Nvidia AI tech claims to slash VRAM usage by 85% with zero quality loss — Neural Texture Compression demo reveals stunning visual parity between 6.5GB of memory and 970MB

As games become more complex and photorealistic, the industry has increasingly relied on upscaling technology to meet surging hardware demands. One of the biggest issues arising from this subpar optimization is VRAM usage, which has risen sharply over the past few years. To combat this, Nvidia has developed a technology called “Neural Texture Compression” (NTC), which was brought up again in today’s GTC talk. The best graphics cards will be able to leverage Nvidia’s NTC technology.

Instead of conventional block-based compression techniques, NTC enables developers to use small neural networks to unpack textures in any scene. This not only dramatically reduces their size, making game installs more manageable, but also cuts down on VRAM usage at runtime. The resulting textures also look better, with Nvidia claiming up to 4x higher resolution in the final render.