DLSS 4.5 Preset F Drops: 23% More VRAM, But Better Ray Reconstruction

Nvidia just quietly dropped a new DLSS update for developers, and while it's not the DLSS 5 you've been waiting for, there's still something worth talking about.

The company rolled out DLSS SDK version 310.9.1, which officially adds Preset F for DLSS 4.5 ray reconstruction. It also comes with a handful of bug fixes and stability improvements. But before you get too excited, DLSS 5? Still no sign of it. Nvidia's keeping that one under wraps for now.

So what's the deal with Preset F? It's a brand-new model for DLSS 4.5 ray reconstruction, built on Nvidia's second-generation Transformer architecture. According to Nvidia's official numbers, this model packs 20% more parameters and 35% more compute than the previous version, while aiming to keep performance roughly the same. That's a pretty big jump in raw capability.

Here's the cool part for developers: Preset F is now part of Nvidia's public developer kit. That means devs can integrate the latest ray reconstruction model directly, instead of relying on extracting files from other games or using the Nvidia App to override things. It's a much cleaner path.

But there's a trade-off. Nvidia also published VRAM usage and processing time data for the new model in its updated docs. The default mode and Preset F are grouped together, while Preset D and Preset E are listed separately. On RTX 40 and RTX 50 series cards, Preset F generally eats up more VRAM and takes slightly longer to process. At 4K resolution, VRAM allocation jumps from 467.97 MB to 578.84 MB—that's roughly a 23.7% increase. On the RTX 5090, processing time goes from 1.83 ms to 2.12 ms, about a 15.8% bump.

On RTX 20 and RTX 30 series cards, the results are a mixed bag. Some scenarios might see unexpected performance fluctuations, so older GPU owners should keep an eye out.

In some good news, the DLSS Swapper tool has already been updated to support DLSS 310.9.1. You can now download and swap in the new DLSS files directly through the tool, no more manually digging through the Nvidia SDK. That's a nice quality-of-life win for tinkerers.

So, is Preset F worth the extra VRAM hit? If you're on a high-end RTX 40 or 50 card and want the best ray reconstruction quality, probably yes. But if you're rocking older hardware, you might want to hold off and see how it performs in real-world tests. What do you think—are you willing to trade a chunk of VRAM for better visuals? Let us know in the comments.