Cyberpunk 2077 is already one of the best-looking games available, despite its advancing age, but the neon-lit game’s latest update makes it look even better, thanks to its new support for DLSS 4. The new Cyberpunk 2.21 patch is being rolled out right now, ready for the new RTX 5000 launch, but you can actually enable the new upscaling tech on any Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU, including the 2000 series.
I had the chance to test a pre-build of Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS 4 support before the launch, ready for my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review, and I was really impressed with the results. You will need an RTX 5000 graphics card to run Multi Frame Gen, which provides a massive boost to frame rates, but the new DLSS Super Resolution tech will work on any Nvidia RTX card, and it makes a big difference to image quality compared to previous versions of DLSS.
Ostensibly standing for Deep Learning Super Sampling, Nvidia DLSS started as a way of using AI to improve frame rates in games. Put simply, it renders the game’s menus, text, and HUD at the resolution you select, but it renders the actual game at a lower resolution to boost the frame rate, using AI to upscale it to a higher resolution. It’s now supported in hundreds of games, and it enables your GPU to run games at settings that would otherwise make them too slow to play, particularly when it comes to ray tracing.
There was just one problem, which was that DLSS upscaling had a negative impact on image quality compared to running at your screen’s native resolution, particularly at lower resolutions such as 1080p, as the starting resolution was so much lower. You might get playable frame rates with ray tracing, but your game could also look blurry, particularly on the aggressive Performance settings.
That’s largely changed with this new update, though, thanks to Nvidia switching the AI model from the old convolutional neural network (CNN) model to a much more sophisticated transformer model. Nvidia has updated the model across three DLSS technologies – Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and DLAA, and it makes an instantly noticeable difference in image quality when you enable it. Put simply, the new tech makes the upscaling system much more stable, so you get less in the way of ghosting, smearing, and blurriness, and it can also resolve more detail than the previous DLSS model.
Once Cyberpunk 2077 has updated to the latest patch, you just need to go into the Graphics settings menu to enable the new tech. Make sure that DLSS Super Resolution is set as the upscaling system, and you’ll also find a separate setting to change the model from CNN to transformer.
As you can see in the image above, taken with DLSS on the Performance setting and with the in-game resolution set to 1,920 x 1,080, the new transformer model looks much better than the old CNN model, with the level of detail and sharpness looking much closer to the native resolution screenshot.
There is a slight performance hit compared to the older CNN model, such that your boost in frame rate is on average around 5% lower with the transformer model, but it’s a small enough hit to easily be made up for by the boost in image quality.
Best of all, this DLSS 4 update is free to all Nvidia GeForce RTX owners, and in the future, you’ll also be able to force the transformer model into games that don’t natively support it, thanks to a new setting in the Nvidia app called DLSS Override. If you own Cyberpunk 2077 and an RTX GPU, get your driver and game updated, and enjoy fast frame rates with much less blurriness.
For more detail on what’s coming with the new Nvidia cards, check out our RTX 5080 guide, as well as our RTX 5070 guide, where we take you through what to expect from the new lineup. You can also read our best graphics card guide, where we take you through all our recommended options at a range of prices.
