RTX 4000 Series Introduced at GTC 22 with DLSS 3.0

RTX 4090 will launch October 12 at $1599 & RTX 4080s launches in November with DLSS 3.0

Today, to kick-off GTC 22, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang delivered the highly anticipated GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast. Today is only the second time that a GeForce video card was launched at a GTC, the last time was the Titan X in 2015, Gamers will be particularly interested in the first 20 minutes of the presentation while creators and developers will want to watch it all.

Here is a short summary of the highlights from the event beginning with the unveiling of the GeForce RTX 40 Series of GPUs led by its new flagship, the RTX 4090 GPU, with up to 4x the performance of its predecessor particularly regarding ray tracing. All of the following image sources are from the presentation.

Based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture, the GeForce RTX 40 Series delivers a generational leap in performance and efficiency offering improved real-time ray tracing and AI-based neural rendering. The first three new GPUs include the 76-billion transistor flagship GeForce RTX 4090, available October 12 starting at $1599, and two GeForce RTX 4080s which will be available in November, starting at $899 (12GB) and $1199 (16GB). The RTX 4090 costs $100 more than the RTX 3090 launch price while the RTX 4080s have large price increases compared with the RTX 3080 launch ($699) two years ago.

The GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 GPUs will be available as custom boards while the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 (16GB) are also produced directly by NVIDIA in limited Founders Editions for gamers wanting the in-house design. In addition, stock-clocked and factory-overclocked models will be available from top add-in card providers (AIBs) such as ASUS, Colorful, Gainward, Galaxy, GIGABYTE, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. Unfortunately, EVGA has indicated they will no longer be producing new video cards.

All of the details from nvidia.com are here and here. One of the other really big announcements was about DLSS 3.0 which is evidently a complete reworking of DLSS to take advantage of the new fourth-generation Tensor Cores and a new Optical Flow Accelerator only available on the RTX 4000 series.

DLSS 3 Introduced With AI-Powered Frame Generation for up to 4x Performance

GeForce RTX 40 Series will support DLSS 3, an AI-powered performance multiplier building on AI-accelerated super-resolution techniques to deliver outstanding image quality and up to 4x the performance of brute-force rendering, plus low latency responsiveness for an improved gaming experience.

DLSS 3 is the latest iteration of NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling technology which introduces a new capability called Optical Multi Frame Generation. Optical Multi Frame Generation generates entirely new frames, rather than just pixels, delivering large performance boosts. Because DLSS Frame Generation executes as a post-process on the GPU, it can boost frame rates even when the game is bottlenecked by the CPU. This is especially well-illustrated by MS Flight Simulator 20/20 which is notoriously CPU-bottlenecked.

We are really looking forward to benchmarking DLSS 3.0 when it eventually comes to VR. The technology is first coming to the most popular game engines, such as Unity and Unreal Engine, and DLSS 3 has also received support from leading game developers, with more than 35 games and applications announcing support. In addition, Valve’s Portal has been remastered with full ray tracing and DLSS 3.0

NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios has reimagined Valve’s iconic video game Portal, regarded as one of the best video games of all time. Advanced graphics features such as full ray tracing and DLSS 3 give the game a completely new look. Portal with RTX will be released as free official downloadable content with RTX graphics in November for Portal’s 15th anniversary.

Portal with RTX is made possible by the new NVIDIA RTX Remix modding platform that also debuted in today’s GeForce Beyond special broadcast at GTC. A “mod” (modification) is new in-game content that players create, not the developers. RTX Remix is an Omniverse-based modding platform to create RTX remasters of classic games. RTX Remix allows modders to easily capture game assets and automatically enhance materials with powerful AI tools as well as enable RTX with ray tracing and DLSS.

The special presentation also brought new announcements for NVIDIA Studio for accelerating content creation.

3D artists will get performance upgrades fromDLSS 3 technology using AI-powered fourth-generation RTX Tensor Cores, and a new Optical Flow Accelerator to improve smoothness and speed up movement in the viewport while working in 3D applications such as Omniverse, Unity and Unreal Engine 5.
RTX Remix puts powerful new game modding tools in the hands of creators including ray tracing and DLSS for classic games, as well as collaboration in Omniverse-connected apps.
New eighth-generation dual AV1 encoders use dedicated hardware on the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs bringing significant boosts for both video editors and live streamers. Video editors may be able to cut their export times in half since the updated tensor cores will boost performance in AI Tools by a claimed 70%. Livestreamers may benefit from these new Broadcast effects. Using dual encoders, gamers can capture up to 8K60 footage using GeForce Experience.
The new September Studio driver is also now available.
OBS Studio and Discord will add AV1 support in their next software release.
The top video editing apps – DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro via the Voukoder plugin, and Jianying – are adding support for AV1 and dual encoders.
New features in the SDKs that power NVIDIA Broadcast will be available in OBS, VTube Studio, and more.

Racer RTX, a demo built in Omniverse, showcases the latest technologies possible with the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. This special edition of ‘In The NVIDIA Studio’ demonstrates how a global team led by creative director Gabriele Leone created this stunning new Racer RTX demo with GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs and DLSS 3 in NVIDIA Omniverse.

There was much more including announcements of 360 FPS on 1440p 360Hz monitors arriving this fall with as low as 10ms of system latency in top esports titles. NVIDIA’s Reflex reduces system latency currently in over 40 games, including 8 of the top 10 competitive shooters and another 8 Reflex games were just announced, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Cyberpunk 2077, Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed, Loopmancer, Overwatch 2, Scathe, SUPER PEOPLE, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, with more on the way. DLSS 3 integrations also incorporate NVIDIA Reflex, which synchronizes the GPU and CPU to ensure better responsiveness and low system latency.

We are really looking forward to bringing BTR’s readers the pancake and VR gaming benchmarks of these new cards – stay tuned!