Gamers are already using Nvidia’s DLSS 4 tech in Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt Red’s patch 2.21 makes Cyberpunk the first DLSS 4-compatible game.

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By Antonio G. Di Benedetto, a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.

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You may have to wait until January 30th to buy Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 graphics card, but owners of last-gen Nvidia 40-series GPUs can already download and install DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation software via the Nvidia app. And if you want a compatible, graphically-intense game to test DLSS 4 out, Cyberpunk 2077’s newly-launched patch 2.21 adds support for it.

Here’s the important info from CD Projekt Red’s changelog for patch 2.21 about DLSS 4:

Added support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, which boosts FPS by using AI to generate up to three times per traditionally rendered frame – enabled with GeForce RTX 50 Series on January 30th. DLSS 4 also introduces faster single Frame Generation with reduced memory usage for RTX 50 and 40 Series. Additionally, you can now choose between the CNN model or the new Transformer model for DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Resolution, and DLAA on all GeForce RTX graphics cards today. The new Transformer model enhances stability, lighting, and detail in motion.

People on the Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit are already trying out DLSS 4’s improved single Frame Generation on their 40-series cards and sharing their results. One user posted a variety of screenshots with comparison sliders that show a side-by-side between the older Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model and the new Transformer model in DLSS 4 with full path tracing on their RTX 4070 Super at QHD resolution. It may not be night-and-day differences when frozen in screenshots, but looking closely reveals improvements like better clothing textures and cleaned up facial details, all without taking any significant hit to framerates.

The real star of the DLSS 4 show may be incredibly high framerates via Multi Frame Generation on the new 50-series cards, but getting graphical improvements for free on older cards is an impressive flex of Nvidia’s new tech. It’s not every day you can download better performance.

But just as 50-series early adopters will have to wait for more developers to implement Multi Frame Generation beyond the approximate 75 titles at launch, 40-series users may also have to be patient to see more DLSS 4-compatible updates.