Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, rather than ray tracing, is the true revolution in gaming. DLSS utilizes Tensor cores, which are powered by artificial intelligence, to render gaming footage at a lower resolution and upscale it to a higher one. This means that older or weaker graphics cards can keep up with the demands of modern gaming, resulting in higher frame rates at bigger resolutions.
DLSS-enabled pictures are typically natively 1080p or Full HD, and 4K is usually upscaled from 1440p. While non-native, the resulting picture quality is often negligible compared to the native one. This means that any upcoming games should work well on any RTX card from 2018’s 20-series or newer, depending on the desired resolution and the VRAM of the GPU.
The Xbox Series X and PS5, which utilize custom AMD RDNA 2 microarchitecture, do not have access to Nvidia’s DLSS technology. While the Xbox Series X now supports AMD‘s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR) upscaling, the level of support remains limited. DLSS 3, which is exclusive to the newest graphics cards, uses fourth generation Tensor cores to create entire images instead of filling in blanks as in prior versions. This allows for a serious frame rate boost.
DLSS 3 performs exceptionally well, as evidenced by internal and external benchmarks. It delivers consistent high-performance footage to playable frame rates without the hefty price tags of top-tier video cards. DLSS technology shows that AI upscaling is the future of gaming, as 30fps on the Xbox Series X and PS5 will no longer be sufficient. In the future, advancements in integration of upscaling technology into consoles will be necessary to keep up with the rapidly advancing capabilities of gaming PCs.
