You possibly can’t have learn these pages just lately with out recognizing some point out of DLSS, Nvidia’s upscaling tech that at the beginning created new pixels for greater resolutions in video games and may now create entire new frames to enhance body fee too. Upscaling has been introduced up in nearly each overview of the very best graphics playing cards—Nvidia or not—however whereas AMD’s FidelityFX Tremendous Decision can run on a variety of playing cards, DLSS is unique to Nvidia.
The totally different variations of DLSS could be a bit complicated, nevertheless. Nvidia has chosen a easy sufficient naming scheme—1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5—however realizing which variations each your GPU and the sport you are making an attempt to run on could be a little bit of an arcane artwork. It is fairly easy within the sport settings display screen to only change it on, however you are not capable of change which model you are utilizing.
Enter DLSS Swapper, a freeware device from finely bearded Australian programmer Brad Moore. This app, which may be both put in in your PC or run as a transportable app, lets you improve or downgrade the DLSS .dll file a sport can name upon with a purpose to enhance picture high quality or efficiency.
DLSS works by permitting the graphics pipeline inside your GPU to do much less work for a greater end result, internally operating at a decrease decision however outputting at a better one to enhance efficiency over and above what can be doable if it was simply rendering natively. Most variants of it make use of the Tensor cores on Nvidia’s ray tracing GPUs and so runs solely on RTX 20-series playing cards or later. Although one particular model, often known as ‘1.9’ strikes the workload purely to the CUDA cores, however that was included with Treatment’s 2019 sport Management and little or no else.
DLSS swapper lets you change between variations of DLSS, however to not add DLSS to video games that do not help it. There is no assure that doing it will enhance both picture high quality or efficiency, or certainly even work, however that is the enjoyment of PC gaming.
The way to use DLSS Swapper
What’s the distinction?
DLSS 1.0 (2019): A picture-upscaling algorithm that wanted to be skilled for every sport it operated on, therefore sparse utilization. Predominantly seen in Battlefield V and Metro Exodus.
DLSS 1.9 (2019): The unofficial identify of a particular model of DLSS 1.0 for Management that used a GPU’s CUDA cores as an alternative of its Tensor cores.
DLSS 2.0 (2020): Temporal anti-aliasing upsampling again on the Tensor cores. Will be utilized extra usually to video games, and makes use of a neural community to search out and take away artefacts created by the upscaling course of.
DLSS 3.0 (2022): With options which might be unique to RTX 40-series GPUs for now, as they depend on an improved Optical Move Accelerator earlier architectures haven’t got, it provides body technology to DLSS 2.0, taking two frames from the pipeline and creating a 3rd one midway in-between.
DLSS 3.5 (2023): Brings the Ray Reconstruction Dave has been salivating over, its AI mannequin skilled on 5 occasions as a lot information as DLSS 3.0.
Set up DLSS Swapper from GitHub—it was on v1.0.3.1 on the time of writing—and comes as each an installer or transportable .zip file. You may as well obtain the supply code in the event you fancy having a very good previous rummage round, however that is PC Gamer and never Coding Weekly.
Operating the app triggered two warnings. The primary was from Home windows Defender, proudly saying that it had prevented an unknown app from operating, click on Extra Information and Run Anyway to run this system. The following comes from DLSS Swapper itself, noting that altering DLSS variations in multiplayer on-line video games may set off automated anti-cheating measures, regardless of not being dishonest itself.
You might have been warned.
You may have to obtain the .dll information you need to use earlier than you may patch them right into a sport. Go to the Library part of the app and you will find an inventory of each accessible model. Click on the obtain icon, and it’ll do what you’d count on it to.
From there, it is a easy strategy of discovering the sport you are fascinated by modifying—DLSS Swapper detects put in video games and shows them in a grid much like that seen within the GeForce Expertise app—checking which model of DLSS they’re at present utilizing, which is helpfully displayed on the thumbnail picture, then selecting a brand new model from an inventory.
For those who select a model you have not downloaded, you will get a message telling you to go to the Library and make it accessible.
How totally different DLSS information have an effect on body fee
To check it out, I put in Cyberpunk 2077 (with patch 2.0) on a laptop computer with an RTX 4050 GPU, and hooked it as much as a 4K display screen.
So whereas there’s little change within the body fee between the default DLSS 3.1 and newer DLSS 3.5 when not utilizing ray-tracing, it pulls an additional 51 fps out of the hat when you flip it on, a formidable efficiency achieve. Which suggests we are able to attempt a better decision…
That is so near the magic 60 fps, utilizing extremely settings, with ray-tracing on, in 1440p, from Nvidia’s lowest-tier RTX 40-series card, in a laptop computer. Not dangerous. The body fee could be very unstable, nevertheless, by no means staying the identical for lengthy, and display screen tearing is current.
On this situation altering to DLSS 3.5 would not change a lot, making issues worse with ray tracing switched on, however the body fee appears far more steady this time round, with much less tearing too.
Then on a distinct GPU:
A drop in body fee, which you’d count on from the extra intensive ray tracing occurring, however the quantity of noise generated right here was phenomenal. There have been enormous flickering patches of it on moist sidewalks the place a slight reflection may be anticipated, however not in puddles the place ray-traced reflections can be seen. There was additionally a glowing layer of it over darkish scenes in a bar.
I additionally managed to bump into a situation the place swapping DLLs made issues noticeably worse, going from playable to not. Metro Exodus was one of many early showcases for DLSS, however the base sport hasn’t been up to date past model 1. Utilizing DLSS Swapper to patch within the DLL for DLSS 2.5 knocked 12fps off the common body fee for the benchmark sequence, whereas shifting as much as DLSS 3.5 solely added 1.5 frames again. This sport, it appears, a lot prefers its tailor-made model of the tech.
So whereas having the ability to change the model of DLSS you are utilizing is feasible, and may enhance the pace and stability of your body charges, it is not an instantaneous treatment for all ills, and you may have to experiment with what seems to be and performs greatest.