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NVIDIA Demos Neural Texture Compression (NTC). What is that exactly?

Connor Schuler

• 2 min read

NVIDIA has officially begun rolling out what it is calling "Neural Texture Compression", a new AI-based technology to reduce memory usage in video games. What is that exactly?

Back in 2023, NVIDIA published a research paper detailing an approach to compressing texture files. We got a first demo in 2025, but it is only just now starting to make it to consumer devices and games.

Neural Texture Compression takes large high-quality texture files for video games, runs them through an AI/machine learning model that compresses them way down. Then, on the consumer's PC (say yours or mine), it uses an AI model to decompress and upscale it back to an essentially perfect recreation. This could mean smaller game downloads and less expensive hardware to run them.

In the past couple of years, most graphics cards have come with at least 6 GB of VRAM (memory your PC uses for graphics), but 8 GB is more common. Higher-end units offer 16 GB, and if you want to spend a ton of money (like over $1,000), you can get ones that have 24 GB or 32 GB of VRAM.

One important distinction to make is that VRAM is separate from regular RAM. Every computer is going to have RAM; usually 16 GB, or if you go a little bit nicer you can get 32 GB. VRAM is typically only found in computers with a dedicated graphics card. That's your workstations and your gaming PCs. VRAM is specifically dedicated to storing files for video games or large graphic projects, such as files for a movie or a 3D render.

NVIDIA's demo reduced the usage from 6.5 GB down to 970 MB. That's an 85% reduction, which is huge. This 85% reduction matters a lot because modern video games have gotten increasingly demanding, requiring more and more VRAM as they increase graphic fidelity. This has also consequently increased the size of a game download to over 100 GB for AAA titles, such as Grand Theft Auto or EA's Madden 25. On top of this, AI data centers have been driving up memory costs across the industry, as they buy everything they can get their hands on.

NVIDIA's Neural Texture Compression technology promises to provide a near-perfect recreation of these texture files at significantly smaller file sizes, which means you don't need as much VRAM to run the latest AAA titles, and they will take up less space on your computer. This technology is still a little ways away, but NVIDIA has released tools for game developers, so it is likely to be coming to games within the next year or two.

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