Tinkerers rejoice! There's a new DLSS version to mess around with in your games
The latest spin of the upscaling tech suffers from too much ghosting and shimmering for some.
A new version of Nvidia's DLSS has appeared with the release of Final Fantasy Origin and Spider-Man Remastered. The new DLL, which has a version number of 2.4.12.0, can be used in pretty much any game that supports the DLSS 2.x, although you need to be careful with any multiplayer games as swapping out the DLLs could be seen as cheating, and potentially get you banned. You also can't use DLSS 2.x files with DLSS 1.x games.
It's worth noting as well that the DLSS version isn't part of the driver package, but rather ships with the individual game. This is why any new game release that supports DLSS is potentially interesting—it could lead to a better version of the upscaling technology for every game. It rarely works quite like that, but if a game isn't actively being updated, it could miss out on a newer version for sure.
You can grab the new DLSS DLL file yourself (available to download from TechPowerUp) and copy it over the existing version in your games of choice—make sure you back the original file up first though.
There is a much better way, though, in the form of DLSS Swapper. It's a cool little app that now exists on the Microsoft Store, so no tricky installation is needed. This is a great tool for managing the various DLSS versions you have installed and lets you swap to whichever one you want to use for a particular game. It'll even automatically download the latest version, which makes life easy.
As for this new DLSS version 2.4.12.0, the general consensus (at least according to this subreddit) is that this is one to pass on. It appears to introduce more ghosting and shimmering than previous versions. Your experience may differ though, and if you're unhappy with the DLSS that ships with a game, then it's certainly worth experimenting with.
The general takeaway at this stage is that version 2.4.6.0 is still wildly seen as the version of choice for most games. That's the one you want to use where possible. Still, it's good to see Nvidia is still tweaking its upscaling technology, even though it's generally considered to be the best upscaling option around. AMD has garnered plenty of support for its FSR 2.0 technology though, which is keeping the pressure on
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Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.