Digital Foundry tested DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation on an RTX 5080 – and is very impressed with the new feature.
At the start of CES 2025, Nvidia unveiled the new GPUs around the Geforce RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 (Ti) as expected. In addition to the graphics cards, the company also presented the new version of its in-house AI upscaling DLSS 4.
Within DLSS 4, there is a new feature as a trademark that is reserved exclusively for the RTX 50 generation and goes by the name “Multi Frame Generation” (MFG). Extremely simplified: Instead of one frame, MFG is now used to generate up to three frames using artificial intelligence, which of course allows Nvidia to promise significantly higher frame rates.
At CES 2025, the tech experts from Digital Foundry were able to take a closer look at a GeForce RTX 5080, which will go on sale in this country for around €1,170, along with DLSS 4 and MFG.
- A “special version” of Cyberpunk 2077 was available as a benchmark game. Thanks to path tracing, the title from developer studio CD Projekt Red is considered one of the Nvidia RTX showpieces par excellence.
Lots of praise for DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation
Richard Leadbetter, founder of Digital Foundry, was extremely impressed by the pure DLSS 4 in his video. He said that some of the problems that tech experts have with DLSS in general have been drastically reduced.
- These include smearing and ghosting effects, which should occur to a significantly lesser extent with DLSS 4.Most motion flicker has also disappeared
- At the same time, the “Ray Reconstruction” feature presented in the course of DLSS 3.5 (according to Leadbetter an “upscaling for raytracing”) had similar, welcome improvements to be determined.
Leadbetter then went into more detail about the pure frame rates achieved with DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation.
The settings chosen were 4K resolution with Raytracing Overdrive activated. By contrast, a Geforce RTX 4080 Super with DLSS 3 and “regular” frame generation provided the comparison value.
- In a direct comparison, the RTX 5080 with DLSS 4 and MFG with an increase in frame rate of around 91 percent compared to the RTX 4080 Super with DLSS 3, could shine.
- The visualization of the frametimes also shows that the use of multi-frame generation not only produces more, but also even frame rates A random test shows that at maximum frame generation, latency is increased by an average of 6.4 milliseconds, which Leadbetter calls “a fair trade” in terms of the additional frames gained.
Digital Foundry’s conclusion: Good first impression
As Leadbetter further elaborates, he was only able to test the RTX 5080 with DLSS 4 and MFG for a “very limited period of time” with a single game known for its status as an Nvidia showcase.
Accordingly, further tests are awaited, however promising the initial independent impressions may be. Nevertheless, it is remarkable to see Cyberpunk 2077 running at well over 120 FPS at 4K resolution with path tracing activated.
