Cyberpunk 2077 introduces a brand new DLSS setting called DRS or Dynamic Resolution Scaling

Patch 2.11 for Cyberpunk 2077 and the Phantom Liberty expansion went live recently, bringing several fixes to the game, including a few visual updates. Although not mentioned in the full release notes, the update also adds a new NVIDIA DLSS settings called DRS or Dynamic Resolution Scaling to sit alongside the Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes.

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The various DLSS modes refer to the rendering resolution as a percentage, where Quality at 4K means AI upscaling from 1440p and Performance at 4K means AI upscaling from 1080p. The new DRS mode is about maintaining a target frame rate, where the resolution that DLSS is upscaling from dynamically changing to ensure a minimal performance loss.

It's an exciting new addition as it means DLSS will be able to dynamically switch from DLAA's native rendering to lower resolutions in much smaller increments, with Redditor 'skyj420' posting that they witnessed native 1440p drop to just 1420p to maintain the target frame rate set of 45 FPS.

In this example, the Redditor noted that scaling down to 90% of native rendering at 1440p was something you wouldn't notice, and this only happened during visually intensive locations like Dogtown, the new zone, or the Night City district added in Phantom Liberty.

It's a pretty exciting addition because it means more GeForce RTX owners will be able to make use of DLAA and not have to switch between DLSS Quality, Balance, and Performance - as long as a target frame rate or, say, 45 FPS or 60 FPS is met. "This tech rocks," 'skyj420' adds, with many users sharing the same sentiment.

There are some things to note: DRS doesn't work with Path Tracing as a lot of ray tracing quality is determined by resolution, so having this dynamically change regularly could lead to artifacts. Also, DRS is applied before Frame Generation - so the target frame rate applies to DLSS 2 Super Resolution.

It'll be interesting to see if this becomes a staple part of DLSS going forward (it should be) and if NVIDIA will formally announce the new setting and option in this week's DLSS round-up. Stay tuned.