what is dsr nvidia?

Our new Maxwell architecture introduces a raft of innovative, exciting technologies that make your games better in dramatic ways. Of these new features, Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) will have largest impact, enhancing any game that supports resolutions above 1920x1080. What does DSR do? Simply put, it renders a game at a higher, more detailed resolution and intelligently shrinks the result back down to the resolution of your monitor, giving you 4K, 3840x2160-quality graphics on any screen.

Enthusiasts with compatible monitors and technical know-how refer to this process as Downsampling or Super Sampling. DSR drastically improves upon this process by applying a high-quality filter specifically designed for the task. DSR also makes the process simpler with on/off integration built directly into GeForce Experience and It's compatible with all monitors, removes the need for technical know-how, and is integrated into GeForce Experience's Optimal Playable Settings.

In Dark Souls II's opening scene, players find themselves surrounded by swaying grass. At 1920x1080, the grass flickers and scintillates heavily as it sways, and appears to be missing detail, as highlighted by our screen capture:

Examining the pixels in detail reveals that the grass is displayed in such a manner because the 1920x1080 resolution lacks a sufficient number of sample points for the grass' fine detail:

At 3840x2160 (4K), the number of sample points is multiplied by 4, enabling the game to capture and render more detail on each blade of grass.

Finally, DSR applies a custom-made 13-tap Gaussian filter as the 4K image is scaled back down to 1920x1080 for display on the monitor:

The DSR process significantly improves image quality, and with the addition of the 13-tap Gaussian filter aliasing artifacts experienced with traditional downsampling are greatly reduced or entirely eliminated, further improving image quality.

Check out an enlarged comparison here.

Grass is an effective example for demonstrating sample points, but don't be fooled into thinking grass is the only beneficiary of DSR's capabilities. In almost every game DSR will increase the quality of textures, shadows, effects, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion shading, geometric detail, and model detail to some degree.

Enabling DSR couldn't be easier: simply click 'Optimize' in GeForce Experience 2.1.2 when GeForce Driver 344.11 WHQL or newer is installed. Only games that lack UI scaling and/or support for resolutions over 1920x1080 are excluded from this feature. If you still wish to enable DSR in these games, perhaps for screenshot purposes, and in other games not supported by GeForce Experience, enter the NVIDIA Control Panel, select the DSR scaling factors you want to use, and select the corresponding DSR resolution in-game.

I already wrote an article explaining the differences between FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) on AMD's side. And it's now time to compare NVIDIA's new DLDSR — announced Jan. 14, 2022 — with existing DLSS and DSR technologies. Here's what you can expect if you're the proud owner of a modern NVIDIA GPU.

Senior Editor Rich Edmonds has an excellent article explaining fully both DLSS and ray tracing, and I also wrote a piece explaining how DLSS compares to AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution. There's a lot of information to digest in those articles, and I suggest reading them if you're looking for a deeper dive.

Deep Learning Super Sampling, otherwise known as DLSS, is a new take on supersampling. It leverages artificial intelligence to boost frame rates while also boosting the visual fidelity of compatible games. Whereas DSR and DLDSR are downscaling techniques, DLSS is an upscaling technique.

When a game is compatible with DLSS, what you're seeing on your screen is first broken down into supersampled "perfect frames" that are examined by NVIDIA's neural network. It starts at a lower resolution and focuses on anti-aliasing, then focuses on sharpening the frame by adding extra pixels. NVIDIA's AI looks at these high-res perfect frames, compares them with upcoming normal frames, and repeats the process throughout.

DLSS ultimately makes your games look better while also taking some of the load off your GPU, upping frame rates at the same time. The rub here is that DLSS isn't available in all games, and it must be baked in by the developer. The list continues to grow, but it's still relatively small. You must also have an NVIDIA RTX 20- or 30-series GPU with dedicated Tensor cores for DLSS to work.

NVIDIA's Dynamic Super Resolution, also known as DSR, was introduced alongside Maxwell GPUs about seven years ago, making it the most mature feature here. It allows for frames rendered in the GPU buffer to be a higher resolution (up to four times more) than your monitor, to then be filtered down to fit the screen. The higher resolution makes for a better image, which translates even when you're filtering down.

DSR is handled at a driver level, and it's best used when your GPU has some performance overhead to play with. If your GPU is already working about as hard as it can to render frames at 1080p, making it render frames at 2K or 4K is going to cause a serious hit to frame rates. DSR works with all modern NVIDIA GPUs, and it can even be enabled alongside DLSS. You should be able to use DSR to some extent in most PC games, as there's not any special requirement to be baked in on the game's side (like with DLSS).

NVIDIA's Deep Learning Dynamic Super Resolution (DLDSR) is an upgrade to DSR, meant to make the process more efficient while resulting in the same end product. The method still renders frames at a higher resolution before shrinking them down to fit your monitor's resolution, but it leverages NVIDIA's potent AI and the Tensor cores in RTX GPUs to downscale images more efficiently.

NVIDIA claims that 4x DSR (rendering the frames at a resolution four times higher than your monitor supports) is about the same as 2.25x DLDSR, making it almost twice as efficient. This is meant to take some of the load off of the GPU. Because DLDSR relies on Tensor cores — the same ones used for DLSS — it will only be available in NVIDIA RTX 20- and 30-series GPUs. If you don't have an RTX card, you can still use standard DSR in games.

DLDSR will also work alongside DLSS, upscaling images before DLDSR kicks in for a higher resolution to be downscaled again. And like DSR, DLDSR is best used by those who have a GPU with some available performance overhead. You're still rendering frames at a higher resolution before downscaling them, and the hit to the GPU is the same.

Dynamic Super Resolution renders a game at a higher, more detailed resolution and intelligently shrinks the result back down to the resolution of your monitor, giving you 4K-quality graphics on an HD screen.