NVIDIA has been fiddling with machine learning and deep learning for a while now. And the result was the first iteration of DLSS 1.0, the world’s best TAA implementation. TAA basically makes everything move smoothly. Combined with DLSS 2.0 from NVIDIA, this makes the implementation a big leap in AI rendering. NVIDIA DLSS was one of the major parts of NVIDIA’s Turing architecture when it was announced way back in August 2018. This new implementation looks way better than it did in the past to the point where no one should avoid using this version of DLSS 2.0 even if you have the hardware to render your games at full resolution. The new tech provides a huge performance boost, from 20% to 120% in some cases. NVIDIA released the updated version of DLSS with the latest Geforce update.

Whats is DLSS?

DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling. It is an AI technique used by the Tensor cores present in RTX cards. With this, the image is rendered at a lower than native resolution and then upscaled. The idea here is that by rendering the lower res image you gain more performance while upscaling it to preserve all the details. The first version of DLSS wasn’t what anyone would call a big success. The results were a mixed bag. Sure you’d get a boost in framerate, but it would be offset by a blurry image that wasn’t as sharp as the native resolution of your monitor.

Credit: Nvidia

DLSS2.0 aims to correct that. NVIDIA has not updated its neural network to be much faster and efficient with the goal of producing much sharper and clearer images than before. NVIDIA claims that with DLSS 2.0 the upscaled image quality is even better than native resolution. DLSS 2.0 utilizes the power of Nvidia’s Tensor cores to intelligently upscale games to a higher resolution using AI and machine learning. This means that your graphics card will be able to output at e.g 4K while working to render at 1440p. This means that 4K gaming is way more affordable than it was before. You won’t need something like an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for 4k gaming.

Benchmarks

Here are some benchmarks showing the performance increase with NVIDIA DLSS 2.0.

Control was one of 2019’s best single-player games

Deliver Us The Moon to increase in performance

Effect on Games

Before DLSS 2.0, there weren’t many games that could leverage this awesome feature. You see, Nvidia’s supercomputers had to undergo specific training for each game that implemented DLSS. It meant that it was labor and data-intensive to get each game ready. Now that’s not the case anymore. Nvidia has been able to condense everything down into one DLSS network which means Nvidia doesn’t need to do per-game training anymore. Instead, there’s a generalized algorithm that will allow any developer to implement the tech into their games.

Conclusion

We assume that the fact that it is more easily implemented will mean that it will appear in more games in the future. With the PS5 and Xbox Series X specs looking like they’ll really push for 4K gaming in the mainstream this time. NVIDIA has also released RTX Super GPUs for laptops and it will be interesting to see DLSS 2.0 on laptops. The higher end RTX 2080s and the 2070s won’t have to worry about performance versus the upcoming consoles. The mid-range GPUs, however, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 are going to need all the help they can get to keep up.