Discovery: DLSS 4.5 Found in Modern Warfare 4 Beta
The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 pre-order beta went live on August 21. A Reddit user unpacking the game files found an unpublished NVIDIA DLSS package—version 310.7.128—containing the first in-game implementation of DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction. This technology was announced by NVIDIA at COMPUTEX 2026 (June 1) and was planned for rollout later this month, meaning the pre-order beta effectively leaked it early.
What Changed in DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction
DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction uses what NVIDIA calls a second-generation Transformer model—with 20% more parameters and 35% more compute overhead than the previous generation.
This Transformer is not a language model. It is an image-sequence model for ray reconstruction: it takes low-resolution spatiotemporal samples (pixel colors, depth, motion vectors, and the previous high-resolution frame) and outputs high-resolution, temporally stable final pixels. Ray Reconstruction addresses the path-tracing dilemma: run at very low sample rates for speed but with heavy noise, or use high sample rates for clean images at the cost of performance. NVIDIA's bet is that instead of raising sample counts, AI can learn to reconstruct a correct image from sparse ray samples.
The second-generation Transformer makes three key improvements:
- More capacity: The increased parameter count gives the network more room to model spatiotemporal correlations, significantly reducing cross-frame flickering (boiling) and ghosting on moving objects.
- Quality without frame loss: The 35% compute increase looks alarming, but under the new Preset F, the model maintains frame rates close to the previous generation—an important engineering balance of "better image quality, no frame drops."
- Stronger long-range modeling: The Transformer architecture better captures long-range spatiotemporal dependencies, with the biggest gains in fast camera cuts and complex lighting interactions.
- Alan Wake 2
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Crimson Desert
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Reddit r/nvidia, DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction found in Modern Warfare 4 beta files, 2026-08-22
- VideoCardz, NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction 4.5 found in Modern Warfare 4 beta files, 2026-08-22
- IT之家, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta ships with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, 2026-08-23
- NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction announcement materials (COMPUTEX 2026, 2026-06-01)
- NVIDIA Profile Inspector / DLSS Swapper / DLSSTweaks toolchain documentation
- Community testing: Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Crimson Desert, Hogwarts Legacy Preset F verification threads
How to Enable It Manually
The new nvngx_dlssd.dll ships in the 310.7.128 package, with a file date of June 12—indicating it was compiled before the COMPUTEX announcement. The setup process:
1. Back up the target game's original nvngx_dlssd.dll, then replace it with the new file.
2. Open NVIDIA Profile Inspector, and under "05 – Upscaling and Frame Generation" find "DLSS-RR – Forced Letter Preset" and set the value to 6, which corresponds to the new Preset F (the older 310.7.0 package used Preset D).
The NVIDIA App does not yet officially list DLSS 4.5, so DLSS Swapper combined with Profile Inspector is currently the only stable injection path.
Verified Compatibility and Early Feedback
The community has verified the following titles work with the new model:
Early feedback focuses on three metrics: reduced ghosting, better temporal stability of the denoiser, and more complete detail retention in motion.
NVIDIA's DLSS debug overlay (enabled via DLSSTweaks) can show which preset is actually active—more reliable than checking the DLL version alone, since an incorrect preset means the old model still runs even with the new DLL installed.
The Bigger Picture: A Unified Transformer Backbone
The DLSS series has shifted architectures repeatedly: CNN in the 2.0 era, frame generation in 3.0, multi-frame composition in 4.0. With 4.5, the ray reconstruction subtask also moves to a second-generation Transformer—suggesting NVIDIA is unifying the entire neural rendering stack on one backbone architecture. CNN's local inductive bias is no longer sufficient; Transformer-based global spatiotemporal modeling is proving more robust for reconstruction tasks. If extended across the DLSS family (super resolution, frame generation, ray reconstruction, path-tracing denoising), a "one model, multiple task heads" architecture could replace the traditional "one small CNN per task" approach.
With Gamescom at the end of August—a show where NVIDIA has historically announced next-generation GPUs and accompanying tech stacks—this early implementation looks like a semi-official preview: letting the gaming community stress-test the model while NVIDIA gathers real player feedback before the official rollout. Comparison screenshots have already appeared for recent ray-traced titles such as Resident Evil Requiem, with the original Reddit thread cited over a thousand times within 24 hours.
The trajectory in computer graphics and game engines is clear: neural rendering is no longer an optional enhancement but a core pipeline. The real suspense for Gamescom is whether NVIDIA will build on 4.5 with a "DLSS 5 unified model"—a single Transformer backbone handling multiple tasks simultaneously.