Club Benefits
Nvidia launched DLSS 4.5 back in the middle of January and (spoiler alert) I’ve been really impressed with just how much detail is AI-infused upscaler is able to get from a rendered picture from just 25% the resolution. It feels like a real value booster for mid-range GPUs!
But there’s one feature that we’ve all been waiting for — Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation — the evolution of the frame gen we have right now. Basically, instead of just packing an arbitrary amount of AI-generated frames in between frames rendered by your GPU, dynamic frame gen is able to see what the max refresh rate of your screen is, and only generate the frames it needs to max that out.
Article continues belowHow does Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation work?
Think about it like driving up a steep mountain, and you’re in a car with a manual transmission. To maintain speed, you’ve got to manually shift your gears (like shifting between the different multi-frame gen options), and those gear shifts can cause a clunky pause in your momentum.
Dynamic multi-frame gen works like a car with automatic transmission — intelligently monitoring how hard the engine is working (your system load) and automatically shifting gears (the frame multiplier) up or down depending on what the terrain demands.
And when the road flattens out and the workload lightens, the frame multiplier seamlessly downshifts so your system computes exactly what is needed in every scenario. The end result of this in my testing is an uninterrupted gaming experience, where you’ll really struggle to notice when that multiplier changes, and virtually eliminates any tiny hints of latency.
Gamesmaxxing
So I saw Black Myth: Wukong running on an RTX 5080 machine with multi-frame generation cranked up manually to 6X, and then The Outer Worlds 2 with RTX 5060 Ti with that dynamic frame gen turned on.
The first observation when it comes to Black Myth is just how minimal the latency impact is at full 6X. We are talking only a few milliseconds here, which I didn’t feel at all in the controller inputs — all while showing off exactly what DLSS 4.5 is able to do here.
For example, while toggling to DLSS 4 shows that some of the finer particle details and distant textures are smoothed out/removed, switching to 4.5 really brings these intricacies back to life. You can see it just by looking at the sparks of light around your weapon.
Then, here comes dynamic frame gen, which targets the max frame rate (240Hz) of the monitor. I got the help of an Nvidia rep to hide the stats in the top corner of the screen with his hand — so I can try to guess when the frame multiplier changes based on feeling alone.
Because visually, I could take an educated guess, right? Like, when the screen is not so busy, that multiplier would go down, but when there’s much more textures and characters to render, it’ll go back up. But the transitions felt oh-so-smooth that I didn’t notice a change to the speed of my inputs whatsoever.
That comes down to three key things:
- Eliminating wasteful latency: Let’s say you’ve got a 144Hz monitor, and you’ve got DLSS running a game at 240 FPS. Those extra 96 frames are never seen, but the GPU still spends time computing them. This can create an interpolation gap — you’re over-exhausting your GPU with AI tasks it doesn’t need to do. By aiming for the max frame rate, the backlog is cleared and waste is eliminated.
- Smoother frame pacing: Another side-effect of aiming squarely for your monitor’s exact frame rate is a consistent delivery of said frames. If you manually set to a certain multiplier, there can be a jittery feeling as you go between GPU-intensive levels and calmer ones. This stops the over-delivery of frames in those quieter moments and has it all running at the same pace.
- Prioritizing the base frame rate: Any AI game frame generation is only as good as the base rate of how fast your GPU can render a game. Sometimes your game can look fast, but feel slow, and sometimes that can be exacerbated by clogging it with AI tasks. With Dynamic MFG shifting from 6X down to 2 or even 0X (native), this ensures that the card focuses more on rendering real frames faster.
The end result is a more tamed DLSS frame generation — only using its AI witchcraft when it’s absolutely necessary and making a game feel smoother and more responsive for it.
Outlook
So ahead of its March 31st debut (launching as part of an opt-in Nvidia app beta that you can turn on as an override), should you use it? Based on my time testing it, the answer is “absolutely,” but results may vary.
Of course, this is going to start life as a beta, so there’s that disclaimer out the way. Plus, I tested it in a very specific space ship environment in The Outer Worlds 2 — what would happen if I was to be in the throws of combat on a planet? How will results change across different games?
The answer, as we all explore this tech together, will change on a game-by-game basis — as more and more optimizations are made to work around it.
That being said, if this is what we can look forward to across the over 200 titles that support DLSS 4.5 (and the 20 native integrations currently in the works for upcoming games), this is the final piece of the puzzle that brings the vision of smooth, responsive AI fueled gameplay to life.
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