Nvidia DLSS 3 will provide up to four times more FPS, exclusive to RTX 40 series

Tudor Cibean

Posts: 182   +11
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In a nutshell: Nvidia's new DLSS 3 technology adds DLSS Frame Generation and Nvidia Reflex on top of the tried-and-tested DLSS Super Resolution to boost framerates even more. It will only work with RTX 40 series GPUs, with the cheapest currently starting at $899. The first games supporting it will arrive next month.

Alongside the new RTX 40 series GPUs, Nvidia also announced the third generation of its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which can deliver up to four times the performance compared to rendering at native resolution.

Nvidia introduced DLSS with its RTX 20 series cards four years ago, and it's now available in over 200 games and apps. It improves performance by allowing frames to be rendered internally at a lower resolution and upscaling them using dedicated AI accelerators inside RTX GPUs, called Tensor cores.

Nvidia improves upon this with DLSS 3 by adding Optical Multi Frame Generation to generate entirely new frames rather than just pixels, similar to motion interpolation found on TVs (although hopefully without the input lag penalty). In performance mode, DLSS 3 is reconstructing seven-eighths of the total displayed pixels. Super Resolution rebuilds three-fourths of the first frame (e.g. 1080p to 4K), with Frame Generation reconstructing the entire second frame.

Since Optical Multi Frame Generation executes as a post-process on the GPU, it can increase framerates even in CPU-limited games, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. Unfortunately, DLSS Frame Generation is powered by the new fourth-generation Tensor cores and Optical Flow Accelerator of the Nvidia Ada Lovelace architecture, meaning it only works on RTX 40 GPUs.

Lastly, DLSS 3 also integrates Nvidia Reflex technology, which synchronizes the GPU and CPU, eliminating the render queue and thus improving responsiveness and input lag.

Over 35 games and applications have announced support for the new version of DLSS, including Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman 3, and Stalker 2.

Justice, NetEase's martial arts MMO, will be the first game to receive support for DLSS 3 through an update launching on October 12. A Plague Tale: Requiem will be the first game with the new technology at launch when it comes out on October 18.

Owners of RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs will still have access to DLSS 2.0 and Nvidia Reflex in DLSS 3-enabled games.

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I see the difference in the supplied screenshots. To me, however, its just not that much of a difference, and I think it not worth spending what Nvidia will ask for the new cards. Too bad. I'm planning on doing at least one new build soon. It's their loss, IMO.
 
Still getting over buyer’s remorse on my 3080. Regret getting caught up in the hype. “Never again”. Could have enjoyed that kind of money so much more had I spent it differently or saved it.

Plus I only buy odd-numbered cards anyway. ;-)
 
Still getting over buyer’s remorse on my 3080. Regret getting caught up in the hype. “Never again”. Could have enjoyed that kind of money so much more had I spent it differently or saved it.

Plus I only buy odd-numbered cards anyway. ;-)
It is a safe strategy to buy GPUs that are a year or two late. You get far more bang for buck. I deliberately did not buy a GPU during the mining craze because I knew that eventually, supply will catch up with demand.

GPUs are STILL too expensive for me. Guess I am buying early next year after the flood of Ethereum cards have fully impacted the market.
 
I'm sure they could have included DLSS 3 in current gen cards too with some changes to use the existing cores, but they chose not to in order to force upgrades (as this software feature is actually the most impressive part of the '4 series' launch). This means there will be a tiny percentage of cards which support DLSS 3 and so developers won't bother adding it outside the most AAA titles as its too niche.

Somebody also needs to tell the greedy f**kers that the crypto boom is over and they can no longer rinse people for a graphics card. I expect these lines to sell quite poorly and get a price reduction in a few months. Don't buy them - they are not worth the money!!!

Oh and can we call the 4080 12GB by its real name - a 4070. Clearly they changed their minds on this cards naming at the last minute to try and hide the massive price hike they have done here from the 3080 and 3070. But its a 4070 but at twice the price of the previous generation.
 
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Never has the phrase "you want to play, you have to pay" been more true. $1199 for the 16GB 4080 is LOL criminal.
Thankfully with PC gaming it's usually closer to "you want to play now, you have to pay now." Personally I'm grateful for the whales who are eager to spend this much to subsidize these technologies. I'm sure* I'll enjoy them at more reasonable prices in the future.

* well not 100% sure - some of them turn out to be duds. See: 3D glasses for 3D gaming.
 

Jensen spent 7m talking about Gaming.... then the rest talking about how great the 4000 Series is for Content Creators..!

We all know nVidia is trying to shove non-gaming technology down Gamer's throats, in hopes that we subsidize their technology for enterprise.
 
I'm sure they could have included DLSS 3 in current gen cards too with some changes to use the existing cores, but they chose not to in order to force upgrades (as this software feature is actually the most impressive part of the '4 series' launch). This means there will be a tiny percentage of cards which support DLSS 3 and so developers won't bother adding it outside the most AAA titles as its too niche.


How? By asking everyone with a 3000 series GPU to mail it to them so they can swap out the tensor cores on those with the new updated tensor core hardware that includes part of the Hopper architecture?
Oh wait. They can't do that either as tensor cores are part of the die, and this process also incorporates part of their new RTX core design as well.
So, no, they couldn't just roll this out to all prior users as it's not just a software based solution, there's updated advanced hardware in play here.

Now that all said, I'm salty as fk that it's a 4000 series only feature.
That said, I'm still eyeballing one of those 4080 16gb...gonna wait and see what AMD bring to the table (and they better bring something big this year) and for third party reviews, but damn it was an impressive showing.

Edit: take it with a grain of salt given the source, but I'll just be over here gnawing on my shoe...
So, could be possible but without the advancements made in the tensor cores for Ada it wouldn't provide any performance gain, and may perform worse.

DLSS 2 will be available for Turing and Ampere GPUs by default in place of DLSS 3, so yes there is incentive for companies to continue to incorporate the new version into games.
 
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How? By asking everyone with a 3000 series GPU to mail it to them so they can swap out the tensor cores on those with the new updated tensor core hardware that includes part of the Hopper architecture?
Oh wait. They can't do that either as tensor cores are part of the die, and this process also incorporates part of their new RTX core design as well.
So, no, they couldn't just roll this out to all prior users as it's not just a software based solution, there's updated advanced hardware in play here.

Now that all said, I'm salty as fk that it's a 4000 series only feature.
That said, I'm still eyeballing one of those 4080 16gb...gonna wait and see what AMD bring to the table (and they better bring something big this year) and for third party reviews, but damn it was an impressive showing.

Edit: take it with a grain of salt given the source, but I'll just be over here gnawing on my shoe...
So, could be possible but without the advancements made in the tensor cores for Ada it wouldn't provide any performance gain, and may perform worse.

DLSS 2 will be available for Turing and Ampere GPUs by default in place of DLSS 3, so yes there is incentive for companies to continue to incorporate the new version into games.
I'm more upset that there are two versions of the 4080 with very different specs, that's just going to make buyer's confused and wonder why their performance isn't what they expected.
 
I'm more upset that there are two versions of the 4080 with very different specs, that's just going to make buyer's confused and wonder why their performance isn't what they expected.

Yeah that's a straight up b.s. move, and even more brazen than the one they pulled with the 3080 10/12GB variants.
 
Jensen spent 7m talking about Gaming.... then the rest talking about how great the 4000 Series is for Content Creators..!

We all know nVidia is trying to shove non-gaming technology down Gamer's throats, in hopes that we subsidize their technology for enterprise.
I took a shot every time that he said "Omniverse".

Needless to say, I am still drunk....
 
RTX on / RTX off.....really??

Sorry, but I don't see anything worth spending so much money on. And upgrading most of my system to achieve it!!

My 4 year old card shows the same identical resolution. Unless I use a microscope or I am a full time shill for Nvidia - I can't claim in good conscience it's better!!.
 
How? By asking everyone with a 3000 series GPU to mail it to them so they can swap out the tensor cores on those with the new updated tensor core hardware that includes part of the Hopper architecture?
Oh wait. They can't do that either as tensor cores are part of the die, and this process also incorporates part of their new RTX core design as well.

I hate smart-arse answers.
DLSS is 99.9% a software algorithm in the nVidia driver not part the hardware. It performs frame comparisons to predict frames. It's a baked-into-the-driver version of temporal upscaling which uses trained models to make better decisions. The hardware allows this process to run more quickly. All the more recent nVidia cards are capable of doing this and it could even be implemented in pure driver form (albeit probably too slowly to be much benefit), however the OCA's in the last few generations of cards can all perform the task a lot faster. No doubt nVidia have added stuff to the 4 series to do this better, but how much better we won't ever know unless they change their mind and do as I mentioned and implement it in previous generations - especially high-end 30 series cards which should be more than capable of getting significant benefits from an intelligent temporal upscaler. Clearly they don't want to do this as they want to shift stock and make money.
 
I hate smart-arse answers.
DLSS is 99.9% a software algorithm in the nVidia driver not part the hardware. It performs frame comparisons to predict frames. It's a baked-into-the-driver version of temporal upscaling which uses trained models to make better decisions. The hardware allows this process to run more quickly. All the more recent nVidia cards are capable of doing this and it could even be implemented in pure driver form (albeit probably too slowly to be much benefit), however the OCA's in the last few generations of cards can all perform the task a lot faster. No doubt nVidia have added stuff to the 4 series to do this better, but how much better we won't ever know unless they change their mind and do as I mentioned and implement it in previous generations - especially high-end 30 series cards which should be more than capable of getting significant benefits from an intelligent temporal upscaler. Clearly they don't want to do this as they want to shift stock and make money.

Currently dlss 2 uses pixel space information to upscale an image, not frame analysis which is what they're moving to with 3 (well, frame interpolation technically).
Mostly yes it was a smart *** way of saying they did include additional hardware to tensor for this, and yes it could work on 3xxx gen but according to them will not offer any gain without the special updated..what..optical flow units they're calling them.

Is it a ploy to get users to upgrade, of course. Is it a selling factor, not for me.

What has got me interested in them (or, what interested me the most during the presentation I suppose) is the improved RT functions and RTX Remix, which while I hope RTX Remix will be supported on 3xxx series am not holding out hope.
 
* well not 100% sure - some of them turn out to be duds. See: 3D glasses for 3D gaming.
IMO, that would depend on the game. I bought 3D glasses ages ago when this game came out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game) It was actually quite amazing, IMO, using the 3D glasses.

FYI - that game is the only game that allowed 6-degress of freedom of movement, and the only game that allowed you to be directly above/below another spot on the "map" of the game. It was/is truly 3D.

Unfortunately, the glasses were only capable of a maximum resolution of 320x240 at that time, so I decided to return them - since higher resolutions were already available and definitely on the horizon. I forget what I paid for them, but the price was just not worth it, IMO, due to the fact that they were basically outdated when they were released.
 
Mostly yes it was a smart *** way of saying they did include additional hardware to tensor for this, and yes it could work on 3xxx gen but according to them will not offer any gain without the special updated..what..optical flow units they're calling them.

Is it a ploy to get users to upgrade, of course. Is it a selling factor, not for me.
"Optical flow units" is definitely marketing blather if I have ever heard marketing blather. :rolleyes:
 
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