Fake Frames or Big Gains? - Nvidia DLSS 3 Analyzed

The idea that we should be playing games at resolutions and settings that mean even the energy monster that is the RTX 4090 can't render the frames natively is... ridiculous. Especially when the 4090 is not real world computing for hardly anyone. I have no interest in 4K. No interest in Ray Tracing. No interest in settings that most equipment isn't up to.

VRAM isn't called "frame buffer" for nothing, maybe enabling DLSS 3 increases VRAM usage? Which would be bad

Thanks for this review and analysis. Did you do also an analysis on DLSS 3.5?

Superb analysis.

Valeu!

ill rather go with amd than going with nvidia

how much dlss3 affect the rendering softwares like lumion? and blender

My 3060 can get 60+ fps and I'd be using a slow-mo camera to see the difference between that and 500 fps

I really wonder how many people "really saw" these "fake frames". Cause when I've tried DLLS 3 on Cyberpunk, I genuinely couldn't tell the difference and I'm pretty sure 99% or the other human beings around here didn't either. Funny how everyone starts to see something as soon as they're being told that there is something to see

If you can't spot the difference side by side, so why waste energy on these "features"?

Based on this I really dont see the point, only use if you already have higher FR? Not for multi player, maybe that is why BF servers are empty.
Its more like a show room setting, not for actual use.

the only thing i noticed where dirt on my screen..

Its silly, if we have enough raw power then we dont need it. If we have too little power, then we dont need it either. A nice solution would be not these artificial frames, but real advancement in real raw gpu performance. We allready pay a hefty price, so it would be only natural to match the performance to that.

bro is talking so long I literally fell asleep in my chair. not to be rude, just saying. need a non-35 min version of this explanation.

I think frame generation sounds like a gimmick. Adding "fake frames" to double fps on a graph but not really increasing performance. Really ? How is increasing latency, and just posting higher fps, not a gimmick ? Just know exactly what it is and what it is not, as explained greatly in this video. I also agree with some videos that say , the best idea is to not use it unless you need to use it. Just use DLSS, which is awesome. But remember, DLSS put more load on a cpu, and takes some load off the gpu. Poorly optimized games that are released too early, causes gamers to need more computer power to compensate for poor programming. But if somehow, it means games run more smoothly, then that is great.

Samsung tv can to the same thing fast faster fastest settings

The best way i can describe dlss3 is its tricking the fps counter to count double its actual frames.

dunno i feel blessed playing Cyberpunk on ultra raytracing in 4k with 80-144fps, dlss and fg are great and i don't care for small input lag, also i don't notice any artifacts unless i start looking for them

knobs and large shafts looool

It sure won't make response time better but I guess you can't ask nvidia to add time traveling in their gfx cards or do you ?

With DLSS2 already you're supposed to compose the scene separately and then render the UI and overlay elements into it. I sure hope DLSS3 has some sort of hook to be able to overlay UI onto generated frames.

With frame generation i think you have two choices to fix the garbled overlays. One is if you have retained mode or stateful UI/overlay rendering is to actually render it separately for intermediate frames, while interpolating the driving data between the two frames. This is a LOT of engineering overhead and risk of breaking the codebase and will likely almost never be done. The other is to bind the depth buffer (if needed) to render the overlay into a new premultplied-alpha surface, and then render this surface into the real frame before it gets submitted to frame generation and into the generated frame, thus limiting UI update speed to real framerate. If depth buffer isn't needed, the third option is to run the UI rendering routine completely on generated frames.

So, buying 4060 just for DLSS 3 is not worth it. It's not worth it even for DLSS 2 if you play at 1080p.

Well I dont know, if you need to go for 3% speed and 200% zoom just to spot those issues properly I think its fine lol. Still worth the performance gain.

Me watching at 240p yes it's obvious

amf sucker are prohibited to copy cat this feature

DLSS 3 is an excuse for an underwhelming performance uplift.

So basically DLSS 3 is useless with modern titles and mid-range cards like the 4060 ti and lower. Unless you are capable of running a game at 120 FPS or greater, DLSS 3 starts shitting the bed graphically. And even then, there's the added latency... which makes DLSS3 useless IMHO.

dlss 3 on high fps games is amazing. dlss 2 is garbage.

Good video, finally i do not has to argue with other guys that for simracing dlss or fsr option is total trash, blurrr fest, worse resolution, why do i need it?😂

In all honesty I prefer frame gen over dlss, dlss ive noticed sooooo much stupid ghosting. With frame gen i do not notice this ghosting. The witcher 3 with dlss when in a dark cave u see a absurd amount of ghosting, frame gen i have not see this problem

Conclusion: you need to already be at 120 fps to be able to use DLSS3 without drawbacks. But if you're not a pro gamer, you almost never need to be above 120 fps. The difference between 120 and 160 or even 200 fps is really small (to me anyway). It's really diminishing returns at this point. So DLSS3 is not all that useful.
In cyberpunk if it brings you from 80 to 120 fps and the resulting lag and artifacts are acceptable, it could be a good use case, as that is an FPS increase that makes a difference. But that's basically only with 4090s and only in a few select situations.
RT and DLSS2 made tremendous improvements from the 20 series (when they were clearly gimmicky) to the 30 series. I guess DLSS3 will really shine with the 50 series.
For Nvidia though, the battle is already won. They innovate, they bring new technologies and occupy the discussions whilst AMD is still busy trying to follow in rasterization alone (they still don't have a gpu matching the 4090 on this), thus reinforcing the large perception that Nvidia is THE GPU company and AMD is more of a market filler.

Still better than playing with half the frame rate.

In the end, what NVIDIA did was putting motion interpolation techniques present in TVs since 15 years into the rendering path of the GPU. They did apparently not solve the issues coming with these techniques, which is always when the algorithm needs to interpolate content which has been occluded / revealed between frames. Not really impressed, and far from being a "game changer" this technique has been labeled.

My problem with the "you need to be rendering with 100-120 fps range".
Assuming a perfect doubling of framerate, a less responsive, but smoother 80fps is far more ideal than a more responsive, but chugging 40, no? I can understand why having a higher framerate is ideal but in the situation when I'd be playing at 50fps or 100 it's a no brainer despite the latency hit.

Looking at the graphs seems the ideal thing to do is enable DLSS Quality then DLFG.
In Cyberpunk 2077 it'd be a 267% framerate increase with a negligible latency difference.
In Flight Simulator it's a 210% framerate increase with 19% latency increase.
In F1 22 it's a 222% framerate increase with a 15% decrease in latency.
Looks to me like DLXX is allowing for users to hit over a doubling of framerate at similar latency to native.

TLDR: I heavily disagree with this video's conclusion and I wish this was recommended.

great video!

I honestly care 50.000.000.000 times more about features like Nvidia Broadcast then DlSs 3

I'm seeing this 'feature' trick a lot of people who don't understand much beyond FPS numbers. Now with the launch of the 4060ti being no better than the 3060ti without frame generation it's become even more obvious how much Nvidia is leaning on this feature. My favorite thing to say is 'why not just enable your TV's motion smoothing instead' since they're functionally not that different.

So,if i play at 1440p,will dlss 3 turn my 1440p into 4k?or am i wrong?

tbh i dont really like dlss in games just ruins the fidelity and gives a false sence of peace with frame rate now i know xbox and palystation are doing it but there consoles

yeah yeah.. anybody not ponying up for the latest and greatest gpu are screwd..
never mind you just spent 1300 on a 3090 6mths ago..
The fact nvidia i trolling their own product is startin to piss me off..
Every time they develop a new gpu their major sellingpoint is how lousy the one you just spent major bucks on is now obsolete..
Menber when they called the 480 a power hogg.. Right..
now ge got a 2000$ 600w tdp gpu in a time when electricity is at its highest..
not to mention wht is with the stupid new squid connector that aparently fries everything..
Why not just use the required 3 eight pin connectors in the card directly like the good ol days and avoid any crap..

I own a 4090 Strix OC, and i had no idea until you talked about it. I play Cyberpunk 2077 at overdrive rtx 4k, and it looks amazing. Then you ruined my fantasy by showing this XDD

I think people are being overly critical of this revolutionary technology. This is a huge step forward to help improve our gaming experience. We must not forget this is the first time a company has tried to do this. I think fg will be better in next generations to come.

thx <3

Thank you for the in-depth review. I own RTX 4070 and so far i am very happy with it. I have to say that DLSS3 looks and feels like smoothing gradation on LG Smart TVs. Somehow my OLED LG TV is doing a batter job at it than RTX 40 series. I get the double the frame-rate with almost no artifacts at the expense of latency of course.

Looking at the numbers only, is the entire comments section on drugs?

Quality + Frame gen is often lower lag than native - at most 12ms (<1fr@60) higher;
and is <16ms (<1fr@60) higher than Quality-no-framegen

I have played with extra 1fr latency (wired vs wireless arcade stick) and could not perceive a difference...

basically you need a 4090 in order to cover all the dlss 3 flaws typical nvidia move

Dlss 3.0 I think is a great feature for people that plan to keep their 4090 for a long time. Or any 4000 series gpu. Once the 4090 is so old that it can no longer keep up with 4k 120hz with dlss 2.0 you can switch to dlss 3.0 and you can still get the 120hz smooth picture with 60fps latency. It would be better than just playing at 60fps with dlss 2.0 once the 4090 is so old that it can't keep up with the latest games.