

While Eurogamer didn’t discuss how good these “fake” frames looked, multi-frame generation appears to offer better conditions than currently available frame generation technology. Meanwhile, other changes in DLSS 4 promise significantly better image quality.

The move from a convolutional neural network to an image converter will likely provide the biggest improvement in DLSS super-resolution since Nvidia introduced DLSS 2 in 2020. Flaws like blur, ghosting and flickering are now much less obvious. Ray reconstruction is also noticeably improved.

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The Image Transformer is probably the most important feature of DLSS 4 as it supports all RTX graphics cards. In addition, the Nvidia app will allow users to update older games without waiting for patches from developers.

What’s not clear is the cost of performance. Future tests should carefully test which RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs can support DLSS 4. Additionally, the impact of multi-frame rendering on VRAM remains undisclosed. The RTX 5070’s ability to implement the new feature with just 12GB of memory will determine whether it lives up to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s claims that it can match the flagship 4090.