At Gamescom, Nvidia presented the updated version 3.5 of its DLSS technology. The new feature Ray Reconstruction provides increased performance in games that use ray tracing. Even 5-year-old graphics cards like the RTX 2000 series benefit from it.
The graphics card manufacturer Nvidia continuously expands the capabilities of its AI upscaling technology DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). With the update to 3.0, only models from the current RTX 4000 series could exclusively benefit from the added features.
However, the new update to DLSS 3.5 also benefits seemingly older graphics cards.
DLSS 3.5 for all RTX cards
What is changing now? The version 3.5 announced by Nvidia in a press release brings with Ray Reconstruction an improvement that can also be utilized by older graphics cards all the way up to the RTX 2000 series from 2018.
Improved Reflection and Lighting
Since when has the feature existed? Nvidia has developed ray tracing for its pixel accelerators to make light rays and reflections in games look more realistic. However, using the feature comes at the cost of performance and has been mainly reserved for the high-end segment of the manufacturer since its release in 2018.
With the introduction of DLSS a year later, it became possible to partially compensate for this loss depending on the optimization level of a game.
Ray Tracing and DLSS are now an even better team
How does the technology work? In DLSS 3.5, Nvidia changes the interplay of both functions. Previously, DLSS and ray tracing appeared in combination. The image of a game was rendered at a lower resolution than that of the monitor and then subsequently upscaled to the original resolution with AI support. This also affected the manually tuned ray tracing effects, which therefore lost image details.
“Ray Reconstruction” works AI-based and thus foregoes manually tuned enhancements. As a result, lighting and reflections look even more lifelike and contain more details. This overall leads to a more optimized image quality and additional performance increase.
Supported Games and Availability
Are there already games with DLSS 3.5? At the current time, there are no available titles that have implemented DLSS 3.5 to utilize “Ray Reconstruction”.
When can Ray Reconstruction be used? In autumn, the expansion “Phantom Liberty” for Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake II, and Portal RTX will be released. These will directly use DLSS 3.5 at their respective launch. According to Nvidia, more titles will follow. For older games, it depends on the developers whether they will take on the effort for the integration.
