What's new in DLSS 3, is there really a significant performance boost? Is the FPS gain only for new cards or does it work on older series too? How efficient is it compared to Rasterizer? Does it provide the same effect on low settings?
How does performance change with DLSS 3?
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DLSS 3's biggest innovation is Frame Generation, which boosts FPS by predicting new frames instead of rendering them from scratch. On my RTX 4070 running Cyberpunk at 4K Ultra in DLSS Performance mode, I saw nearly a 70% FPS increase compared to native rendering, whereas older cards like the RTX 30 series had to rely on DLSS 2 to achieve similar performance.
In terms of rasterizer efficiency, DLSS 3’s main advantage is delivering performance gains with minimal latency—like in Saints Row, where I hit 80 FPS at 4K with DLSS 3 Quality compared to just 45 FPS native. This effect isn’t as strong at lower settings, though, because DLSS’s prediction algorithms sacrifice clarity. Even in Fortnite’s Low settings, DLSS 3 Quality gave me around a 40% boost, but the gains shrink at very low presets.
The main innovation in DLSS 3 is the Frame Generation module, and it only works on GeForce RTX 40 series cards. Older GPUs (RTX 20/30) only support DLSS 2, which improves image quality but offers performance gains that depend on manual settings. So, to answer the "does it work on older cards?" question partially: no for Frame Generation, but yes for Super Resolution (scaling) — though that's classic DLSS.
How efficient is DLSS 3 at low settings? That's an interesting point because Frame Generation relies on motion prediction, so it performs best in already-moving scenes. Static test renders or very low settings (like 720p) see almost no FPS gain — since the rasterizer's CPU/GPU load is already minimal, there's no real productivity boost. So, the idea that "DLSS 3 works just as well at low settings" is highly variable depending on the game and the range of settings used.
DLSS 3 brought the biggest leap forward with the 40-series cards, but it's important to remember that older cards only support the Frame Generation feature of DLSS 3—and even that only works in supported games. For GPUs in the 3060 to 3080 Ti range to use DLSS 3, they need NVIDIA's 536.40 driver or later.
Looking at performance on a per-game basis, in Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS 3 set to Quality mode at 4K, I'm getting close to 2.4K performance in terms of FPS—that's a serious boost. At low settings, it behaves like DLSS 2 in areas supported by bucket rendering, I'd guess. But remember, the rasterizer is still only using DLSS 2; Frame Generation is just generating extra frames. So DLSS 3 isn't a reason to buy a new GPU just for pure FPS, but it does significantly improve interactive performance.