Nvidia unveils the new features brought by its DLSS 3.5

In 2020, Nvidia laid the first brick of a small revolution in the world of video games with its DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) delivering a significant performance boost for players. As a reminder, this technology makes it possible to run a game in a lower resolution then to calculate part of the pixels thanks to artificial intelligence to display a rendering in a higher resolution. Result: fewer heavy tasks to perform for the graphics card and a number of frames per second that climbs.

DLSS 3.5 is coming

Nvidia has since refined its copy with regular updates, better rendering quality and the arrival of Frame Generation with DLSS 3, for even more impressive performance on the RTX 40s (only, unfortunately). After DLSS 3.1 at the start of the year, the manufacturer is now moving to DLSS 3.5 with the ambition of improving the recipe.

This time, it is on the side of the lighting effects that it will be necessary to look since Nvidia introduces the Ray Reconstruction (RR), a technology of denoising (denoising) based on artificial intelligence which is supposed to work better than the usual techniques. Denoisers help to correct artifacts and noise that can appear on the screen when raytracing is enabled, but they can cause a few issues, including lower quality reflections and lighting effects, and even ghosting when there are has movement on the screen.

AI at the service of raytracing

With its ray reconstruction, Nvidia has improved the process by training its model to recognize the “good” and “bad” pixels to display, and we should no longer suffer the loss of quality due to the use of denoisers traditional. In addition, a slight performance gain is to be expected, with Nvidia announcing an 8% increase in CyberPunk 2077 for example (going from 100 fps in DLSS 3 to 108 fps in DLSS 3.5). Note that we do not know the test configuration used by Nvidia for its example, nor the resolution of the game: the results may therefore be different in 1440p or in 4K.

Really tangible results?

In addition, the manufacturer was careful not to provide image comparisons between DLSS 3 and DLSS 3.5, and we could only see the differences between with/without DLSS 3.5. In practice, if the innovation is interesting, it should not revolutionize the gaming experience and may even be almost imperceptible. Good news, however, all RTX (series 20, 30 and 40 therefore) should be able to benefit from it, and not only the RTX 40.

We just have to wait for the first titles compatible with DLSS 3.5, namely Portal RTX, Alan Wake 2 and of course, CyberPunk 2077: Phantom Libertythe game’s DLC expected for September 26, 2023.