Your RTX GPU's best image-quality upgrade is disabled by default, and it isn't ray tracing

Published Aug 7, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT Hamlin has been in the tech field for over nine years. Since 2017, his work has appeared on MakeUseOf, Android Police, OSXDaily, Beebom, and more. He served as the Senior Editor at Valnet's MakeUseOf for over two years before joining XDA. He uses a high-end gaming rig for desktop use and a MacBook for traveling, but dislikes some of the quirks of macOS. You're more likely to catch him at the gym or on a flight than anywhere else. Whenever we want a game to look its best, we usually crank every graphics setting to Ultra and enable ray tracing if our GPU can handle it. As someone with an RTX 4090, that's what I did for most of the four years I've owned it. Sure, real-time reflections and lighting do transform the look of a game, but the biggest image-quality upgrade has nothing to do with either of them. It actually comes down to an anti-aliasing setting that most gamers tend to overlook. For years, I assumed native 4K already gave me the best possible image quality. But that's only partially true, as most games now use temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to smooth out jagged edges. The problem with TAA is that, depending on the implementation, it can blur fine detail more than you'd expect. That leaves you with a slightly softer image, which defeats the purpose of rendering a game at native 4K. But if you have an RTX GPU, you can just use DLAA instead. It's the feature I now enable before I even think about ray tracing. DLAA fixes what TAA does to native 4K And unlike ray tracing, you notice the difference in every frame The way TAA removes jagged edges and reduces shimmering is one of the main reasons it has largely replaced older techniques like MSAA and SMAA in modern games. Instead of relying on a single frame, it combines information from multiple frames to produce a smoother image, while being far less demanding than MSAA. But blending information from the previous frame with the current one is exactly what tends to soften the image, especially in games with a more aggressive TAA implementation. DLAA is still a temporal anti-aliasing technique, but it uses the same AI model behind DLSS Super Resolution without rendering the game at a lower internal resolution. It does a much better job of preserving fine detail, so foliage, distant objects, and thin geometry stay sharp even when you move the camera around. And unlike ray tracing, which primarily improves specific effects such as reflections, shadows, and lighting, DLAA improves the image as a whole. That extra sharpness is something you notice throughout the entire game. DLAA is far less demanding than ray tracing At least I'm not sacrificing half my frame rate for this visual upgrade Ray tracing can significantly change the look of a game when it's implemented well, especially if it uses full path tracing. We've seen this in popular releases like Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong, where the lighting, reflections, and shadows make entire scenes look far more realistic. The only downside, though, is that the game can suddenly become borderline unplayable on even high-end GPUs like the RTX 4090 and 5090, and you'll be forced to rely on DLSS upscaling and frame generation to compensate for the FPS hit. With DLAA, you're looking at roughly a 5-10% FPS hit in most cases, which is much more manageable than watching your frame rate plummet after enabling path tracing. Sure, this performance hit can still be a dealbreaker for gamers with lower-end cards, but if you're playing at, say, 1440p and have some GPU headroom, I'd argue DLAA is a better use of that headroom. In fact, when I game on my 1440p ultrawide, I enable DLAA whenever my CPU is bottlenecking my GPU. I'd much rather push my GPU closer to 100% usage with DLAA and get a sharper image than enable ray tracing for improvements that are only obvious in certain scenes. DLSS also replaces TAA while boosting your FPS But for those who want the cleanest image, DLAA still wins Most of you are better off using DLSS instead, as it also provides an FPS boost from the lower internal rendering resolution while avoiding the softer image that comes with conventional TAA. After all, DLSS has improved so much over the last year and a half that Nvidia is now comfortable claiming its upscaled image looks better than native resolution. And in my testing with DLSS 4.5's newer presets, I don't think that's an exaggeration at all. But that comparison is against native rendering with TAA, not DLAA. If I could rank them purely by image quality, I'd still put DLAA at the top, followed closely by DLSS Quality and then native rendering with TAA. The gap between DLAA and DLSS Quality is small enough that I don't think most people would notice it unless they were looking for it. That's why I believe DLSS is the more practical option. But if enabling DLSS shifts the bottleneck to your CPU or you have enough GPU headroom, DLAA is still the better way to use it. Not every game supports DLAA, but it's always worth checking Even a game that supports DLSS may lack a dedicated DLAA setting in its graphics menu. But that doesn't mean you're stuck choosing between TAA and upscaling. In most cases, you can still force it through the Nvidia App by going to Graphics -> Global Settings -> DLSS Override — Super Resolution Mode and selecting DLAA from the drop-down menu. If having the cleanest image is your priority, I'd recommend enabling DLAA before you even think about turning on ray tracing. At least it's an improvement you'll notice throughout the game, not just in scenes where lighting or reflections stand out. NVIDIA App The Nvidia app isn't just for updating your graphics drivers. You can use it to optimize games, access the in-game overlay and, more importantly, get better control over your DLSS and DLAA settings.