Nvidia announces DLSS 4.5 at CES - but will it be enough to silence the 'fake frames' haters?

• Nvidia has announced its new DLSS 4.5 upscaling tech at CES 2026
• The upgrade comes free for RTX 5000 GPU owners
• Other announcements included improvements to GeForce Now and new G-Sync Pulsar gaming monitors

We're at CES 2026, and it's unsurprisingly another big one for Nvidia. Team Green had a staggeringly good year in 2025, now sitting pretty as the most valuable company in the world (worth a mind-blowing $4.5 trillion). It's no shock, then, that Nvidia has a lot to show off at CES this year.

Leading the presentation was the reveal of an upgrade to Nvidia's DLSS upscaling tech for PC gamers, but don't get too excited; DLSS 5 isn't here just yet, but rather DLSS 4.5. It's an iterative upgrade, delivering a 2nd-generation transformer model (which was originally introduced with DLSS 4) and general improvements to ghosting, pixel sampling, and temporal stability.

Most interesting is a boost to the Multi Frame Generation feature (MFG), which takes the maximum mode from 4x frame-gen to 6x - a significant leap, though my current experiences with the 4x mode on an RTX 5060 and 5070 have been spotty (I've been sticking to the original 2x mode in most games). That being said, if the new transformer model makes the 4x mode more stable, it could be a huge step forward for DLSS. The new-and-improved MFG will be able to intelligently target a framerate that matches your monitor's refresh rate, further optimizing performance.

The time is Now

Hot on the heels of the DLSS 4.5 announcement, Nvidia also unveiled some sweeping improvements to the GeForce Now game-streaming platform, which allows users to pay a subscription to play their own games with the power of RTX graphics via cloud streaming.

A new top tier, featuring RTX 5080-level performance, will effectively replace the existing $19.99 a month RTX 4080 tier for the same price (regional pricing has yet to be confirmed, but will likely remain the same as the existing top tier). Nvidia is advertising up to 5K at 120 FPS or 1080p at 360 FPS for this new tier.

GeForce Now will also be getting native clients for Linux and Fire TV, the latter of which is likely to be of interest to couch gamers who want to play PC titles but don't have a living-room PC. Expanded controller support is also on the way; racing wheel and flight stick controls are first in line.

Additionally, Nvidia G-Sync is getting an upgrade. The new G-Sync Pulsar technology offers improved sharpness and smoother gameplay compared to existing G-Sync displays, and will be available from January 7th in a select number of monitors from Acer, Asus, AOC, and MSI.

These new monitors will reportedly be 27-inch 1440p 360Hz displays, targeted towards serious esports gamers, and are claimed by Nvidia to offer "1000Hz+ Perceived Motion Clarity," which I'm sure will mean something to the aforementioned serious esports gamers. 360Hz sounded high enough to me, but then again, I'm absolute dogwater at Counter-Strike.

The GPU problem

Of course, those fancy DLSS 4.5 upgrades won't mean jack to the average PC gamer if they can't get their hands on an RTX 5000 graphics card, and the current RAM crisis is already having a significant impact on GPU pricing. Needless to say, it's not looking great - prices are skyrocketing, stock is thin, and it's not been harder to pick up a high-end GPU since the crypto craze.

Nvidia is part of the problem, unfortunately. The recent spike in component demand has been largely driven by a fresh need for AI datacenter hardware, and Team Green is deeply entrenched in the AI market at this stage.

Indeed, the company's CES presentation was also chock-full of AI advancements, with half of the slides dedicated to how RTX 5000 benefits AI-powered content creation, LLM performance, and other AI tools. It's no doubt going to be another profitable year for Nvidia, but I can't help but worry that PC gamers will end up being left in the dust - and with GeForce now providing a tempting alternative for those without their own hardware, Nvidia is poised to win either way.