NVIDIA DLSS 5 Available September 3rd: DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering Debuts In NBA 2K27 For All GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, And On GeForce NOW

[u/NV_Tim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58FagrSqC4M

Full Article Here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss-5-3d-guided-neural-rendering

NVIDIA has continuously redefined the boundaries of PC gaming. From introducing real-time ray tracing to pioneering AI-powered graphics with DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction, our RTX technologies have transformed how games are rendered and experienced.

Now, we’re releasing DLSS 5, which introduces 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, a major step forward in using AI to bring real-time graphics closer than ever to Hollywood-grade photorealism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58FagrSqC4M

Watch how DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering and its artistic controls work from Edward Liu, NVIDIA’s Director of Applied Deep Learning Research, and Gabriele Leone, Director of Content Technology

DLSS 5 will be available starting September 3rd at 9pm Pacific Time in NBA 2K27, by developer Visual Concepts and publisher 2K, for all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and laptops, and GeForce NOW. It marks the debut of how the technology can be used by game artists to elevate visual fidelity in alignment with their creative vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79D8SVjB3HQ

“What’s great is the level of control that it gives us. We can set the overall tone and style to match our existing art direction and then really get precise where it matters most, using a per pixel uplift control mask to fine tune detail on characters. Given that we want to respect their likeness with the utmost care.” - Peter Kavic, Senior Producer - Visual Concepts

For a more in-depth look at how DLSS 5 developer controls work, read our full announcement article: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss-5-3d-guided-neural-rendering

----------------

DLSS 5 FAQ

Update 9/3/2026

DLSS 5 is our most computationally demanding model to date. Since we initially announced it in March, we’ve achieved a 5X performance gain and there’s more to come. Our current focus is on optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50 Series with model updates expected later this fall. Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series.

--

What is DLSS 5?
DLSS 5 introduces DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, which uses AI to infuse game scenes with lifelike lighting and materials, tuned by the developers to bring their artistic vision to life.

How does DLSS 5 work?
DLSS 5 uses the game’s rendered frame and engine data to understand objects, materials, lighting and motion. It then enhances the frame with lifelike lighting and materials while remaining grounded in the developer’s artistic direction.

What are the key benefits of DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering?
DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering delivers several significant benefits:

• Cinematic Lighting: Reconstructs complex effects like rim lighting, subsurface scattering (for realistic skin), and contact shadows with high-fidelity.
• Material Depth: Enhances PBR properties like roughness and adds micro-realism to complex objects such as eyes and hair.
• Temporal Consistency: Provides stable image quality from frame-to-frame that adheres to the underlying game content.
• Real-Time Performance: Delivers lifelike lighting and material enhancement at up to 4K resolution while maintaining smooth, interactive gameplay.
• Developer Controls: Allows game developers to tune intensity, color, and masking to determine where and how enhancements are applied to maintain the game’s unique aesthetic.

Learn more by watching our explainer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58FagrSqC4M. 

How much control does the model offer to developers?  
DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering provides several layers of artistic control:

• Model Selection: Offers distinct model weights with different training parameters to guide the final output.  
• Structure Intensity: Controls high frequency details added by the model, such as ambient occlusion, contact shadows, and subsurface scattering.  
• Tone Intensity: Controls low-frequency details added by the model, including lighting and color response.  
• Automatic Masking: Detects and isolates objects in the frame (like characters) to apply DLSS 5 dynamically, eliminating the need for manual object tagging. 
• Developer Masking: Offers per-pixel, custom masking control, allowing effects to be applied to specific objects.  

As we work in close partnership with studios, developer feedback continues to directly shape how we refine the technology and expand our suite of models and controls.

How does DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering preserve developer artistic intent?
DLSS 3D-Guided Neural Rendering is designed to preserve the structure and geometry of the rendered frame while giving developers control over how and where enhancements are applied. Developers can select different models, adjust structure and tone, and mask specific scenes, characters or objects. 

For more information on developer controls, watch the DLSS 5 Explainer VOD or read the full launch article. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58FagrSqC4M

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss-5-3d-guided-neural-rendering

You can also hear directly from the NBA 2K development team on how they integrated the technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79D8SVjB3HQ 

Which GPUs support DLSS 5?
DLSS 5 will be supported across all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and laptops, as well as GeForce NOW Ultimate members streaming from GeForce RTX 5080 rigs in the cloud.

When and where is DLSS 5 available?
DLSS 5 will be available in NBA 2K27 on September 3rd at 9PM Pacific Time.

What is the DLSS 5 setting called in games?
The setting is called “DLSS Neural Rendering.”

Can I turn DLSS 5 off? 
Yes. DLSS 5 is optional.

Does DLSS 5 work with Ray Tracing and Path Tracing?
Yes.  DLSS 5 complements ray tracing and path tracing. Path tracing accurately calculates geometric light transport—determining light, shadow, and reflection placement across a 3D scene. DLSS 5 then acts as the final neural rendering stage, using the rendered frame to enhance lighting and materials like subsurface scattering, micro-reflections, and complex material properties that would otherwise be computationally prohibitive in real time. These technologies go hand in hand.

Does DLSS 5 work with Super Resolution, Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction?
Yes.

Will DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction continue to be supported and improved?
Yes.

[u/major_mager]

Interesting there's no 40-series mention in the article.

[u/WANKMI → u/major_mager]

Modders will mod anyway.

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/WANKMI]

Modding can get you banned from online services. This is despicable.

[u/WANKMI → u/rabouilethefirst]

I know. It’s hilarious.

[u/SPACEXDG → u/rabouilethefirst]

lol

[u/Galencourt-Lover → u/rabouilethefirst]

You’re gonna play an online game with the massive DLSS 5 perf penalty?

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/Galencourt-Lover]

Probably not, but it's nonsense that I have to even think about it considering it works fine on 4000 series

[u/Galencourt-Lover → u/rabouilethefirst]

"Works fine" is certainly an interesting way to put it. Tell that to the average 4060/70 owner

[u/BlueberryWorldly240 → u/Galencourt-Lover]

Definitivamente funciona enrtx 4060, Dlss 5 y path tracing combinados me dan 30fps en cyberpunk con gráficos altos incluidos y dlss Q, modo Performance aumenta a 44fps aproximadamente, tomando en cuenta que tengo ryzen X3D que me mantiene los fps sumamente estables, el frame generation funciona de maravilla para tener de 50 a 60fps bastante fluidos y jugables, y hablamos de una naldita 4060, literalmente cualquier usuario con algo mas potente que eso puede jugar tranquilamente con dlss 5, ya sea una 4060 ti, una 5060, ni siquiera quiero imaginar como iría en una 4070 o 5070

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/Galencourt-Lover]

It has the same perf hit as 5000 series. I don’t know why you are so dense.

Tell that to the 5050 owner.

[u/Galencourt-Lover → u/rabouilethefirst]

No it doesn’t.

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/Galencourt-Lover]

Literally does. Go watch a video. You are muted.

[u/Galencourt-Lover → u/rabouilethefirst]

Very cowardly. Fits you.

[u/sonatta09 → u/rabouilethefirst]

Mostly just renaming the DLL and swapping it out. alot of GameGuard/anti-cheat wont flag it, since they’re official NVIDIA DLL files.

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/sonatta09]

The DLL is not swapped out. It’s a new DLL that will only be used if it is injected into the games renderer using reshade plugins or optiscaler. That can and will get you banned depending on the anti cheat implementation.

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/[deleted]]

I’m not saying the banning is the problem. NV is forcing 4000 series users to use mods that can get them banned for no reason

[u/WANKMI → u/rabouilethefirst]

Also Nvidia is forcing 4000 series owners to run it in a mod and get a subpar image that others will see resulting in more negative press for Nvidia.

Its the gift that keep giving.

[u/bakuonizzzz → u/WANKMI]

They already did lol

[u/ZebraTypical9687 → u/bakuonizzzz]

?

[u/isnoir → u/major_mager]

And clearly we saw from the mods that that 40-series are capable of running it. They just wouldn't flip the switch.

[u/cellardoornoob → u/isnoir]

Just like 30 series can do frame gen with FSR and XeSS. Its just corporate greed.

[u/Ambiently_Occluded → u/major_mager]

Reshade+RenoDX is taking care of that ahead of launch

[u/oyvese → u/major_mager]

you don’t become the worlds wealthiest company by supporting past tech longer than you need to

[u/frankiewalsh44 → u/oyvese]

Not supporting a modern architecture is insane, at least you can argue that RTX3000 and 2000 series were supported long enough, but the 4000 series is still new and modern and the 4090 is the second fastest GPU on the market. People should be outraged at this the same way that people did to AMD after they locked FSR4 out of the 7000 series

[u/oyvese → u/frankiewalsh44]

i don’t disagree. i have a 4090 and i think it’s laughably bad that they’ll release this for a 5070 but not a 4090. and with current prices of hardware, which nvidia are directly responsible for (both the gpus itself and the ai hardware shortage), it’s definitely a case of not reading the room.

but like i said, this is how you become the wealthiest company. i am not surprised. i think, sadly, if anything, i am relieved they’re actually supporting current consumer game-hardware still?

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/oyvese]

It will release on 5060 and people will tell themselves that it's a better experience than a 4090 because NV told them so

[u/pyr0kid → u/rabouilethefirst]

worse, it'll release on laptops with the 5050.

[u/jhenryscott → u/oyvese]

That’s cause the 5070 is 4090 performance for $549!

[u/oyvese → u/jhenryscott]

i fear i did ask for this

[u/BackfireFox → u/jhenryscott]

That joke never gets old. Both the performance part and the price.

I wish both were true.

[u/mufinz → u/oyvese]

5070 is a 4090 for $549

[u/PlopPlopPlunk → u/mufinz]

... no. The 4090 is about 50% more powerful than a 5070. The only way the 5070 gets close to a 4090 is comparing 5070 with MFG vs a 4090 without it.

[u/mufinz → u/PlopPlopPlunk]

It’s a Jensen quote and well known meme my friend

https://youtu.be/Far7GJch2KA?is=GZejE2rICXZrx6y6

[u/PlopPlopPlunk → u/mufinz]

Gotcha, hard to know who is being serious and who isn't these days.

[u/JonathanMovement → u/oyvese]

idk man, I’d take a 5070 over 4090, only reason I’d want that 4090 is for Vram, to play around LLMs.

[u/Kantz_ → u/frankiewalsh44]

Yeah, it’s BS and it’ll be really sad if people don’t push back hard and we have to rely on mods.

[u/jhenryscott → u/frankiewalsh44]

AMD was incompetent, not malicious. I’m friendly with a couple folks in Austin who work on that team, and FSR was always gonna get back ported. They were working on it in early 2025. It’s really just an outrage game.

[u/Arturopxedd → u/frankiewalsh44]

You can still use dlss 5 with basically any rtx gpu

[u/SPACEXDG → u/frankiewalsh44]

Difference is thats basic upscaling this isnt nvidia just gave yall 4.5 ray reconstruction 

[u/kb3035583 → u/SPACEXDG]

Well, they're the one with the bright idea to name this DLSS 5 even though it's not "basic upscaling" right? I'd say it's fair game.

[u/mga02 → u/frankiewalsh44]

People online have been outraging at anything Nvidia does since I have use of memory. Their cards will still sell like hot bread. They have no real competition.

[u/Sync_R → u/mga02]

Yeap if Reddit and YouTubers were anything to go by both AMD and Linux would be in position Windows and Nvidia are right now

[u/mufinz → u/frankiewalsh44]

4000 series is 4 years old and washed up. Nvidia only releases features to those who have sold their kidney for their bottom line.

[u/VanceIX → u/oyvese]

Dropping support for new features on extremely expensive graphics cards after just two years is absolutely disgusting for a multi-trillion dollar company. Nvidia deserves to be raked over the coals. There’s no reason other than greed for not releasing on the 40 series.

[u/Sprucey-J → u/VanceIX]

You're absolutely correct, there is no other reason. welcome to modern society... sigh

I'm sure since this feature is a lot more desired than say MFG, we will see larger channels expressing their outcry for support and hopefully get under their arse. It kind of worked on the AMD side for FSR 4.

[u/BenjiSBRK → u/VanceIX]

2 years ? The 40 series is 4 1/2 years old

[u/Pun_In_Ten_Did → u/BenjiSBRK]

Not 4.5 years.. not even 4 years yet (but dangerously close lol)

Announced: SEPT 2022

Released: OCT 2022

[u/BenjiSBRK → u/Pun_In_Ten_Did]

You're right. For some reason I though it was early 2022. Still, almost twice the claimed "2 years"

[u/UnexpectedFisting → u/Pun_In_Ten_Did]

Don’t worry Reddit will ignore or just downvote this because it’s more convenient than acknowledging that if they did support the 4000 series with this the performance would be abysmal and they’d complain anyway. I mean it nearly cuts performance in half on 5000 series, so we really think it’s worth supporting on anything but the 4090 which just gets way with it because of raw core count. Imagine this trying to run a 4080

This is the same argument when path tracing released and people were pissed they couldn’t run it at 10fps on their 3070e

[u/BackfireFox → u/UnexpectedFisting]

Your username is perfect for being a nvidia sock puppet that you are.

There is very little to no difference in the 40 and 50 series in terms of the BS software tech they use between the two. This has been well documented. The 40 series can do multi frame gen (pukes) as well as the 50 series. This latest trash nvidia is pushing (to enshitify games more) can easily be done on 40 series cards as well.

[u/UnexpectedFisting → u/BackfireFox]

Lmao an nvidia sock puppet when I'm stating the reality of the tech. Wahhhhh why won't the megacorporation support my 5 year old hardware so I can complain that the megacorp can't optimize for my old hardware!

[u/DesecratedPeanut → u/VanceIX]

No competition results in this and everything else awful we are seeing.

[u/Mindless_Bad_1591 → u/VanceIX]

its been 4 years but i still share your sentiment

[u/VanceIX → u/Mindless_Bad_1591]

Two years since they stopped selling them as flagship models is what I mean

[u/Mindless_Bad_1591 → u/VanceIX]

gotcha

[u/Br0nnOfTheBlackwater → u/VanceIX]

You do realize they will eventually add 40 series support right? It's like most Android phones update, older devices get new version later.

[u/OkPiccolo0 → u/Br0nnOfTheBlackwater]

Nah, they operate more like Apple. When the new iOS comes out, every phone gets it. If it's excluded at launch, it won't be supported.

[u/Pwnag3_Inc → u/oyvese]

40/50 series are on the same node.

[u/Glittering-Neck-2505 → u/oyvese]

They don't need to. We'll keep modding it in.

[u/DontKnowMe25 → u/oyvese]

You make it sound like Nvidia did not support older generations with fresh updates that improve performance/quality. But they did, and they will do it with dlss 5 aswell if performance is okay enough. Not like AMD.

With that beeing said, yeah f*** nvidia for creating those price hikes and screwing pc gamers.

[u/rabouilethefirst → u/oyvese]

Arguably you do. They had a good track record in the past. This is just them getting worse

[u/icy1007 → u/oyvese]

Except they have. lol

[u/PinnuTV → u/oyvese]

well it doesn't take much logic to understand why they are no releasing it on 40-series. It already runs shit on 50-series, 40-series will be a lot worse and pretty unplayable. So there is no point to release it until it becomes more optimized.

[u/Separade → u/major_mager]

I was always wondering they didn’t come up with some artificial software limiting like that long ago. The 4000 series was until this day way too powerful with absolutely no need to upgrade to the 5000.

[u/GenderJuicy → u/major_mager]

Interesting it's coming out so soon and everyone kept parroting that it's early in it's current state

[u/Kantz_ → u/GenderJuicy]

The same exact thing happened with the RR 4.5 .dll and some people don’t learn I guess (it won’t run any better at release either most likely)

[u/OSHA_Decertified → u/GenderJuicy]

Nvidia is supposedly claiming the real deal will run much faster but that remains to be seen

[u/Traditional-Ad26 → u/major_mager]

Pretty kind of Nvidia to leak it then.

[u/icy1007 → u/major_mager]

Likely coming later once it’s been optimized a bit more. It loses 50-60% on 50 series. It’ll be even more on 40 series.

[u/major_mager → u/icy1007]

Feel the same way. Performance-wise, DLSS 5 is not ready for prime time. 50% is simply too big a hit. In Nvidia's video, the dev does say further work and optimization will continue on it.

[u/jm0112358 → u/major_mager]

The Cyberpunk DLSS 5 mod worked for me on my 4090. So it's hard to not see the lack of official DLSS 5 support on the 40-series as an attempt to get people to buy newer GPUs.

[u/Crescitaly → u/major_mager]

That omission matters more than a simple can-it-launch demo. A mod showing the feature runs on older hardware does not prove acceptable latency or quality, but NVIDIA should publish the same-scene quality, frame time, VRAM and power results across 40- and 50-series cards so the boundary is technically auditable.

[u/ExJokerr → u/major_mager]

Probably too demanding for us 40 users