NVIDIA DLSS vs. DSR vs. DLDSR

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 review Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Windows Cardinal

NVIDIA and AMD are creators of the all-time graphics cards on the market, and it's no longer plenty to simply ship a powerful card without a bunch of supporting features. Things similar FidelityFX Super Resolution, Radeon Super Resolution, and Infinity Cache on AMD'due south side, or DLSS, DSR, and DLDSR on NVIDIA's side are starting to sound a lot alike, and I don't blame anyone for not paying close plenty attention to keep them all separated.

I already wrote an article explaining the differences between FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) on AMD's side. And it's now time to compare NVIDIA'southward new DLDSR — announced January. xiv, 2022 — with existing DLSS and DSR technologies. Hither's what you can look if you're the proud owner of a modernistic NVIDIA GPU.

What is NVIDIA DLSS?

Senior Editor Rich Edmonds has an excellent article explaining fully both DLSS and ray tracing, and I also wrote a piece explaining how DLSS compares to NVIDIA FidelityFX Super Resolution. There's a lot of information to digest in those articles, and I suggest reading them if y'all're looking for a deeper dive.

Deep Learning Super Sampling, otherwise known every bit DLSS, is a new take on supersampling. It leverages bogus intelligence to heave frame rates while also boosting the visual fidelity of compatible games. Whereas DSR and DLDSR are downscaling techniques, DLSS is an upscaling technique.

When a game is compatible with DLSS, what you're seeing on your screen is first broken downwardly into supersampled "perfect frames" that are examined by NVIDIA'due south neural network. Information technology starts at a lower resolution and focuses on anti-aliasing, then focuses on sharpening the frame past adding extra pixels. NVIDIA's AI looks at these loftier-res perfect frames, compares them with upcoming normal frames, and repeats the process throughout.

DLSS ultimately makes your games look better while as well taking some of the load off your GPU, upping frame rates at the same time. The rub hither is that DLSS isn't available in all games, and information technology must be broiled in by the programmer. The list continues to grow, but it's still relatively pocket-sized. Yous must also have an NVIDIA RTX xx- or 30-series GPU with dedicated Tensor cores for DLSS to work.

What is NVIDIA DSR and DLDSR?

NVIDIA'southward Dynamic Super Resolution, likewise known as DSR, was introduced alongside Maxwell GPUs almost seven years agone, making it the most mature feature here. It allows for frames rendered in the GPU buffer to be a college resolution (up to four times more) than your monitor, to then be filtered down to fit the screen. The college resolution makes for a better prototype, which translates fifty-fifty when yous're filtering down.

DSR is handled at a driver level, and it's best used when your GPU has some performance overhead to play with. If your GPU is already working about as hard as information technology tin can to render frames at 1080p, making it render frames at 2K or 4K is going to cause a serious hitting to frame rates. DSR works with all mod NVIDIA GPUs, and it can even be enabled alongside DLSS. You should exist able to use DSR to some extent in most PC games, as there's not any special requirement to be baked in on the game's side (like with DLSS).

Nvidia Dldsr Source: NVIDIA

NVIDIA'southward Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution (DLDSR) is an upgrade to DSR, meant to brand the process more efficient while resulting in the same end production. The method still renders frames at a higher resolution before shrinking them downwards to fit your monitor's resolution, only it leverages NVIDIA'southward potent AI and the Tensor cores in RTX GPUs to downscale images more efficiently.

NVIDIA claims that 4x DSR (rendering the frames at a resolution four times college than your monitor supports) is nigh the same equally two.25x DLDSR, making it most twice as efficient. This is meant to accept some of the load off of the GPU. Because DLDSR relies on Tensor cores — the same ones used for DLSS — it will only be available in NVIDIA RTX xx- and 30-series GPUs. If you lot don't have an RTX card, you can still utilize standard DSR in games.

DLDSR will also piece of work alongside DLSS, upscaling images before DLDSR kicks in for a higher resolution to be downscaled again. And like DSR, DLDSR is best used past those who have a GPU with some available functioning overhead. You lot're all the same rendering frames at a higher resolution before downscaling them, and the hit to the GPU is the same.

DLDSR, which is a commuter-based feature, has been available since January. fourteen, 2022. Update your NVIDIA drivers if you'd like to test it out! And if y'all're all the same shopping around for a new carte du jour, be certain to check out our collection of the best NVIDIA GPUs and all-time graphics cards.