Nvidia dropped DLSS 4.5 and the internet instantly decided it’s basically wizardry—turning “dog-vomited oatmeal” footage into “Brad Pitt’s abs.” So obviously I had to do something sensible with that information: I tried it on the worst RTX graphics card Nvidia has ever slapped a badge on, the laptop-only RTX 2050, to see if DLSS 4.5 could finally bully it into being a high-resolution gaming beast. Spoiler: it’s… complicated, and my expectations were still somehow too high. I started with an RTX 5050 to see what the new Transformer 2 presets actually do when they’re not being forced through a 4GB VRAM straw. In Cyberpunk at 1440p Ultra, the new presets look a bit sharper with better-controlled flickering, but they also cost performance—about ~6 FPS for preset M and ~10 FPS for preset L. Then I moved to my trusty HP Victus with the RTX 2050 and immediately ran into the real villain: 4GB of VRAM repeatedly blowing out my kneecaps. The OG Transformer (preset J) was honestly impressive for how playable it made things, but switching to the new DLSS presets absolutely nuked performance—preset M nearly halved my FPS. Silent Hill 2 on UE5 was its own smeary disaster, and DLSS 4.5 didn’t magically fix that either. The takeaway: Nvidia wasn’t lying—DLSS 4.5 really doesn’t like older RTX cards, which is very on-brand for modern Nvidia behavior.