Do you want better performance in games? Of course you do,
and when it comes to gaming laptops, we’ll take any performance boost we can get.
Luckily for us, it’s possible to increase your framerate in games,
lower latency, and even have the game look better while using the same
if not less power! You might already have access to this feature for free too!
Sounds too good to be true right? Well NVIDIA’s DLSS makes this a reality in
more than 180 current games and apps! I've said in many videos that DLSS is a
great feature. There's a reason we enable it in our game benchmark videos, which is why I was on
board when NVIDIA wanted to sponsor this video to show you how DLSS can be used to increase both the
performance and efficiency of your gaming laptop. Alright, so what is DLSS?
DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, and put simply, its goal is to increase frame rates
in games without sacrificing image quality. It does this by rendering fewer pixels and
using AI to construct sharp, higher resolution images in real-time while you’re playing a game.
Basically, it’s AI magic, and DLSS can do this by using the dedicated AI processors
on GeForce RTX GPUs called Tensor cores. Put a little less basically, NVIDIA
uses a powerful supercomputer to take a low resolution game frame and uses
a 16K reference image to work out how to generate a higher quality frame. Once the neural network
is trained, the AI models are delivered to you through NVIDIA’s Game Ready drivers.
Cool, but why is DLSS beneficial when it comes to gaming laptops?
Compared to a desktop PC, a gaming laptop has more power, heat and noise constraints.
Each laptop runs within a defined power limit range that the thermal solution can support.
By enabling DLSS, we’re able to increase both performance and efficiency at the same time,
because we’re getting more FPS out of the same power and thermal budgets.
With high refresh rate 1440p and even 4K screens starting to become more common on gaming laptops,
maintaining high FPS in games at higher settings will become more challenging.
DLSS offers 4 different image quality modes - Quality, Balanced, Performance,
and Ultra Performance. These control the game’s internal rendering resolution and give you the
choice between bigger performance boosts or better image quality. Everyone’s different,
and like I always say, having user choice is best. The general rule of thumb from NVIDIA was they
recommend starting with DLSS on quality mode at 1080p, and balanced mode for 1440p and above, so
this is how all of our our testing has been done. Let’s check out how DLSS affects game FPS, system
latency, power draw and of course, image quality. We’ll start out with Cyberpunk 2077. I’ve got the
1080p results down the bottom, 1440p results just above, and 4K results above that. At 4K,
our GeForce RTX 3080 Ti was running the game at around 30 FPS. Maybe that’s acceptable for console
gamers, but we’re PC gamers and we demand more! Simply enabling DLSS with balanced mode was almost
enough to double the frame rate and get us above the magic 60 FPS sweet spot. The 56% increase to
average FPS at 1440p is still quite significant, and while there’s still an improvement at 1080p,
it’s not as large, which is in part due to the higher DLSS quality mode.
A competitive game like Fortnite benefits greatly from more frames. 1440p 165Hz laptop screens have
become quite popular this year, and being able to boost the average frame rate by 33%
by turning on one setting would allow us to get better use out of such a screen. The laptop I’m
testing with has a 4K 144Hz screen, and while 4K gaming was running ok at around 70 FPS,
a 56% boost is possible simply by enabling DLSS. With DLSS on, even the 1% low,
which represents the dips in performance, is far ahead of the average FPS with DLSS off.
Not only that, but I actually found that the laptop was drawing less power with DLSS enabled
too. Sure, playing with DLSS off was barely using 2% more power in this game, it’s a negligible
difference. NVIDIA expects the same power level to be maintained with and without DLSS. But combined
with the fact that Fortnite was also reaching a 56% higher frame rate in the same test with DLSS
on while also using less power demonstrates that DLSS increases both performance and efficiency.
But wait, there’s more! Again continuing with our Fortnite example, I actually found that the system
latency was lower with DLSS enabled. This is the amount of time between a mouse click and when
a gunshot fires on the screen. As DLSS increases the amount of frames that get sent to the screen,
it makes sense that it would reduce latency too, though it’s only a minor difference in this game.
Alright we’ve confirmed that better performance in games with DLSS enabled is possible within
the same power budget, but what about image quality? If the image doesn’t look good with DLSS,
then this has all been for nothing. NVIDIA says that DLSS aims to offer
similar or better image quality, so let’s put this claim to the test!
NVIDIA has an Image Comparison and Analysis Tool, ICAT for short,
which can be used by anyone to compare screenshots and videos from games side by side.
I’m not much of a pixel peeper, but I spent a good amount of time
looking at this same Fortnite playthrough side by side and honestly both myself and my
partner preferred how it looked with DLSS on. You can judge for yourself though, here’s a
still image from Fortnite of me running through the game. DLSS off is on the left and DLSS on
balanced mode is on the right. To me, pretty much every aspect of the image on the right hand side
is clearer and sharper with DLSS enabled. This is subjective and comes down to personal preference
to some degree. YouTube compression might make this hard to see, so I’ll leave a link to the
100mb video file in the description if you want a closer look at what I’m showing here.
I wasn’t expecting DLSS to look better. I mean we’re using DLSS on balanced mode, not even the
higher quality option, but everywhere I looked things just looked better to me with DLSS enabled.
Going into this test, I was expecting DLSS to look worse, but it seems like there’s truth to NVIDIA’s
claim of “similar or better image quality”. Results will of course depend on the specific game
and the DLSS implementation, but anyone can use ICAT and compare any game with and without DLSS
themselves, NVIDIA isn’t hiding anything here. All of the data I’ve collected for this video is
just telling me that DLSS is objectively delivering a better gaming experience.
It does this by offering higher frame rates in games, better power efficiency, lower latency,
all while maintaining good image quality. So sponsored video or not, these are the
reasons why we’re going to keep testing with DLSS enabled in our game benchmark videos.
It’s a seriously great feature that anyone with a GeForce RTX gaming laptop should use.
DLSS is currently supported in over 180 different games and applications, and you can improve your
gaming experience with more than 180 GeForce RTX 30 series laptop designs that are available
right now. You can check out those gaming laptops with the sponsored links below the video.
Speaking of improving your gaming experience, NVIDIA’s Advanced Optimus is another great way
to boost gaming performance, and you can find out more about this feature in this video next!