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Nvidia’s DLSS 4 is almost here — but many questions remain

A box for the Nvidia RTX 5080.
VideoCardz / Chiphell
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Nvidia’s RTX 50-series is right around the corner, and now, one of the most prominent GPU leakers just confirmed that we can also look forward to a new version of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). According to kopite7kimi on X (Twitter), Nvidia will launch DLSS 4 alongside some of its best graphics cards. Still, that just leaves us with even more unanswered questions.

The main question that comes to mind is whether DLSS 4 will be an RTX 50-series exclusive or not. DLSS 3, with its impressive frame generation, was only available in the RTX 40-series. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Nvidia might, once again, introduce some kind of a major improvement for DLSS 4 that would be locked to next-gen cards. In fact, with some of the GPUs rumored to deliver minor performance increases, DLSS 4 could be a big deal for Nvidia’s RTX 50-series marketing.

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The other question is just what DLSS 4 might be able to provide that the previous iterations don’t. VideoCardz cites Inno3D, one of Nvidia’s partners, as it claims that DLSS 4 might change how graphics are processed and displayed. There are also mentions of neural rendering capabilities. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke about things such as generating entire textures and objects and even characters — but it’s unclear whether that would be part of DLSS at all, let alone DLSS 4. The ability to generate and upscale in-game content to that extent would certainly be a selling point for the RTX 50-series.

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Speaking of selling points, an early leaked listing of the RTX 5080 is how this confirmation came about. Kopite7kimi responded to a post by GawronskIT on X that showed the RTX 5080 priced at a whopping 1,699 euros (roughly $1,750). The listing mentions DLSS 4 in the title, and kopite7kimi confirmed that it’s coming.

RTX 5080 – 1699euro Asus price ~1349$ (no vat/tax) pic.twitter.com/ui24JcWqNQ

— Tomasz Gawroński (@GawroskiT) January 2, 2025

That’s a pretty steep price for the RTX 5080, which we’ve already seen listed at really high prices before. It really is starting to look like the recommended list price (MSRP) for the RTX 5080 might be similar to what the RTX 4080 initially launched at, meaning $1,200 for the Founders Edition card. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s partners may list overclocked cards at several hundred dollars more. That could include the Asus model seen in this screenshot.

It won’t be long before we know for sure. Stay tuned for our CES 2025 coverage, where we will talk about everything that Nvidia announces on January 6.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
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