DLSS has come a long way since NVIDIA introduced the technology alongside the GeForce RTX 20 Series in 2018. Powered by AI, DLSS Super Resolution was designed primarily to boost the performance of the brand-new real-time ray-tracing without impacting visual fidelity. After some growing pains for both DLSS and RT, DLSS Super Resolution technology quickly advanced to the point where it became a go-to tool for boosting performance when gaming in high resolutions.

Fast-forward to today, DLSS has evolved to include a suite of technologies, including Ray Reconstruction, which dramatically improves ray-tracing image quality compared to native or traditional rasterized rendering. As it's exclusive to the GeForce RTX line-up, DLSS has seen the rise of competing tools and offerings - from AMD's FSR to Intel XeSS and even Sony's AI-powered PSSR technology for the PlayStation 5 Pro.
It's safe to say that upscaling and Super Resolution are here to stay and that NVIDIA DLSS is still the clear leader regarding image quality. As part of its deep dive into the GeForce RTX 50 Series and new Blackwell architecture, which significantly increases GeForce's AI capabilities, the company confirmed that most GeForce RTX gamers play with DLSS enabled.

With over 540 DLSS games and apps available and 15 of the top 20 PC games in 2024, including DLSS support, NVIDIA has confirmed that over 80% of GeForce RTX owners game with DLSS. This equates to over 3 billion hours of gaming with DLSS.
With DLSS 4, the technology is set to improve for all GeForce RTX owners. NVIDIA has trained across hundreds of games, analyzed failures, and grew DLSS data with the DLSS supercomputer running 24/7 for over six years. With DLSS 4, the classic DLSS Super Resolution is being upgraded to a new Transformer Model that is more complex and can improve image quality.
Seeing it in action at CES 2025 was immediately impressive. DLSS Performance Mode with the new Transformer Model looks as good or better than DLSS Quality Mode using the older CNN Model. Throw in Frame Generation and the new DLSS Multi Frame Generation, and that 80% figure points to technologies like DLSS becoming increasingly more important as time goes on.