As sales pitches go, Nvidia’s deep learning supersampling (DLSS) is as revelatory, and preposterously sci-fi, as it gets. Specific cores dedicated to machine learning, harnessing bleeding-edge algorithms, take resource-friendly 1440p resolution images and blow them up to super-sharp 4K proportions—and all without the performance hit of actually running at that higher resolution in the first place.
Along with that quietly revolutionary real-time ray tracing capability, DLSS was the big selling point of Turing cards. But while the advantages are real, and available to you in a generous swathe of games, its uneven execution from title to title is confusing. In its worst moments, it’s been capable of actually making your game look worse when enabled than in the original native resolution.
But the teething problems might prove trivial when we look at deep learning’s potential to turn graphics rendering on its head. Just as real-time ray tracing’s proved to be what some might call a soft launch, offering tantalizing glimpses of its promise amid the noise of patchy game support and performance issues, so it goes with DLSS. For owners, it feels like being in on the ground floor on an important new advancement, and having to deal with adjustment inertia from software developers and driver writers.
This story is from the April 2020 edition of Maximum PC.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2020 edition of Maximum PC.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
2TB Crucial T500 M.2 PCle 4.0 SSD
The best budget 4.0 drive?
Hyte Y40
Traditional design meets Hyte
Lenovo Legion Go
A handheld gaming PC, just on a larger scale
Dough Spectrum One
As stunning as Dough's original glossy display
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
1080p gaming with integrated graphics? Hell, yes
AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT
As cost-effective as an RTX 4080 Super
MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G Ventus 3X
Iterative change and 4K dominance
STATE OF THE PC INTEGRATED GRAPHICS
Can you get by without a dedicated GPU?
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super
LONG AGO, before the reign of the Supers, there was a graphics card. It was bold, gauche, and built with the blood of a Titan, with gaming in mind. Its heart was near identical to the goliath it was born from, yet it lacked the memory, spirit, absolute architectural majesty, and subsequent price tag of its Titanic kin.
THE ULTIMATE PC BUILD GUIDE
Strap in as we divulge 20 more tips on how to become the next master PC builder