Nvidia has revealed plans for a 2024 launch of three new 40-series Super GPUs on Jan. 8, and the adjacent look at just how many upcoming PC titles are set to launch with DLSS 3 technology provides a strong incentive to upgrade.
Plenty of games are releasing with DLSS 3 support built in over the next few months, with Dragon’s Dogma 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Gray Zone Warfare launching soon to name a few. Additionally, Diablo 4 will be receiving a March update to add the technology, and the complete edition of Horizon: Forbidden West will be released with DLSS 3 as well.
For those who haven’t kept up with the constant stream of new tech terminology, Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS) is an upscaling technique used by Nvidia graphics cards that allows for significantly better gaming performance without increasing power demands. DLSS does this by rendering frames at lower resolutions, and then simultaneously using AI technology to upscale those frames to the desired native resolution. On many games, this technology can double frame rates with virtually no loss of image fidelity. But what makes DLSS 3 different?
40 series Nvidia GPUs are the only graphics cards that can utilize DLSS 3, and the technology’s effect on performance is massive. In addition to upscaling frames, DLSS 3 is able to immediately analyze two frames and generate a third frame in between the two. This built-in frame generation allows a tremendous increase in FPS, but it also bypasses CPU bottlenecking problems by being solely GPU-dependent.
The drawback to the technology thus far has only been the price of 40 series graphics cards: they’re expensive. The Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090, which is the objective best graphics card currently on the market, is about $2,000 USD. For many (myself included), the price of 40 series cards made them inaccessible, regardless of how awesome DLSS 3 may be. However, the new 40-series Super cards releasing later this month may change that.
This is because the three cards announced, the 4070 Super, 4070 Ti Super, and 4080 Super, are launching at the exact same prices as their non-Super predecessors. This doesn’t just mean you can get a stronger card for the same price—it also means that the 4070, 4070 Ti, and 4080 are bound to see significant price drops, especially on the second-hand market. If a 4070 Super is going for $600, nobody is going to buy a regular 4070 for $600. As such, it may finally be possible and justifiable for many PC gamers to upgrade to a 40 series graphics card and reap the benefits of DLSS 3.
