DLSS-NR on AMD gets up to 42% faster with simpler installation
You may need to wait months, if not years, for AMD to offer anything similar to NVIDIA DLSS 5. Not everyone will wait. Not everyone needs it in their games, and not everyone will trade GPU performance for visuals that may look better or worse depending on the scene (and taste). However, those interested in DLSS 5 can already try parts of the technology on Radeon GPUs through community mods.
We already covered modders bringing DLSS Neural Rendering to Radeon GPUs, where performance was the main problem. AMD GPUs were not designed specifically for this technology, so developers have had to find ways to make it usable at acceptable speeds. In this case, frame generation time may be more useful than raw FPS, since frame generation can inflate the final frame-rate figure without reducing the cost of the neural rendering workload itself.
Recently, running NVIDIA DLSS 5 Neural Rendering on AMD Radeon GPUs is becoming both faster and easier. The unofficial DLSS-NR-on-AMD project has received two major performance updates, while a separate AMDNR Launcher now handles much of the installation and configuration work automatically.
Developer Daniel Blanco released DLSS-NR-on-AMD Alpha 0.3.3 with a claimed 23% performance improvement over version 0.3.2. Alpha 0.4.0 followed shortly afterward with another claimed 42% improvement over 0.3.3. The project supports Radeon RX 9000 and RX 7000 GPUs in DirectX 12 games using FSR.
Installation also gets simpler
AMDNR Launcher addresses another problem with these unofficial implementations: installation. Instead of manually copying and replacing DLL files for each game, users can select a game and runtime from the launcher and install the required components with a few clicks. It can also remove installed files and update AMDNR components from one interface.
The launcher currently supports Daniel Blanco’s DLSS-NR-on-AMD runtime and Kien’s open-source HIP runtime while retaining the full OptiScaler interface. This includes access to FSR and XeSS options, frame generation, Ray Regeneration and Model Interleave. Experimental handheld support is also available, with the developers already testing the software on the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme.
Performance work is continuing separately from the launcher. The AMDNR developers report that one neural network pass on an RX 7800 XT at 1440p with FSR Quality dropped from around 73 ms to 52 ms, while RX 9000 GPUs are receiving new kernels targeting further improvements. Both projects remain unofficial community efforts and are not affiliated with AMD or NVIDIA.
It looks like NVIDIA DLSS 5 (NR) tech has been completely taken over by modders. It works on GeForce, Radeon and even Intel GPUs, but the biggest issue is performance, increased GPU power, and perhaps no official way to force this tech on other non-official games. It’s hard to believe DLSS 5 is still locked to one title (NBA game).
Source: DLSS-NR-on-AMD (GitHub), AMDNR (GitHub), Wccftech