I tested NVIDIA’s new DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction — it finally fixes path tracing’s biggest flaw, but here’s the reality check

Nvidia’s new DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction claims to fix path tracing’s biggest flaw: visual artifacts like smudged reflections, ghosting, and digital noise. After testing it on several games, the truth is that the visual upgrade is undeniable, but the expectation of a massive paradigm shift in the middle of a game may require tempering of expectations.

DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction captures the rough reflections, colors, and shadows created by path tracing and smooths them out using an AI network trained on supercomputers. This technique offloads the heavy lifting of calculating true light data to the AI, allowing the GPU to focus on rendering the game. The performance impact is negligible, with my RTX 5080 setup experiencing no frame rate penalty.

However, older RTX 20 or 30 series cards may experience a more noticeable performance drop. The pixel-peeping test on games like Cyberpunk 2077, Pragmata, and Alan Wake 2 showed significant improvements in lighting, reflections, and overall visual clarity.