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Nvidia's Monday-night "GeForce On" presentation, timed with this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV, included an unsurprising flurry of AI-related announcements. On the GPU front, rather than emphasise any new graphics hardware, Nvidia instead unveiled DLSS 4.5, which updates two pieces of the DLSS image reconstruction family.

The first, a "second generation" version of its Super Resolution "transformer" model, is out right now for all Nvidia RTX GPUs and can immediately be forced on in DLSS 4-compatible games using the official Nvidia App. The second, Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, will come exclusively to Blackwell GPUs sometime in the "spring" with a new 6x FG maximum and a frame-rate cap - and Nvidia says these will combine to deliver smoother frame-time cadence.

When pressed about the event's lack of new RTX GPU models, particularly anything from a rumoured RTX 5000 Super series, Nvidia representatives responded by saying the company does not "talk about unannounced or rumoured products."

Before we go hands-on with RTX 4.5's new transformer model ourselves, we have seen limited demo sequences that spotlight some of its image quality improvements. These include reduced ghosting when a first-person view rotates at high speeds, increased image stability and reduced shimmering when dynamic lighting is cast on a finely textured surface, superior parsing of fine particles in effects like flames and generally improved anti-aliasing.

Each of those improvements addresses existing Digital Foundry criticisms about the existing transformer model, though each demo shown off in a pre-CES session lasted no longer than a few seconds - so we look forward to further, rigorous testing to see how DLSS 4.5 transformer impacts a variety of graphics scenarios. Today's Nvidia App update includes two new transformer models to choose from: "model M," which is recommended for general use, and "model L," which is recommended for a more aggressive "4K ultra-performance" upscaling profile.

Nvidia reps suggest the new DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution model uses five times the compute of the 1.0 transformer model, and floating-point 8 (FP8) support on the hardware level in Ada Lovelace and Blackwell GPUs drives "even faster" performance of this new, updated Transformer model. But we did not receive clear indications of what DLSS 4.5 transformer's performance hit will be on either newer or older GPUs - and previous testing has confirmed that the 1.0 model incurs a performance penalty compared to the older DLSS "CNN" model, especially on RTX 20 series and 30 series parts.

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A still image can only convey so much about a technology like Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation, but its use of the updated DLSS 4.5 transformer model at least makes its general visual quality look improved compared to DLSS 4.

Nvidia says that the updated transformer model figures into DLSS 4.5's improved frame-generation technology, as well - with higher-quality image input leading to higher-quality generation of new frames. Between that and other undisclosed updates to the FG model, Nvidia says DLSS 4.5 DMFG - again, as a Blackwell GPU exclusive - will generate up to five frames of animation from every source frame. This surpasses DLSS 4's three frames generated per source frame.

The "D" for "Dynamic" applies to whatever target frame-rate is set within the Nvidia App. DMFG will keep tabs of that target and either emphasise MFG in moments where source frames dip or let the GPU natively render more frames when it's easily able to. Nvidia says that at either extreme - with either more source frames or more generated frames - the new DMFG system has been tuned to improve DLSS 4 MFG frame-times, proudly advertising "better frame-pacing" in its promotional materials. Exciting stuff if it all bears out - and we'll be there day one to test how well the new model balances image quality, frame-time delivery and input latency.

The event included a number of other announcements, a few of which we can recap here before likely getting hands-on opportunities either at CES or down the line in the weeks and months to come.

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Nvidia's provided photography of off-screen Counter-Strike 2 gameplay on the same monitor, with and without Pulsar technology enabled.

Nvidia Pulsar: One of Nvidia's least AI-influenced announcements is the long-awaited rollout of Pulsar-compatible monitors, following the technology's debut at CES 2024. This entirely new approach to frame presentation on flat-panel monitors combines backlight strobing with a de-flickering pass and smarter pixel colour-shifting, and it effectively gives LCD panels motion quality more in line with CRT displays - even when running as low as 120Hz.

The first wave of compatible monitors from Acer, AOC, Asus and MSI all max out at 27-inch and 1440p resolution, and all four models go on sale on January 7th.

RTX Remix: A new "Remix Logic" system advertises a substantial number of visual aspects that can be added to RTX Remix mod projects "without ever needing to touch the source code or programming." World-changing effects like weather can now be triggered selectively: instead of snow and ice appearing everywhere, an RTX Remix mod will now limit this weather to particular environs and exclude interior areas. RTX Remix Logic will add more variables for particle and volumetric effects and material types, and it will also include triggers for chromatic aberration, vignettes and other "stress" signals.

Like any other RTX Remix toggle, these will likely vary wildly based on how modders manually update important in-game aspects like lighting conditions and material types - and we've recently taken a deep dive into how much a lift such an update can require in the form of the uneven-but-promising in-development Unreal RTX project.

Nvidia ACE: What if on-board Tensor cores could be redirected from graphical tasks to other ML-intensive work - particularly something that models assistance and advice in an intensive strategy game? For years, Nvidia has been touting its Nvidia ACE systems as a wholly offline, locally rendered option for such experiments, and the GPU maker now points to a beta test coming to Creative Assembly's 2023 strategy game Total War: Pharoah, which will add an AI advisor as an Nvidia RTX-exclusive beta test in 2026. We hope you have VRAM to spare, however, as the "experimental" test will initially require roughly 6GB of spare VRAM to function.

Neural Texture Compression: Nvidia confirmed a small SDK update to this technology will launch during CES week. Nvidia tells us to expect inference performance increases in the 20-40 percent range relative to the currently posted SDK. The company will offer more information in a developer blog this week.