The ability to swap DLSS files has been known for some time and now the latest version has been discovered in the recently released Portal with RTX and has been shown to help improve visual quality in a number of games. Users have been posting videos online showing that manually patching NVIDIA DLSS 2.5.1 can reduce visual artifacts, flickering, and ghosting, and even improve edge smoothness in select games. DSOG has located three videos documenting improvements for Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, and Death Stranding (one of the original poster children for super sampling tech).
Here we have Cyberpunk 2077 being tested at 4K using the psycho and ultra ray tracing settings with an NVIDIA RTX 4080 and Intel i7 10700F. Visual artifacts and ghosting are reduced along with improved edge smoothness.
Next up is Red Dead Redemption 2 where the screen flickering from objects and camera movement is reduced along with improved background object sharpening.
Lastly, is a video showcasing Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077, and God of War. The poster of that video, Zona Master, also provided the following explanation for DLSS 2.5.1 and also refers to the previous video for RDR2.
“The new version of DLSS (2.5.1) completely removes the built-in sharpening filter, therefore the image may look a little blurrier, but in return, it will remove some artifacts in the image as it is in the case of God of War (GOW already removes the filter by setting the lowest value) and Red Dead Redemption 2, where due to excessive sharpness it caused a type of ghosting and flickering when moving the camera, this is totally fixed with the new version, however in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, ghosting is now more noticeable, especially when you are in a vehicle at high speed, soon there will be another video in which more details about this new version will be explained.”
Manually patching NVIDIA DLSS files is a pretty straightforward process that only involves downloading a file and copying it over the old one. This can only be done with games that support DLSS 2.0 onward, but many developers have already updated their games past 1.0 so it’s rare to find a game where it cannot be done. TechPowerUp has provided a link for the latest 2.5.1 file which can be found here. Additionally, there was a programmer who created a DLSS swapper tool that is available on GitHub. As always when modding any game files, make sure to make a backup of them before making any changes in case of unforeseen issues.