Proton brings Nvidia DLSS for Linux games

November 27, 2021 0 By Tobias

Proton 6.3-8 will support Nvidia DLSS for various Linux games.

The Proton team will also bring Nvidia’s DLSS technology for Steam to Linux with version 6.3-8. DLSS is supposed to enable higher frame rates with the same image quality. Machine learning is used to extrapolate resolutions from lower render resolutions. For example, a 4K image can be created from 1080p sources. Support was announced in the summer of 2021, and the feature is now fully developed.

By means of Proton 6.3-8, Nvidia graphics cards can also use the technology on Linux gaming systems in the future. The magazine Phoronix names various games that support DLSS on Linux. Among them are Assassin’s Creed, Mafia 2, Greedfall, Deathloop, Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Age of Empires 4. Generally, DLSS should work on DirectX11 and DirectX12 games.

However, this requires one thing: DLSS is only supported by Nvidia graphics cards like Nvidia Turing (Geforce RTX 3000). It is therefore essential to have such a graphics card installed in your system. AMD graphics cards use a similar technology, called Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR). This feature is probably already supported since Proton 6.13. So owners of an AMD graphics card don’t necessarily have to do without the technology, even if it is called differently.

DLSS and FSR are not an optimal solution for better performance in all cases. The extrapolation of the resolution can cause artifacts, which can reduce the picture quality. In most titles, this is hardly noticeable. However, games like Cyberpunk 2077 are very noisy when DLSS is enabled, especially during night scenes.