AMD DLSS 4.5 Mod Adds Support to RX 7000 and RX 9000

AMD GPUs have been gaining new technology through community projects, including support for Nvidia technologies not originally designed for Radeon hardware. A new mod now adds DLSS 4.5 support to AMD GPUs, while Intel's next-generation desktop CPU lineup has also appeared in a leak. At the same time, Microsoft is expanding its Advanced Shader Delivery technology to more PC hardware.

AMD GPUs have been getting a ton of new tech lately, from DLSS 5 to faster DLSS 5, CUDA support, and more. And it's all thanks to modders. But this time, a new mod has been released that adds DLSS 4.5 support to AMD GPUs. DLSS 4.5 is Nvidia's latest tech, and it actually upscales the image rather than finishing it.

AMD GPUs Get DLSS 4.5 Support Through a New Mod

So, if anything, it's probably more important than DLSS 5. Either way, the new mod is called D4R, and it supports DLSS 3, 4, and 4.5 on RX 7000 and 9000 GPUs. What's wild is that it uses ZLUDA, a compatibility layer that translates CUDA applications to run on AMD GPUs.

At first, it only supported RX 7000 cards, where DLSS 4.5 takes a pretty big hit compared to DLSS 3 or FSR 4. Luckily, support for FP8 compute and RX9000 GPUs was recently added, so they should run much faster. That said, it's only been tested on an emulator, so we obviously want to use it carefully.

A list of games tested so far is available on GitHub, and there are quite a few. At first, this only supported Windows games on Linux using Proton, but a new fork was created that apparently added Windows support. This one targets only DLSS 4 preset K and DLSS 4.5 preset M for the 9070 XT, but it clearly shows how quickly these projects can take off. All it takes is for someone to get it started.

A major problem that's plagued PC gaming for years is finally being fixed, and it's being released broadly in its first game.

For those who don't know, PCs have had a major issue that consoles have largely avoided: shader compilation. Game shaders have to be compiled to work with your GPU and driver. But unlike a console, where developers know exactly what GPU and software environment the game will run on, a PC can have many possible hardware and driver combinations.

Instead of simply downloading pre-compiled shaders made for one known system, PC games have traditionally compiled them locally. This can cause one of two problems. The first is when the game compiles them before you start playing. That's why some games hit you with long shader-compilation loading bars the first time you launch them or after a major driver update.

The other option is to compile shaders as they're actually needed while you're gaming. And that's where shader compilation stutter comes in. You enter a new scene, see a new effect, or encounter something the game hasn't compiled yet, and the CPU has to pause to compile that shader on the fly. This results in a noticeable stutter during gameplay.