Leaked Nvidia DLSS 4 Details Suggest RTX 50-Series GPUs Will Have ‘Neural Rendering’

We already know a lot about the upcoming big, hefty, and supposedly super-powered GPUs from Nvidia. But there’s another side to Team Green’s success, and that’s in its DLSS upscaling software. The proprietary blend of resolution upscaling, frame generation, and anti-aliasing may be receiving an upgrade in 2025 with DLSS 4. New leaks from some industry sources suggest that Nvidia’s super scaling tech could be getting “neural rendering capabilities” alongside other AI enhancements to make games run better on lower-end hardware.

German-language tech site HardwareLuxx (via VideoCardz) spotted pre-CES marketing from GPU OEM INNO3D (pay no attention to the alphabet soup of tech naming conventions). The manufacturer talked up Nvidia’s advanced “deep learning super sampling offering even better image quality and higher frame rates.” The next-gen GPUs should also have “enhanced ray tracing,” “improved AI-driven upscaling,” and “neural rendering capabilities.”

If you extrapolate based on these bullet points, it seems that whatever update to DLSS 3.5—first launched in 2023—will be AI-centric. INNO3D has deleted the original DLSS bullet points from its news release. Luckily, the original page is available via the Internet Archive. The screenshot below shows that the manufacturer was heavy on marketing but light on details. We still don’t have a good idea of how neural rendering will change how cards display graphics on PCs.

© Screenshot: INNO3D

Like other super sampling technologies from AMD and Intel, Nvidia uses AI algorithms to upscale a lower-resolution frame to a higher resolution, which increases frame rates. Nvidia claims more than 600 games currently support various RTX upscaling technologies, but only a fraction of those titles support the latest version, DLSS 3.5. Both RTX 20- and RTX 30-series cards can use DLSS 3 or later, though frame generation is only available on 40-series GPUs.

We would be surprised if Nvidia doesn’t bring whatever upcoming DLSS update to its previous range of cards or at least go back to the RTX 30-series. Some features may be restricted to the 50-series cards, especially those that demand a good deal of AI performance. This month, Nvidia revealed its palm-sized $250 Orin Nano chip. It’s built to let regular folk run AI applications on their PC. The new DLSS update will include “generative AI acceleration,” which indicates the new graphics cards will have an AI bent as well.

INNO3D’s release mentions that this “new range of graphics cards” will include the liquid-cooling option iChill Frostbite alongside other fan-cooled GPUs. VideoCardz took “Small Form Factor” as a hint that Nvidia may also unveil mid-range cards like the 5060 at CES in January. Nvidia could show off these cards but hold them back for release later in 2025, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Both FSR 3 and XeSS (recently upgraded to XeSS 2) are very good at supporting better framerates in games, but in our experience, DLSS offers slightly better overall performance. It’s also the most customizable, with some games, like Cyberpunk 2077, offering specific frame generation and ray reconstruction options. We don’t yet know if the AI capabilities will spill over into games, but maybe we’ll finally get the promised “G-Assist” features to adjust game graphics for users on the fly.