Nvidia could soon introduce an Ultra Quality preset for DLSS; new version 2.2.9.0 spotted in UE5 with worse image quality than 2.2.6.0

Word on the street is that Nvidia could introduce the DLSS Ultra Quality mode as a direct reaction to AMD’s Ultra Quality FSR mode. The latest Unreal Engine 5 PDF documentation states that DLSS Ultra Quality is already implemented at least for UE5, but will not be visible to end users until Nvidia decides to activate it. Some redditors pointed out that this Ultra Quality mode was already mentioned in the PDFs back when Nvidia and Epic introduced DLSS support for UE5 and UE4 in March 2021, so it looks like Team Green has been working on it for some time and is not being rushed to counter the FSR Ultra Quality mode.

Unfortunately, the UE5 PDF does not provide any details on the Ultra Quality scale factor. It remains to be seen if Nvidia wants to introduce an intermediary scale between native resolution and the 1.5x scale of the Quality mode. Something like a 1.3x scale for Ultra Quality could be beneficial for power resolutions where CPU bottlenecks may occur and Quality mode still struggles with some blurriness. Alternatively, the Ultra Quality preset could just use native resolution with DLSS applied to improve edges and overall details for no performance penalty.

In other news, the latest UE5 build already features a newer DLSS version. Instead of the DLSS 2.2.6.0 update sneaked by Nvidia a few weeks ago with a Rainbow Six Siege patch, UE5 now includes version 2.2.9.0. However, initial image quality tests performed in Doom Eternal show that the newer version is not as good as 2.2.6.0 when it comes to artifact mitigation and overall sharpness. Still, Doom Eternal only features version 2.1.66, so users might want to manually replace the appropriate dll file with the one from the latest Rainbow Six Siege patch that features version 2.2.6.0.

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