Last night, at CES 2025, Nvidia finally announced their RTX 50 series graphics cards, and can I just say that I am wise to the RTX 5090’s tricks. A GPU that eats up to 575W and costs £1939 / $1999? Yeah, nice try, Geoffrey N. Vidia, but such a mad card couldn’t possibly exist in reality. It’s clearly only here to make the other ones, the RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070, look like better deals.
]]>There’s plenty that you could justifiably expect from a Bioware RPG: chats with mates, opportunities to get those mates horribly killed, surviving mates turning to the side then walking offscreen. But I don’t think anyone expected Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be, at least on a purely technical level, one of the smoothest-performing, settings-rich AAA PC releases of the year so far.
]]>Per last night’s Sony State of Play, PS5 darling and supposedly rather good action-dad adventure God of War Ragnarök is coming to PC on September 19th 2024. The good news is that the port, co-developed by Jetpack Interactive and original makers Santa Monica Studio, will pack in all the DLSS 3, FSR 3, and ultrawide what-have-yous that one might expect from a big, monied PC release. The bad, silly, clearly pointless news is that it will need a PlayStation Network (PSN) account, despite the complete lack of multiplayer.
]]>While I’ve always thought the race towards graphical hyperrealism isn’t as pervasive as it's often perceived, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is definitely one of those games. The kind that probably has twelve artists dedicated to the recreation of visible pores, that sort of thing. It’s so focused on looking pretty that it hasn’t even noticed the title and subtitle got mixed up.
Sure enough, Hellblade 2 is a harsh test for older hardware, with a heavy reliance on DLSS or FSR upscaling to keep performance sweet. That said, it’s no Dragons Dogma 2-style technical horrorshow either. A happy balance of visuals and smoothness is attainable on plush PCs and low-end laptops alike, while DLSS 3 frame generation can deliver an effective kick in the framerate pants on RTX 40 series GPUs.
]]>I still don’t fully understand the rancor with which the RTX 4070 Ti is often regarded. Where some see an overpriced, memory-deprived albatross of a graphics card, I’ve only ever seen a fast and feature-rich GPU whose 12GB of VRAM is demonstrably fine for 99.95% of games at 4K. A better deal than the RTX 4080 for that resolution, in any case.
Now, though, we can all agree: nobody should buy an RTX 4070 Ti. Not when the RTX 4070 Ti Super is here, doing a better, hopefully less contentious job of smooth 4K without demanding RTX 4080 (or, indeed, RTX 4080 Super) levels of investment.
]]>If the RTX 4070 Super was all about addressing its predecessor’s so-so performance gains, the RTX 4080 Super’s course correction is more deeply rooted in issues of cold, hard coinage. For better and worse, it turns out – while this Super-fied GPU knocks hundreds off the RTX 4080’s starting price, any excitement for a potential new 4K champion is quickly muted by it barely moving the dial on straight FPS output. If, indeed, it’s not somehow running slower.
]]>It’s been two whole graphics card generations since Nvidia last tried the whole Super-branded refresh thing, and from what I recall of that sweaty 2019 summer, most of the updated RTX 20 series cards were meek rejigs of GPUs that didn’t really need replacing in the first place. Having tried the new RTX 4070 Super, though, it looks like Nvidia aren’t just redeeming the Super badge – they might just right the wrongs of the RTX 40 family as a whole.
]]>By Nvidia’s count, there are now 500 games and applications that employ DLSS upscaling and ray tracing visual effects – or "RTX technologies," in GPU superpower speak. While there’s arguably some cheekiness behind that count, as ray tracing in particular is not an RTX-exclusive feature, it is nonetheless quite the feat for a set of tools that launched in subjectively auspicious circumstances back in 2018.
]]>Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is, according to our reviewer Graham, "perhaps the best expansion pack ever made." Feh, small potatoes – Phantom Liberty’s most prestigious achievement is surely how it heralds a new ray tracing feature that makes Cyberpunk 2077 look and run a tiny bit better. On specific settings. And only on GeForce RTX graphics cards. The more expensive ones.
Hello, then, to DLSS 3.5 and its Ray Reconstruction component. Like how DLSS improves visuals and performance with AI-aided upscaling and ant-aliasing, Ray Reconstruction injects some machine learning cleverness into the rendering of ray tracing. Nvidia say Ray Reconstruction cleans up artefacts and reduces the performance impact of RT effects, and judging by how it works in Cyberpunk 2077, I’d say they’re correct – with the caveat that all its enhancements are, ultimately, modest.
]]>"Modders will fix it" is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is they’re rooted in fact. So it is with Starfield, which already has a DLSS mod ready to patch in the class-leading Nvidia upscaler that Bethesda left out in favour of AMD FSR 2.
It’s the work of seasoned modder PureDark, previously seen hammering both DLSS and FSR into Skyrim. I’ve tried the Starfield mod and it works rather nicely, granting a visible quality boost on RTX graphics cards while equalling FSR’s ability to smooth out Starfield’s sometimes-tricky performance. Unfortunately (and largely by association), it’s also been dragged into a spot of nasty business, one involving a separate mod for DLSS 3 frame generation and PureDark’s application of DRM.
]]>As with Half-Life 2 RTX, Nvidia have taken to Gamescom to make a heap of DLSS announcements. Chief among these is an upcoming new version, DLSS 3.5, which will add to DLSS 3’s existing toolkit of upscaling and AI frame generation with a new trick named Ray Reconstruction. And it sounds pretty clever, if currently limited in application.
]]>Nvidia are making an early start on their Gamescom announcements, which include the reveal of Half-Life 2 RTX. This incoming mod for the seminal 2004 FPS will, in the style of Portal with RTX, rejig the original game with modern technical goodies like ray tracing, updated environmental details, and Nvidia Reflex support. DLSS will also be on hand to absorb the inevitably mahoosive performance hit from bouncing all those rays around, and that includes DLSS 3, provided you have a compatible graphics card.
It’s being developed by a collective of experienced HL2 modders, Orbifold Studios, without direct input from Valve. No release date yet, as Half-Life 2 RTX – or to use its full name, Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project – is still in the early stages. There is a teaser trailer, though.
]]>Immortals of Aveum is making me wonder whether there’s some kind of gigantic hidden market for floaty magic shooters with overcooked YA dialogue and exceedingly high PC hardware demands. After this and Forspoken releasing within a few months of each other, I’m half expecting Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to open with Captain Price shooting GPU-smelting laser beams out of his 'tache.
Indeed, this first person sorcery adventure will be hell on your hardware, even if you’ve tooled up with a high-grade graphics card and CPU. This is somewhat more understandable than with the other low-performing PC games we’ve seen this year, as Immortals of Aveum is one of the first Unreal Engine 5.1 games, and makes extensive use of its sparkly new lighting and VFX tech. Sadly, it also aims so high that the only way to get playable performance on lower-end and older mid-range kit it to gut the quality settings.
]]>Ideally, the story of Remnant II’s launch would start and end with it being an ambitious success of a shooty Soulslike. Sadly not: in a Reddit post addressing complaints of wonky performance, even on higher-end graphics cards, developers Gunfire Games admitted to having "designed the game with upscaling in mind."
Working the likes of Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS into a game wouldn’t normally be a cause of incredulity. Indeed, as optional performance boosters, they’re pretty much always a welcome sight amid the duller texture filtering and ambient occlusion toggles of the average settings menu. The problem here is that with its dismal performance at native, non-upscaled resolutions, Remnant II essentially forgets about the 'optional' part – and in doing so, undermines what makes DLSS and its rivals such valuable tools in the first place.
]]>I didn't get as deep into The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as our reviewist Rachel, but I do share her view that it is not A Good Game. In fact, I’ve had about as much fun with it as I would on a spa day in the Barad-dûr sulfur pits. Between the soulless platforming, undercooked stealth, tedious storytelling, and framerate stuttering so bad it’s got me killed twice, Gollum is perilously short on likeable qualities. Especially if you’re not into LOTR lore, or fine hattery.
In my unclad head, then, Gollum’s highlight so far has been DLSS 3. It’s one of just a few dozen games to support the newest, most artificially intelligent version of Nvidia’s deep learning-powered upscaler, and frankly makes a very compelling argument for switching it on. Graphics card allowing, obviously.
]]>Hey hey, we’re finally getting some real mid-rangers in the RTX 40 series, as Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 GPUs. These will finally bring Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, complete with improved ray tracing performance and DLSS 3 support, beneath the £400 mark.
]]>It’s taken a few GPUs, but Nvidia’s RTX 40 series is finally veering away from ludicrous luxuries and heading back in the right direction: that of graphics cards you can, and maybe even should buy, even if you’re not the heir to an Emirati property conglomerate. The GeForce RTX 4070 launches with a heavier price tag than the RTX 3070, and doesn’t make the shin-splintering performance leap forward that its predecessor did, but between its high speeds, low power usage, and DLSS 3 advantage, it’s a potent upgrade regardless.
]]>Update: Our RTX 4070 review is now live! Also it's on sale now but that's less important.
Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4070, a 1440p warrior joining the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 in a collection of largely 4K-minded RTX 40 series GPUs.
]]>Here it is, then, the RTX 4070 Ti – the 12GB RTX 4080 that wasn’t. "Unlaunching" this GPU, rebranding it, and releasing it for £100 / $100 less may have bruised egos at Nvidia, but at least it’s left us with an intriguing silicone prospect. Finally, there’s a high-end, DLSS 3-capable, Ada Lovelace architecture-based graphics card that doesn’t cost four figures.
]]>If I were a PC graphics bigwig, choosing which aged game to spruce up with ray tracing as an elaborate mod tools advert, I wouldn’t have gone for one with as timeless an aesthetic as Portal's. Maybe that’s why I’m not one – Portal with RTX is a gorgeous return to Aperture Science, a borderline must-play for anyone with a premium GeForce RTX GPU, and a mightily impressive demonstration of the Nvidia RTX Remix tools that built it.
Admittedly, that’s in spite of some shortcomings, including utterly broken performance on even the strongest Radeon RX graphics cards. Equip yourself with RTX hardware, however, and this free mod is a real Christmas treat.
]]>How was your year for PC hardware, reader? Pick up anything nice, or got any old favourite gear still going strong? I’m still very happy with the 4K gaming monitor I got for a pittance, and have spent the past twelve months becoming increasingly convinced that tenkeyless keyboards are, in fact, the best keyboards.
That’s just me, though. On an everyone’s-invited macro level, 2022 ended up being the most transformative year for PC gaming kit in recent memory. We’ve had it all: long overdue launches, bitter disappointments, and genuinely impactful performance innovations. Also, Valve made a handheld PC. That was cool.
]]>Portal with RTX now has a release date, so anyone with a) a copy of Portal on Steam and b) a ray tracing-capable graphics card will be able to explore a freshly polished Aperture Science from December 8th.
]]>If you visited this URL in… oh bloody hell, November, you’ll know I have some ‘splaining to do. Basically I was only going to keep this RTX 4080 review as a review-in-progress until I cleared some other important hardware gubbins that was occurring that week, but then the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX showed up and I thought "Well it’d be good to include benchmarks from those too", so I pushed it back until those were tested. Then the RTX 4070 Ti got announced and I thought "Well it’d be good to include benchmarks from that too", so pushed it back until that was tested. Which it has been, so here they are, a little late but fully formed: opinions on the RTX 4080.
]]>Nvidia DLSS 3 is arguably the single most interesting thing to emerge from the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPU launches. Even with, I’ll concede, some limits: whereas previous DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) versions have been available to any GeForce RTX graphics card, DLSS 3 is currently only usable on these RTX 40 series models. Or will be, once the RTX 4080 goes on sale on November 16th. Yet having tested it out on the RTX 4090, I’m convinced it could be as big a deal as the cards themselves, especially if you have a high-refresh-rate gaming monitor.
]]>By far the best thing about the RTX 4090 – which is otherwise a bit of a GPU boondoggle – is that is supports DLSS 3. This next-gen version of Nvidia’s DLSS upscaler not only boosts performance with render resolution trickery but also adds entirely new, AI-generated frames of its own, smoothing out visuals even further. Fewer than 40 games are confirmed to implement it so far but that number is growing, with Nvidia today announcing that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will include DLSS 3 when it launches for PC on November 18th.
]]>As a James who’s always forgetting things, I’m probably the main target audience of the Silent Hill 2 remake – one of yesterday’s many Silent Hill game and film announcements. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have expected such high demands from its PC system requirements, which have appeared on Steam.
Highlights include the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 – a former flagship! – listed among the minimum specs, alongside a 12GB RAM requirement, and Windows 11 as the recommended OS. Those with a GeForce RTX graphics card could get some performance help, though, as the requirements’ notes say that meeting the recommended spec will allow for 4K resolution “using DLSS or similar technology”. That’s not quite a formal confirmation of Nvidia DLSS support, but strongly indicates it, maybe along with similar upscaling systems like AMD FSR or Intel XeSS.
]]>Seems things change fast in the world of graphics cards, especially if you announce a GPU that gets people cross before it’s even out. Less than a month after Nvidia announced three all-new GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs, they’ve cancelled the launch for one of them: the RTX 4080 12GB. That leaves just the RTX 4090, which has already launched, and the RTX 4080 16GB, which is coming as planned in November.
How odd to “unlaunch” a GPU so soon prior to release, though since Nvidia are reportedly paying rebranding costs to board partners, we could still see that 12GB card release under a different name. In the meantime, here’s where you can read all about Nvidia’s latest graphics card generation, from details on its ‘Ada Lovelace’ architecture to intriguing new features like DLSS 3. Plus all the basic price and release date deets, if you’re just after those.
]]>As expected, Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4090 during their GeForce Beyond livestream – and confirmed the RTX 4080 for good measure. Both GPUs are based on Nvidia’s new Ada Lovelace architecture, and will launch this year: the RTX 4090 on October 12th, and the RTX 4080 sometime in November.
Key features of Ada Lovelace, and thus these new cards, include 3rd Gen RT cores, 4th Gen Tensor cores, and a new streaming multiprocessor. These supposedly add up to twice the performance of Ampere (that’s the RTX 30 series architecture currently dominating our best graphics card guide) in standard rasterised games, and up to four times the performance in ray traced games. And since Nvidia were clearly in a ray-tracey mood, they also took the opportunity to reveal Portal RTX: a semi-official mod for the original Portal that upgrades it with RT lighting and reflection effects. Corrrr.
]]>Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is landing on PC, and it’s pretty good! Co-developers Insomniac Games and Nixxes, who spoke to me this week about the port's development, have also taken the care to festoon this version of the open-world crim-puncher with various Windows-exclusive features. These span enhanced ray traced reflections and ultrawide monitor support to both Nvidia DLSS and (surprisingly, given it wasn’t in the initial PC features trailer) AMD FSR 2.0, adding to a list of visual options that already stretches into the sky like a Manhattan high rise. Let’s take a look, then, at how Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered performs on PC – as well as the best settings to keep it swingin’ real smooth like.
]]>Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is getting more than a quick polish for its PC launch next month. A new PC features trailer has revealed the myriad of visual and technical improvements that the Windows version will wield over the PS5 edition, including ray traced reflections, Nvidia DLSS and DLAA compatibility, an uncapped framerate and ultrawide monitor support.
]]>Nvidia DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing) is more of a niche prospect than its upscaler cousin DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), though it shares the same ultimate goal of making your PC games look sharper. Like DLSS, DLAA uses a dash of AI brainpower to stitch together frames with more detail than conventional anti-aliasing techniques like TAA and MSAA – only with DLAA, there’s no upscaling involved. That means no performance gains, but for those with sufficiently powerful Nvidia RTX GPUs, potentially superior image quality at all resolutions. Even better than DLSS, mayhaps.
]]>You could fairly think of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti as a big, stump-necked brute of a graphics card. What better characterisation for the latest tippity-top-of-the-line GPU from Nvidia, who’ve already produced the best graphics card for 4K in the RTX 3080? But rather than be overwhelmed by its power, I personally feel more like the RTX 3090 Ti is trying to trick, tempt and seduce me, Old Testament-style. “Recommend meeeee” it whispers, coasting through another maximum settings benchmark. “Tell evvvvvvveryone these frame rates are totally worth £1879.”
But I can’t. Sorry. While I am a sucker for go-faster gear, the RTX 3090 Ti is just too far of a stretch, with its sometimes imperceptible performance differences to the £1399 RTX 3090 and a tendency towards impractically gigantic partner card models.
]]>Doom – the 1993 one – can famously run on all manner of stuff that generally has no business running games, from inkjet printers to pregnancy tests. You’ll be wanting a bonafide PC for this new mod, though, as it adds some GPU-intensive but rather lovely ray tracing to Doom’s first three episodes. There’s DLSS support too!
]]>Dying Light 2 is quite the hardware fiend, hence why enabling DLSS – provided your GPU supports it – is so useful for keeping frame rates up. Sadly, in both the review build I tested and at launch, even the highest quality DLSS setting looked uncharacteristically lower-res. It was still worth using, especially if you fancied clambering over Villedor’s rooftops at 4K or with ray tracing effects, but there was a nagging sense that DLSS can do better. And now it can, for Dying Light 2’s 1.04 update is live, and sharpens Nvidia’s upscaling tech to close that gap between the rendering and native resolutions.
]]>Even with a bunch of post-launch performance improvements, Microsoft Flight Simulator is still the kind of game that can make most PCs sweat. Good news, then, for frequent flyers who happen to own an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card: Flight Sim is getting DLSS support this year.
Specifically, DLSS will be available when running the sim in DirectX 12, as part of a handful of upcoming DX12 enhancements that also include optimisations for playing on multiple monitors. Developers Asobo Studio confirmed the DLSS addition in a recent devstream, which you can watch in full below, though the feature is still being tested so there’s no specific date beyond 2022.
]]>Ahead of God of War coming to PC on January 14th, an Nvidia blog post has laid bare the enhancements you can expect from the port, as well as the PC system requirements. In fairness it looks like a pretty comprehensive effort, combining expected tweaks like 21:9 ultrawide monitor support with performance-boosting Nvidia DLSS upscaling and even some general graphical upgrades. There’s a PC features trailer, too.
]]>Back when erstwhile PlayStation exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn launched on PC last year, it was a bit of a lucky dip whether you got a smooth-running port or a constantly crashing mess. These days, though, the PC version is in far better shape, and has just today received a major upgrade in the form of support for Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling) and AMD FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution).
]]>Nvidia have launched a revamped Image Scaling feature that aims to provide a DLSS-style performance boost in your games – as well as ICAT, a new screenshot and video comparison tool that will let you see the difference for yourself.
]]>Battlefield 2042 has a new trailer ahead of its November 19th release, and this one is aimed directly at us PC folk. While the action itself is more of the near-future mega-bangs you’ve probably seen in previous teasers (or, indeed, the open beta), it’s all in service of demonstrating the PC-exclusive features: chiefly ray tracing, Nvidia DLSS and Nvidia Reflex support.
]]>Exactly one month after launch, Deathloop received its "first major game update" last night. Along with (hopefully?) fixing lingering issues with stuttering framerates, it has added DLSS support to give Nvidia folks a big FPS boost, fixed some crashes and other bugs, including a nasty one where a bad menu option would reset Colt's progress, and generally improved things. And this is the point where I think I'll finally play the game.
]]>The Elder Scrolls Online is the first game to implement Nvidia DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing), and thanks to YouTuber MxBenchmarkPC you can now see how the AI-powered edge-smoothing system looks in the fantasy MMO. DLAA is a new spin on Nvidia’s existing DLSS (Deep Learning Super-Sampling): whereas DLSS involves rendering a game at a lower resolution then upscaling, reducing the performance hit of the AA it applies, DLAA skips the upscaling part and keeps the resolution native.
]]>Nvidia DLSS is usually worth turning on for an easy frame rate bump, but even after DLSS 2.0 made it easier for developers to implement, the list of games that actually support the AI-powered anti-aliasing tech has never exactly been running off the page. That said, Nvidia can now claimed to have reached the milestone of 100 DLSS-compatible games, thanks in large part to a recent adoption wave from indie games.
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