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Nvidia Shows Neural Texture Compression Cutting VRAM by 85% as SDK Hits Beta

It signals a move toward tiny neural decoders on AI cores that shrink assets without altering a game's look.

Overview

  • Nvidia, in a GTC 2026 session, showed a Tuscan Villa scene drop from about 6.5GB of VRAM to 970MB with image quality holding steady.
  • The method stores each texture as compact learned data and a small GPU network reconstructs pixels on demand in a deterministic way.
  • Decoding runs on matrix engines such as Tensor Cores rather than the main graphics units, which helps keep the render pipeline clear.
  • Nvidia also presented a related Neural Materials demo that reduced material data and sped up shading by up to 7.7x at 1080p.
  • The NTC SDK is available in beta on GitHub and rivals are aligning under DirectX standards, though no released games support these systems yet.