Nvidia’s graphics cards may not be cheap, but they do come with a host of fun features that can come in handy. An obvious software and hardware benefit is DLSS 4.5, but many people missed the memo on a hidden feature that can make old videos look a whole lot better.
Reliant on Nvidia’s Tensor cores, this feature is available in many graphics cards from the last decade. Here’s how you can upscale nearly all videos easily, how it works, and what the caveats are.
What Nvidia’s hidden video setting actually does
It’s not magic, but it helps a whole lot sometimes
Alright, alright, I’ll stop with the suspense: I’m talking about Nvidia’s RTX Video Super Resolution. It does exactly what it says on the label, but with a bit more nuance than a simple upscale.
Nvidia uses an AI model to sharpen edges, restore patterns and features, and clean up the blocky compression artifacts that make old uploads and low-bitrate videos look smeared or muddy. And let’s face it, they really are: some of those old 360p YouTube videos are practically unwatchable.
Quiz
GPUs: Past to present and beyond
Trivia challenge
From early framebuffers to AI-powered rendering — how well do you really know the GPU?
HistoryHardwareAI & GPUsPioneersTechnology
Which company released the GeForce 256 in 1999, marketing it as the world’s first GPU?
That’s right! NVIDIA coined the term ‘GPU’ (Graphics Processing Unit) with the release of the GeForce 256 in 1999. It was notable for offloading transform and lighting calculations from the CPU, marking a major shift in how graphics were processed.
Not quite — it was NVIDIA that launched the GeForce 256 and trademarked the term ‘GPU’ in 1999. This card was a landmark release because it moved transform and lighting calculations off the CPU and onto dedicated graphics hardware for the first time.
Which company produced the Voodoo graphics card, one of the most iconic early 3D accelerators of the 1990s?
Correct! 3dfx Interactive’s Voodoo cards dominated 3D gaming in the mid-to-late 1990s. The original Voodoo released in 1996 was so popular that ‘Voodoo’ became synonymous with PC gaming performance for several years, before 3dfx was ultimately acquired by NVIDIA in 2000.
The correct answer is 3dfx Interactive. Their Voodoo line of 3D accelerator cards were the go-to choice for PC gamers in the mid-to-late 1990s. 3dfx was eventually acquired by NVIDIA in 2000, ending one of the most beloved names in early GPU history.
What does VRAM stand for, and what is its primary purpose in a GPU?
Exactly right! VRAM stands for Video Random Access Memory, and it serves as the GPU’s dedicated pool of memory for storing textures, frame buffers, and other rendering data. More VRAM generally allows higher resolutions and more detailed textures without performance penalties.
The correct answer is B. VRAM stands for Video Random Access Memory, and it’s the GPU’s own dedicated memory used to hold textures, frame buffers, and rendering data. Having more VRAM is especially important for gaming at high resolutions or with demanding texture packs.
What is ray tracing in the context of modern GPU rendering?
Spot on! Ray tracing simulates how light physically behaves by tracing the path of individual rays as they bounce around a scene. This produces highly realistic reflections, shadows, and global illumination, though it’s computationally expensive — which is why dedicated RT cores on modern GPUs are such a big deal.
Not quite — ray tracing is a rendering technique that simulates the physical behavior of light by tracing rays through a scene. It creates strikingly realistic reflections, shadows, and ambient lighting. Modern GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD include dedicated hardware cores specifically designed to accelerate ray tracing calculations.
What is NVIDIA’s DLSS technology, and what AI technique does it primarily rely on?
Correct! DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling. It renders frames at a lower internal resolution and then uses a trained AI model running on Tensor Cores to intelligently upscale the image, producing near-native quality visuals with significantly better frame rates.
The right answer is A. DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling. NVIDIA’s technology renders games at a lower resolution and uses AI — specifically trained neural networks running on dedicated Tensor Cores — to upscale the image. The result is better performance without a dramatic loss in visual quality.
In what decade did GPUs begin to be widely used for general-purpose computing tasks beyond graphics, a practice known as GPGPU?
That’s right! GPGPU (General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units) became a serious field in the 2000s. NVIDIA’s launch of the CUDA platform in 2006 was a watershed moment, allowing developers to harness GPU parallelism for scientific computing, simulations, and eventually AI workloads.
The correct answer is the 2000s. While GPUs existed before then purely for graphics, the concept of using them for general computing — known as GPGPU — gained real traction in the mid-2000s. NVIDIA’s CUDA platform, released in 2006, was instrumental in opening up GPUs for tasks like scientific research, physics simulations, and AI training.
What interface do modern discrete GPUs primarily use to connect to a motherboard?
Correct! PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) has been the standard interface for discrete GPUs since the mid-2000s, replacing AGP. Modern high-end GPUs typically use PCIe x16 slots, with PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 offering substantial bandwidth improvements over earlier generations.
The answer is PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express). AGP was the predecessor that was common through the early 2000s, but PCIe took over around 2004 and has been the dominant standard ever since. Today’s GPUs use PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 slots, which provide massive bandwidth to keep up with ever-growing GPU performance demands.
Which of the following best describes AMD’s answer to NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling technology?
Well done! AMD’s FSR, or FidelityFX Super Resolution, is their upscaling technology designed to compete with NVIDIA’s DLSS. A key differentiator is that FSR is open-source and hardware-agnostic, meaning it works on GPUs from AMD, NVIDIA, and even Intel — making it far more accessible than DLSS, which requires NVIDIA Tensor Cores.
The correct answer is FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution). AMD developed FSR as their competitive response to NVIDIA’s DLSS. One of its biggest advantages is that it’s open-source and not limited to AMD hardware — unlike DLSS, FSR can run on GPUs from NVIDIA and Intel too, making it a more universally accessible upscaling solution.
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But simply blowing up a rough low-res video to fit a higher resolution screen can make the flaws stand out even more, and while that definitely does happen with RTX Video at times, the tech is also smarter than that. Nvidia built artifact reduction into the feature, trying to minimize all the oddities that happen when you try to force a 360p video from 2009 to look decent in 2026. Overall, the feature works to improve input video from 360p to 1440p.
It also works in real time, upgrading each video as it happens. RTX Video leans on Nvidia’s Tensor cores to enhance playback as you watch.
I’m surprised that more people don’t know about this feature. It could be because it’s far from perfect, but based on my own testing, it’s worth checking out.
There are a few requirements to meet
Not everyone gets to benefit from RTX Video
First things first, this is an RTX-only feature. If you have an RTX 20, RTX 30, RTX 40, or RTX 50 GPU, you’re good to go. If you’re on an Nvidia GTX card, you’ll need to try your luck with Lossless Scaling instead, or buy a new GPU. (It’s about time—those good old GTXs are growing obsolete.) RTX Video is available on both desktops and laptops.
You’ll also need 64-bit Windows 10 or Windows 11, so Linux users are out of luck for this one.
RTX Video works in the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and VLC, and it may also work in other current Chromium-based browsers, although Nvidia has only explicitly verified Chrome and Edge. One annoying caveat is that if you use Edge, you have to disable Microsoft’s own Enhance videos feature first, or you may not be using Nvidia’s processing at all.
Lastly, the video itself needs to check some boxes, too. As I mentioned above, RTX Video is available in videos between 360p and 1440p, but it’ll only kick in if the video actually needs it. It won’t help if you’re already watching something at native resolution or lower. Some content may not work with RTX Video even though it seems like it should, and based on my testing, there’s little rhyme or reason to it. It just doesn’t work sometimes. (I’ve never seen it work in YouTube Shorts.)
- Graphics RAM Size
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12GB
- Boost Clock Speed
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2600MHz
If you want to take full advantage of DLSS 5 and other features like RTX Video, you may need to upgrade your GPU. The RTX 5070 is a cost-effective way to enjoy the full benefits of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series.
How to set it up and try it for yourself
A lot of guides get it wrong in 2026
A lot of guides will tell you to enable RTX Video through the Nvidia Control Panel, which was highly unintuitive. Fortunately, Nvidia’s updated the path, making it much simpler.
All you need is the Nvidia app. Download it, install it, and then head to System > Video. Toggle on Video Super Resolution.
It’ll show as inactive if you’re not currently tabbed into a video that’s playing an eligible video, so I recommend testing whether it works before you exit out of the app.
Between manually tweaking the quality and leaving it on Auto, it’s pretty much up to you. If you’re doing other GPU-intensive things at the same time, such as gaming, leaving it on Auto is sensible.
When this setting won’t save your videos
I played around with it a lot, and it’s not flawless
RTX Video is great, especially considering it’s some small, under-the-radar sort of feature that Nvidia doesn’t go super far out of its way to advertise. But it’s not a magic eraser for everything that looks wrong in low-res videos. Oftentimes, it’ll upscale parts of the image and not others, creating a weird mishmash of sharp visuals and blurry disappointment. It is what it is.
It doesn’t hurt to try
For all its faults, RTX Video is genuinely good when you want to watch an old video, show, or anime, and want to give it a little bit of an upscale. It’s a native alternative to Lossless Scaling, which can help too, but it costs money to buy.
My advice: try out RTX Video first and see the results with your own eyes. You might like them, or you might consider them negligible. Try it on a sample of at least 10 different videos on different platforms and cast your judgment.
Then, if you’re not happy, try out Lossless Scaling. It has a lot of uses beyond frame generation and can really help in situations such as these.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
