DSOGaming tested the new Model F Ray Reconstruction preset on a Ryzen 9 7950X3D system with an RTX 5090 in Cyberpunk 2077, Crimson Desert, PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem, and Samson. Its most useful finding is not that the new model looks sharper in screenshots; it is that Model F reportedly removes specific, repeatable failure cases seen with the older DLSS 4 model: artifacts in PRAGMATA’s opening spaceship, excessive blur in Resident Evil Requiem, and flickering and firefly-reflection trails in Crimson Desert.
That result aligns with NVIDIA’s stated goal for the second-generation transformer model. NVIDIA says DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction processes more parameters while maintaining roughly comparable performance to its predecessor, using a larger training set and more detailed temporal and spatial analysis to improve lighting response, motion stability, and reconstruction of low-sample ray-traced scenes. Independent hands-on coverage from Club386, PC Gamer, PC Guide, and Tom’s Guide likewise found cleaner reflections, reduced ghosting, and more stable detail in supported titles, though not an across-the-board transformation in every scene.
Model F fixes the failures viewers notice in motion
Ray Reconstruction is easy to misunderstand because it is not chiefly an upscaling feature. Conventional ray tracing and path tracing are too expensive to render with enough rays per pixel in real time, so games use denoisers to turn a noisy, incomplete lighting signal into something that resembles a finished frame. NVIDIA’s Ray Reconstruction replaces several hand-tuned denoisers with a neural model intended to interpret the game’s motion vectors, depth information, lighting data, and previous frames together.
The benefit is often invisible in a static promotional image and obvious once a camera starts moving. The previous model could create a distracting set of tradeoffs: less raw noise, but smeared detail; a cleaner reflection, but a trail behind bright moving objects; stabilized lighting that occasionally shimmered or broke apart. Those are precisely the weaknesses DSOGaming says it encountered in PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem, and Crimson Desert.
In PRAGMATA, the report says the revised model removes visible artifacts inside the introductory spacecraft sequence. In Resident Evil Requiem, it says the opening street scene no longer takes on the noticeably soft, blurred look produced by the older Ray Reconstruction preset. For Crimson Desert, DSOGaming found that the new model eliminated pronounced flickering and the ghosting trails associated with firefly reflections.
Those observations make more sense than a generic “better image quality” claim because they concern situations in which ray reconstruction is most vulnerable: tiny high-contrast light sources, glossy reflections, transparencies, rapidly changing illumination, and thin geometric details in motion. NVIDIA’s own examples ahead of release pointed to reduced snow ghosting in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, cleaner residual lighting from lasers in PRAGMATA, and steadier CRT static in Alan Wake 2. The common thread is temporal stability, not merely added sharpness.
The upgrade is a driver override, not native game support
NVIDIA lists 27 games that can use DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction at launch, including Alan Wake 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Cyberpunk 2077, Crimson Desert, DOOM: The Dark Ages, F1 25, Hogwarts Legacy, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Portal with RTX, PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem, Samson, and Star Wars Outlaws. That is a larger starting list than DSOGaming’s wording suggests, although the practical distinction is worth spelling out.
A game must already implement DLSS Ray Reconstruction for the NVIDIA app to substitute the updated model. It does not add ray tracing, path tracing, or Ray Reconstruction to a game that lacks those features. Nor does it guarantee that every title’s existing implementation will behave perfectly with the new model.
For supported games, NVIDIA’s route is the DLSS Override control in the NVIDIA app. The company’s guidance directs users to the game or global profile, then to Driver Settings and DLSS Override – Model Presets, where the Ray Reconstruction setting can be changed to the recommended Preset F. As of August 25, the update is distributed through an opt-in NVIDIA app early-access release rather than the ordinary production channel; NVIDIA says a wider app release is due in September.
That delivery method is useful because it allows NVIDIA to improve image reconstruction in older games without waiting for each developer to issue a patch. It also shifts more responsibility to the user. A driver-level override can expose a better model in a supported game, but it cannot correct a game engine’s bad motion vectors, broken ray-tracing data, poor texture streaming, or a rendering pipeline that was only narrowly tuned around an older denoiser.
The early reports already show why restraint is sensible. Tom’s Guide found visual glitches in Portal with RTX when using the override, while otherwise reporting stable behavior in its test selection. That does not make the update unreliable; it means the sane first-day approach is to test Model F game by game rather than apply it globally and assume the result will always be superior.
Comparable RTX 5090 performance is encouraging, but it is not a guarantee for all RTX owners
DSOGaming’s performance result is the other significant part of its test. Across most of its five games, it found DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction performing nearly the same as the previous DLSS 4 Ray Reconstruction preset, with Crimson Desert even posting better performance in repeat runs. Club386 and PC Guide independently saw a negligible difference between old and new Ray Reconstruction in Cyberpunk 2077 on RTX 5090-class hardware.
That supports NVIDIA’s claim that the new Ray Reconstruction model can deliver better image reconstruction without a material performance increase over the preceding RR model. It does not prove that every GeForce RTX owner will see identical frame-rate behavior.
DSOGaming tested a GeForce RTX 5090, the fastest consumer GPU in NVIDIA’s current lineup, paired with a Ryzen 9 7950X3D and DDR5-6000 memory. That is an appropriate setup for showing whether the model is a regression on a high-end path-tracing system. It is not evidence for RTX 2060, RTX 3060, laptop RTX 4070, or CPU-limited configurations. A game that becomes visibly cleaner at 4K with an RTX 5090 may remain too demanding to enjoy with path tracing enabled on an older card, regardless of how efficiently Model F runs relative to Model D.
There is also a separate source of confusion around the DLSS 4.5 name. Earlier DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution testing found meaningful performance costs on RTX 20- and RTX 30-series cards because the newer models can lean on FP8 capabilities that later RTX architectures handle more efficiently. NVIDIA has said Ray Reconstruction remains compatible with all GeForce RTX generations, but compatibility is not a promise of identical frame rates, settings headroom, or image quality at every resolution.
For owners of RTX 40- and RTX 50-series cards using ray tracing or path tracing already, the early evidence supports trying Preset F. For RTX 20- and RTX 30-series users, the right comparison is not “does DLSS 4.5 work?” but “does this improve the game enough to justify my existing ray-tracing performance budget?” In many demanding titles, dropping from Quality to Balanced or Performance mode to sustain frame rate can erase some of the benefit a superior reconstruction model provides.
Cyberpunk 2077 shows why this is a refinement rather than a reset
In DSOGaming’s Cyberpunk 2077 comparison, DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction appears sharper than its predecessor, but the change was less dramatic than in the games with obvious old-model artifacts. PC Gamer reached a similar conclusion from broader testing: the new Ray Reconstruction model is a clear quality step forward, but path-traced rendering still has unresolved edge cases and does not become visually flawless overnight.
That is the realistic framing. Cyberpunk 2077 already had one of the more mature PC implementations of path tracing and Ray Reconstruction, so there was less broken behavior to repair. The new model can improve fine detail and stability, but it cannot turn every surface into a revelation during normal play.
Samson provides the counterexample. DSOGaming could not reliably distinguish Ray Reconstruction on from off in its blind comparison shots, while the feature still carried a substantial performance cost compared with disabling Ray Reconstruction entirely. In a game where the old denoiser was not producing distracting artifacts and the visual gain is difficult to see, Ray Reconstruction remains optional rather than mandatory.
That is a more useful conclusion than calling the new model a no-downside upgrade. Model F appears to be the preferred Ray Reconstruction option when a game already benefits from Ray Reconstruction. It is not automatically the preferred graphics setting in every title, because the larger decision remains whether to enable ray-traced lighting and path tracing at all.
What PC players should do now
Players with a supported title should update the NVIDIA app through its early-access option, set Ray Reconstruction to the recommended Preset F for that specific game, and compare it in movement-heavy areas rather than relying on a single screenshot. Reflections, particle effects, distant lights, foliage, thin detail, and sudden camera pans are the places most likely to reveal both the upgrade and any unwanted side effects.
Do not use unofficial DLL swaps or inspector-based forcing as a first resort. NVIDIA’s official override exists for supported Ray Reconstruction games and provides a controlled way to select the new model. Community workarounds may make Model F load elsewhere, but they do not establish compatibility, and NVIDIA has not promised stable behavior in titles outside its supported list.
The practical change is straightforward: DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction makes NVIDIA’s denoising layer less likely to be the weakest link in a high-end ray-traced image. PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem, and Crimson Desert are early evidence that the model can repair visible flaws without demanding more performance than the old Ray Reconstruction path. For RTX users already paying the steep cost of path tracing, that is the rare graphics update that improves the image they have now rather than asking them to buy a new game or a new GPU.