NVIDIA's DLSS upscaling technology has revolutionized the PC gaming industry in the last few years. Ever since its introduction in 2018 alongside the RTX 20 series graphics cards, we've seen vast improvements in DLSS, with NVIDIA adding more capabilities like ray reconstruction and frame generation. As much as I enjoy using DLSS to upscale and play graphically demanding games at 4K resolution at smooth frame rates, this technology has also negatively impacted the PC gaming space. While it works like magic, your games, in reality, look and feel a bit worse than they should.

4 DLSS introduces visual artifacts

Expect ghosting and smearing, especially in fast-paced games

DLSS uses AI to upscale your games, which Nvidia calls "Super Resolution." It basically takes a lower-resolution frame that's natively rendered on your PC and outputs a higher-resolution frame. Let's say you're playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a 4K monitor with the DLSS Quality setting enabled. Here, your graphics card renders the game at 1440p and upscales it to 4K resolution. Sounds great, right? Well, not quite.

Unfortunately, the upscaled output won't look as good as a natively rendered 4K footage. While it does appear pretty close to 4K footage at first glance, the differences are noticeable to a trained eye. When you look closely, you'll see ghosting and smearing in moving objects far away in a scene — for example, the NPCs in a video game. This is more noticeable when you're playing fast-paced games, and it's one of the main reasons gamers don't use DLSS in competitive titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone.

Thankfully, Nvidia claims DLSS 4 will alleviate this issue, as it uses a new transformer model that minimizes ghosting and improves detail in moving objects. And the best part? You don't need to upgrade to the RTX 50 series to enjoy this improvement. DLSS 4 Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction will be available on all RTX graphics cards after a driver update. But until NVIDIA rolls that out, you'll have to deal with these annoying visual artifacts.

3 DLSS frame generation increases latency

The input lag is unbearable in competitive games

Artificially generating more frames with AI seems like an excellent way to get higher FPS in games. DLSS 3.5 can insert a frame between two natively rendered frames, whereas DLSS 4's multi-frame generation technology — exclusive to RTX 50 series graphics cards — can add up to three more frames to further boost the frame rate. Either way, frame generation increases latency because the AI needs time to analyze the last rendered frame and predict the next one. This increase in latency is why the game doesn't feel as buttery smooth as it should be.

The latency increase results in gamers experiencing input lag, i.e., the game doesn't feel as responsive. Although this isn't a big deal in single-player games, it makes a tremendous difference in fast-paced multiplayer games. For those who play online games competitively, where every millisecond matters, DLSS frame generation's latency hit is a dealbreaker. It's not worth enabling it to improve the perceived frame rate when you know the game will feel less responsive.

2 Developers are getting lazy

Games aren't as optimized as they used to be

Remember when game developers put a ton of effort into making their games playable on low-end graphics cards? Nowadays, that doesn't seem to be the case. We can partly blame upscaling and frame generation technologies like Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR for this trend. Many gamers, as seen on Reddit, believe that developers use these technologies as a crutch instead of focusing on improving performance.

Look at it this way: if a flagship graphics card like the RTX 4090 needs DLSS and frame generation to run a AAA game at over 60 FPS, what chances do the low and mid-range graphics cards — that most people buy — have? Let's look at Silent Hill 2, for example. Even if you have an RTX 4090, you need to enable DLSS to get over 60FPS with maxed-out settings at 4K resolution. The same goes for Black Myth: Wukong, which runs at roughly 40FPS (in 4K) even with ray tracing disabled.

More and more developers expect gamers to enable DLSS to enjoy a smooth 60 FPS gaming experience, even on high-end cards. Studios seem to focus more on cutting development time to maximize profits and less on optimizing their games like they used to. Although modern games look very beautiful, game development is heading in the wrong direction. Developers must realize that most people don't have the money to spend over a grand on high-end GPUs.

1 Nvidia uses DLSS to mislead customers

Using DLSS to mask true performance gains is not a good look

When Nvidia's CEO and founder, Jensen Huang, revealed the RTX 5070 at CES 2025, he boldly claimed that it would deliver RTX 4090's performance. But he also said, "impossible without artificial intelligence" right after. Many people overlooked this, but that's the important part to note here, because Nvidia is using DLSS to mask the RTX 5070's true performance.

Remember that the RTX 5070 supports multi-frame generation, meaning it can generate three additional frames using AI per natively rendered frame, whereas the RTX 4090 can only generate one. Of course, when you put it that way, the RTX 5070 can match the RTX 4090's performance. However, if you compare the specs side by side, you'll immediately realize that the RTX 4090 is far more powerful. With DLSS disabled, the RTX 4090 will still easily outperform the newer RTX 5070.

NVIDIA's own performance slides on its RTX 5070 page indicate that the RTX 5070 is only about 20-25 percent faster than the RTX 4070 without DLSS multi-frame generation in games like Resident Evil 4 and Horizon Forbidden West. When one of the biggest companies in the world uses upscaling and frame generation technologies to make absurd claims like this, less-informed gamers may buy the wrong graphics card due to unrealistic expectations.

DLSS works like magic, but it comes at a cost

DLSS is, without a doubt, an excellent way to boost your frame rate while gaming. I use it when a demanding game—like Black Myth: Wukong or Cyberpunk 2077 — can't natively run at 4K/60 FPS with ray tracing enabled on my RTX 4090. However, I limit its use to single-player games since I don't have to worry much about input lag or ghosting. Whenever I load into a multiplayer match on Call of Duty, I make sure to turn it off. As long as you know its disadvantages and when to use it, you can reap the benefits of DLSS upscaling and frame generation, especially on a mid-range PC.