Nvidia’s going to push DLSS as its killer advantage over Radeon with its next-gen GPUs
Nvidia’s going to push DLSS as its killer advantage over Radeon with its next-gen GPUs
With AMD’s “big Navi” graphics cards, a huge generational leap in performance is expected, and with RDNA 2, the ray tracing aspect of Nvidia’s RTX feature set will have disappeared. This market shift will leave Nvidia in a position where they will need to rely on raw performance, its reputation and DLSS to continue its market domination.Â
As we discussed with our DLSS analysis of Death Stranding, DLSS 2.0 is Nvidia’s 4K performance trump card. Radeon has no answer to DLSS at this time, and it currently acts as a technology which can give Nvidia users both a performance and quality boost over native resolution rendering techniques. Even if AMD can deliver higher raw performance numbers with its RDNA 2 graphics cards, DLSS will allow Nvidia to deliver more performance and increased image clarity in supported games.Â
With games like Watch Dogs: Legion and Cyberpunk 2077 supporting DLSS 2.0, Nvidia graphics cards will offer gamers a significant technological advantage over its Radeon rivals. With this in mind, we can expect Nvidia to push for more developers to support DLSS and request that more technology-focused websites and YouTubers to highlight games where DLSS is used.Â
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DLSS 3.0
Rumour has it that Nvidia is working on DLSS 3.0, a new version of DLSS which will reportedly “work in any game with TAA”, but will require some developer effort to get working. With this version of DLSS, Nvidia wants software integration to be easier than other versions of DLSS, allowing gamers to more easily access the feature within future PC titles.Â
Given the success of DLSS 2.0, we believe Moore’s Law is Dead when he says that DLSS 3.0 is in the works. However, it remains unclear how this new version fo DLSS will be implemented into games, or how much this new version of DLSS has improved over today’s incarnations.Â
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In Death Stranding, we found that DLSS could deliver Nvidia’s RTX 2060 performance improvements which could give it higher raw framerates than an RTX 2080 Ti (without DLSS). That’s an insane performance increase. DLSS is a killer advantage that Nvidia needs to exploit if they want to maintain their current dominance of the PC gaming market, especially with RDNA 2 on the horizon.
AMD needs an answer to RDNA 2
Until AMD can develop a FidelityFX/GPU Open equivalent to DLSS, Nvidia’s AI-powered DLSS technology will give team Geforce a considerable advantage over Radeon.Â
If AMD can develop an equivalent feature, they can get developers to exploit it on both consoles and PC, giving them an easier route to widespread adoption. That said, for all PC developers to adopt it, we will need a DLSS-like feature which can function on both Radeon and Geforce hardware.  Â
In the meantime, gamers can expect to see enhanced upscaling techniques to become more commonplace within future PC and console games. True game resolutions will become something from the past, and this will free up GPU resources that can be pushed into new areas. If a high-quality hardware-agnostic DLSS-like upscaler sees widespread adoption, gaming will enter what could be called a post-resolution era. If faking resolution gets good enough, why would you ever run a game natively?Â
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For now, Nvidia has a major advantage over Radeon because of DLSS. You can expect Nvidia to do everything in its power to push that advantage, both by encouraging developers to add it to their future games and by discussing the feature at every conceivable opportunity. Until AMD has an answer to DLSS, DLSS will be a big reason to buy graphics cards from the Geforce camp.Â
You can join the discussion on Nvidia plans to push DLSS harder on the OC3D Forums.Â