A lot more games are about to get framerate-boosting Nvidia DLSS support

Nvidia DLSS 2.0
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Yesterday Nvidia dropped its DLSS plugin into the Unreal Marketplace, thus enabling a lot more game developers to start using its Deep Learning Super Sampling tech in their games. This is great news both for Nvidia's tech and for us gamers, as it should mean that more games end up offering support for the upscaling technology, which can see framerates almost double with no obvious loss in quality.

Screen queens

(Image credit: Future)

Best gaming monitor: pixel-perfect panels for your PC
Best 4K monitor for gaming: when only high-res will do
Best 4K TV for gaming: big-screen 4K PC gaming

Ray tracing may be the headline-grabbing feature of Nvidia's first- and second-gen RTX graphics cards, but it's actually DLSS that has impressed us the most. The tech essentially lets your games render at a lower resolution and then upscale them to higher resolutions, such as 4K, without the framerate hit that would normally incur. It's the tech we want in more games, and this announcement means that is now closer to being the case.

With the original rendition of DLSS, game developers had to work closely with Nvidia to implement the feature into their games. That was because the deep learning engine that weaved its magic needed a lot of images from the game in question. With DLSS 2.0 this is no longer the case, and as it is trained using generic images—it no longer needs input from the specific game in question. 

We've been hoping that this change alone would usher in a whole new slew of games supporting the technology, and while DLSS 2.0 has had more uptake than the original implementation (DLSS 2.0 is supported in 35 games, while DLSS 1.0 only had eight games), it's support like this that will really push it to the next level. 

If you're a games developer, then you'll find a link to the DLSS plugin in the Unreal Marketplace, which will point you at this Nvidia page

AMD has alluded to its own take on DLSS 2.0 a few times now, which is refers to as 'Super Resolution', and while we haven't seen anything concrete yet, we expect something from the red team later this year. It's a technology that gives Nvidia an edge right now, so AMD definitely needs an answer. 

TOPICS
Alan Dexter

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.

Latest in Graphics Cards
Nvidia App
Hmmm, upgrades: Nvidia App gets an optional AI assistant and custom DLSS resolution scaling
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Colorful iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan OC graphics card from various angles
The RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are rumoured to be mere weeks away, with board partners reportedly required to ensure at least one MSRP model at launch
Nvidia headquarters
Nvidia CEO sets sights on making 'several hundred billion' dollars worth of electronics in the USA over the next four years, increasing the chance of your next GPU being made in America
The Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition, a gold-plated graphics card on a sand dune background
A Jensen Huang-signed version of this golden Asus RTX 5090 will be auctioned off to support relief efforts for the California wildfires
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway