On August 25, 2026, NVIDIA released DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction. It supports every generation from the GeForce RTX 20 series onward, but for now it's only available through the early access version in the NVIDIA App, with a full release planned for September. What's changed this time isn't whether the feature that cleans up ray-traced lighting exists—it's an advancement of the Transformer architecture introduced with DLSS 4 to a second generation, improving the model's ability to preserve moving light and fine detail patterns over time.
The NVIDIA App can now override the model in 30 games. However, being listed as supported doesn't mean image quality improves dramatically in every scene. Early hands-on testing has found cases where visible smearing is noticeably reduced, alongside titles where the difference is hard to spot, and even scenes where new artifacts appear.
Model Updates from DLSS 3.5 to 4.5
Ray Reconstruction is a technology that uses AI to fill in insufficient light samples and remove noise in real-time ray tracing and path tracing. Since firing enough rays per pixel would be too computationally expensive, games assemble the final image from a limited number of samples. In 2023, DLSS 3.5 replaced the hand-tuned denoisers previously built separately for reflections and indirect lighting with a single network trained on NVIDIA's supercomputers.
With DLSS 4 in 2025, both the Ray Reconstruction and super-resolution models moved from CNNs to Transformers. Because self-attention can track relationships across a wide range of pixels, it became easier to preserve fine detail and lighting across frames. DLSS 4.5 advances this Transformer approach to a second generation. Rather than introducing an entirely new feature, this is a generational update that refines how much information is retained over time and how far it's applied to the current frame.
Ray Reconstruction handles denoising and upscaling within a single model. Even so, swapping the model doesn't guarantee uniform implementation quality across games. Developers still need to correctly pass linear depth and motion vectors, and disable the legacy denoiser. History also needs to be reset during camera cuts. If the inputs are flawed, even a smarter model can't properly fix smearing or flickering.
Understanding the 35% and 20% Figures Correctly
Regarding the second-generation model, NVIDIA states that it increased "compute capability" by 35% and the number of parameters processed by 20%, while maintaining performance comparable to the previous generation. The 35% figure here doesn't refer to a frame rate increase, nor does it necessarily mean a 35% rise in processing load. Likewise, the 20% figure doesn't mean the model's file size or VRAM usage increased by the same amount. NVIDIA's announcement page doesn't disclose the measurement methodology, baseline workload, or a breakdown by GPU generation.
On the image quality side, NVIDIA says it expanded the training data and deepened the model's ability to capture spatial relationships across an entire scene. It also improved the accuracy of selecting pixel samples and motion information received from the game engine, enhancing lighting accuracy, temporal stability, and clarity of moving objects. Additionally, developers can now finely tune how much historical frame information is retained.
Among the changes NVIDIA disclosed is a feature that lets developers finely adjust temporal accumulation. However, the announcement page doesn't specify particular settings or their effects on a per-scene basis. How the second-generation model selects among the motion and lighting data it receives will need to be verified once games implement native updates.
The Override for 30 Titles and September's Full Release
As of August 25, using the new model requires enabling Early Access under "Settings > About" in the NVIDIA App, along with GeForce Game Ready Driver 580.88 WHQL or later. From there, open "DLSS Override - Model Presets" in a supported game's Graphics settings or in Global Settings, and select Recommended or Preset F for Ray Reconstruction. Ray Reconstruction itself must also be enabled within the game.
The 30 titles receiving the override include Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, DOOM: The Dark Ages, PRAGMATA, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. This is a mechanism for distributing the new AI model to already-supported games—it doesn't add ray tracing or Ray Reconstruction to unsupported titles. Nor did all 30 titles receive game updates on the same day. Native support, where developers fine-tune even the temporal accumulation, will arrive gradually as individual game updates.
The claim of support across "all GeForce RTX" GPUs also doesn't guarantee identical speeds across generations. While the model works from the RTX 20 series through the 50 series, NVIDIA's published materials don't show processing times broken down by generation. If you're using an older GPU, it's worth checking the image quality difference and frame rate in your own setup.
Smearing Gone in PRAGMATA, a Weakness Remaining in Cyberpunk
NVIDIA cited three titles as examples of improvement. In Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, smearing in snow particles is reduced; in PRAGMATA, the residual glow left behind after a laser disappears has been suppressed. In Alan Wake 2, the thin noise lines shown on a CRT television are said to be preserved more stably. These are all examples of fixing information that tends to break down over time, rather than improvements to still-image sharpness.
HotHardware, which independently compared four titles, found that on Blackwell-generation GPUs, performance differences from the previous model fell within run-to-run variance. While PRAGMATA's laser afterglow showed clear improvement, a certain chain-link fence in Cyberpunk 2077 reportedly showed a more noticeable glowing artifact than with the older model. In Crimson Desert and Hogwarts Legacy, it was often difficult to distinguish differences during actual gameplay.
Wccftech also compared the RTX 5090 against RTX 40-series cards and reported frame rate differences within plus or minus 3fps. However, the specific RTX 40-series GPU and resolution used, along with other comparison conditions, weren't fully disclosed. What early testing can tell us so far is that the new model can fix certain specific failure patterns. It's not yet possible to conclude that it uniformly sharpens every game without any performance cost.
007 and CONTROL Will Test the Maturity of Native Integration
Going forward, the real indicator won't be app-based overrides but titles where developers tune their implementation specifically for the second-generation model. 007 First Light will receive a path tracing and DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction update on September 15. CONTROL Resonant is planned to support path tracing and DLSS 4.5 from launch on September 24.
RTX Remix has also gained the new model, making it possible to apply it to existing mods. At the same time, NVIDIA cautions that compatibility and image quality will vary from mod to mod. While Ray Reconstruction's reach has extended to user-created mods, there's no guarantee the results will match those seen in officially integrated games.
Once the full September release arrives, what will matter more than the number of supported titles will be processing time on RTX 20/30-series cards and how much smearing native updates can actually eliminate. If games pass correct information and can tune history retention scene by scene, the second-generation model should be able to suppress the most visible temporal breakdowns in path tracing. Whether that holds true across multiple game engines will determine the real-world strength of DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction.