What is Nvidia's new DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation feature, and why should 3D artists care?

Nvidia announced its lineup of new RTX GPUs at CES 2025, and alongside the new DLSS 4 with pathtracing, the tech giant revealed its new feature, Multi-Frame Generation. This could save developers money and improve performance for gamers, so what is it?

Announced alongside the roster of new GPUs - the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 - which are twice as fast as the previous Nvidia The GeForce RTX 4090, the new DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation could turn out to be more important that raw speed for gamers and artists using the best 3D modelling software.

The new tech can generate up to three additional frames for every traditionally rendered frame, which Nvidia says can lead to games having eight times faster frame rates with little draw on memory. Nvidia has demoed the tech on Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and the new Multi-Frame Generation tech increased performance by 10% and used 400MB less memory, running at 4K resolution.

For creatives, such as animators, it means scenes can be navigated smoothly with greater fidelity, with four times as many frames, and 3D content can be rendered at 60fps or more.

The new AI-driven model really does sound like the answer to so many pressing issues as gamers demand higher frame rates at 4K and developers spend time and money on performance issues. Multi-Frame Generation is said to be 40% faster with 30% less video memory used, and needs to only generate one frame to render multiple subsequent frames.

There are plans for Multi-Frame Generation to support 75 games at launch, including Cyberpunk 2077, which maxed out at 238fps on an RTX 5090 with DLSS 4, and this is with full raytracing. The full list can be found on Nvidia's DLSS 4 blog.

So what's the issue? The new Multi-Frame Generation will only be supported on Nvidia's new RTX 50 range of GPUs, so you're going to need to upgrade to get that massive frame rate boost.

But, there's more reason to upgrade, as Nvidia also has improvements to DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Resolution and DLAA - these make use of transformer architecture - a deep neural network model - the same as found in AI models like ChatGPT, to make advances in motion rendering.

Away from pure gaming, there's reason to upgrade. The new GeForce RTX 5090 GPU looks like a 3D modeller's dream - it has 32GB of GPU memory, larger than any previous GeForce RTX GPU, and a 33% increase over the GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. This means 3D artists can create larger, more detailed models and worlds and run multiple applications simultaneously. Nvidia claims the new RTX 50 series can run 3D applications 40% faster than previous Nvidia RTX GPUs.

Everything came together in the new footage of Doom: The Dark Ages, that makes use of DLSS 4 and showcased Multi-Frame Generation in action as well as ray reconstruction and path tracing technology.

Billy Khan, Director of Engine Technology at id Software said: "With DLSS 4, we are stepping into a new era of gaming. The new ray reconstruction transformer model powers a historical leap in raytracing capabilities; not just accelerating performance but also enhancing visuals in Doom: The Dark Ages".

Need more info on GPUs? Read our guides to the best graphics cards and our explainer of what are the best graphics cards for digital artists and creatives.