The debut of DLSS 3 technology came with the release of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40, a generation of graphics cards that uses the Ada Lovelace architecture and which not only includes the fourth generation of tensor cores, but also comes with a new Optical flow acceleratora component that is twice as fast and much more accurate than the one used by the GeForce RTX 30.

This technology introduced a generation of frames, which is a very important advance it allows the GPU to create one frame completely independent of the CPU for every two traditionally rendered frames. This greatly improves fluidity in games, drastically reduces CPU dependency and reduces the impact this component has when it becomes a bottleneck.

DLSS 3 technology is implemented and works very similarly to DLSS 2. That means we have to have a compatible graphics card to activate it in supported games. It’s very simple, but despite everything, I have managed to confirm that some users still have doubts and even have problems when it comes to this technology.

To help you solve them and so that you do not have any problem in this regard, I decided to give shape to this article where I will explain it to you all we need to do to make sure DLSS 3 will always work as it should and that we can always activate it directly in the games. If you have any questions after reading the article, you can leave them in the comments and I will help you solve them.

NVIDIA DLSS 3 requires a GeForce RTX 40 to run

It’s something we need to be clear from the start. If we don’t have a GeForce RTX 40, we won’t be able to activate DLSS 3, because this technology requires a state-of-the-art Optical Flow Accelerator. A unit that mounts GeForce RTX 30 and below not fast enough or accurate enoughand therefore it is not able to achieve a good result when frame generation is done.

For that reason, NVIDIA decided to limit the frame generation to the GeForce RTX 40 series and frankly I think it’s a good move because it’s better not to force the implementation of the technology into hardware that won’t be able to move it properly. Ultimately, this would do more harm than good to the user and lead to a very negative user experience, especially if it degenerates into glitches and image quality issues characterized by a lack of performance and accuracy.

If you are trying to activate DLSS 3 but it is not working make sure you have a GeForce RTX 40. I know this is pretty basic stuff, but you’d be surprised how many people keep asking for help on the forums to activate this technology on their GeForce RTX 30 or even GeForce RTX 20. On the other hand, if you have a GeForce RTX 40 and an integrated Graphic Design make sure the game uses the first one.

Enable hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling

This adjustment has an important impact, sincereduces latency and improves performance, and it is necessary to be able to use NVIDIA DLSS 3 under both Windows 10 and Windows 11. To activate, just follow these steps:

• Press the Windows key and type “Settings”.
• Enter the first result and click “View”.
• Now find the “Graphics Settings” option and click on it.
• Turn on “Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling”.

As you can see, it is very easy. It won’t take you more than a few seconds. and you won’t have to worry about anything because this setting has no effect on game compatibility.

NVIDIA DLSS 3 does not work under the DirectX 11 API

DLSS 2 technology can run under DirectX 11 without problems, but the same is not the case with DLSS 3. DirectX 12 must be activated to activate frame generation. So if you see that a particular game does not allow you to activate this technology make sure you are running it under DirectX 12 and not DirectX 11.

In this matter, I want to tell you something important, which I am sure will help you a lot. There are some Steam titles that run in DirectX 1 by default1 when we open them from the shortcut icon that is created on the desktop, and this gives us the option to choose between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 when we launch them directly from the Steam interface.

One of the best examples is Destroy all humans 2, a title that managed to mislead me at the time because it wouldn’t let me activate DLSS 3 when days before I could do it without problems, all because of what I just told you, because it doesn’t run in DirectX 12 by default, when launched from a shortcut icon. Again, this is something very basic, but important, and if you don’t take it into account, it can cause you more than one headache.

Update your graphics card drivers

This is essential because it can affect the proper functioning and also the performance of our graphics card. Keep your drivers up to dates is something basic so you can always get the most out of itand in this case they can also make a difference in terms of good DLSS 3 support.

If we don’t update the drivers we may encounter errors which do not allow us to activate frame generation in compatible games, even if we have a compatible graphics card. Since NVIDIA Game Ready drivers are completely free and don’t take more than a few minutes to download and install, we have no reason to skip them, quite the contrary, because they usually introduce stability and performance improvements and can fix bugs.

You can update drivers for your GeForce RTX graphics card from GeForce Experienceand you can too download them from official NVIDIA website. The process is very easy and the installer works its way fully self-managedSo you won’t have anything to worry about.