Nvidia is launching its next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs today, but it’s also releasing an exciting update for existing RTX GPU owners. A new GPU driver (572.16) allows you to force DLSS 4 inside games or apps that don’t currently support it, providing improved image quality and even less VRAM usage in some cases.
While DLSS 4 is debuting today in 75 games and apps, the Nvidia app now has a new override feature that will improve image quality in games that use DLSS by allowing you to switch to Nvidia’s new transformer model. This means you don’t have to wait on developers to update their games. Owners of RTX 40-series GPUs will also get access to a new frame generation model that is 40 percent faster and uses 30 percent less VRAM than the old one.
Nvidia has also updated its RTX Video Super Resolution (VSR) feature, which can upscale old blurry YouTube videos, to a new and more efficient model. It now uses 30 percent fewer GPU resources on the highest-quality setting, allowing more RTX GPUs to enable this feature. VSR will also now upscale HDR video, so if you’re watching lower-resolution HDR videos, these can now be automatically upscaled.
While existing RTX owners will get access to more efficient models, those looking to purchase RTX 50-series cards today will also be able to enable DLSS Multi Frame Generation. This new feature builds on top of Frame Generation by generating three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame.
In our RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 reviews, we found that Multi Frame Generation is a promising addition but only works well if your base frame rate after DLSS Super Resolution is applied is high. Otherwise, even if your base 30fps after Super Resolution gets boosted beyond 100fps, it will still have the input latency of a 30fps game.
Nvidia also surprised potential RTX 50-series owners with a new Smooth Motion feature in today’s driver update. It’s a driver-based AI model that enables “smoother gameplay by inferring an additional frame between two rendered frames” for games without DLSS Frame Generation support. Nvidia says Smooth Motion is exclusive to the RTX 50-series and can be applied to games running with DLSS Super Resolution, at native resolution, or even titles with other upscaling technologies and it will typically double “the perceived frame rate.”
