While CES is usually about the latest tech products NVIDIA is the one company I look forward to their software advancements and this year didn’t disappoint. DLSS 4 already felt like one of the biggest leaps in neural rendering I’ve seen lately, but DLSS 4.5 is where things get kicked up a notch. The focus this year is cleaner detail, steadier motion, and less of that AI shimmer you sometimes catch when you know what to look for.
In our hands-on time, the improvements showed up in the stuff that usually breaks first. Strands of hair stayed defined instead of smearing, distant detail held together better while panning the camera, and lighting in areas that normally look muddy had more shape and separation. It genuinely made scenes pop, and in some cases it looked like it was pulling out detail you would expect to lose at higher performance settings.
A big reason DLSS 4.5 is considered a worthy upgrade updated Super Resolution model, moving to a second-generation transformer approach. In normal human terms, it seems better at understanding the full frame and how it changes over time, which helps reduce flicker, ghosting, and crawling edges. Particles, fine textures, and subtle lighting effects also looked more natural, instead of that overly processed look some upscaling can introduce.
One of the more exciting DLSS 4 showcases tied to this update is Capcom’s PRAGMATA, which is shaping up to be a perfect “stress test” for everything NVIDIA is pushing right now. The game drops you into a near-future lunar research station gone dark, where a spacefarer named Hugh teams up with an android, Diana, to survive a hostile AI takeover. What’s cool is how the gameplay concept matches the tech flex: you control both characters at the same time, using Diana’s hacking to crack open enemy defenses and Hugh’s firepower to capitalize on those weak points. And now on PC, Capcom is upping the ante by upgrading the visuals to full path tracing alongside DLSS 4, which should make that cold, metallic, high-contrast moonbase setting feel even more realistic while DLSS does the heavy lifting to keep performance in a playable place.
On the performance side, DLSS 4.5 pushes Multi Frame Generation with a new 6X mode, generating up to five extra frames for every rendered frame. There’s also Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, which automatically adjusts the multiplier to better match your display’s refresh rate so you get smoothness without forcing max frame gen all the time. Just keep the usual frame gen reality check in mind: it shines most when your base frame rate is already decent, and it works best paired with Reflex to keep things feeling responsive.
The rollout also sounds fairly friendly. DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution can be enabled through the NVIDIA app as an override across a large list of DLSS-supported games, so you do not necessarily have to wait for every title to patch it in. From what we tested at CES, DLSS 4.5 is less about chasing bigger numbers and more about making games look cleaner, sharper, and more stable while still getting the performance lift that makes DLSS worth using in the first place.
