Nvidia DLSS 5 arrives September 3: NBA 2K27 debut, but a big frame-rate hit

Nvidia has pushed DLSS to version 5. The company says DLSS 5 launches on September 3, debuting in NBA 2K27 alongside a same-day Nvidia Game Ready Driver release. Nvidia is selling it with promises of “Hollywood-grade photorealism,” though early reports say the tradeoff could be steep, with frame rates dropping by roughly 50 to 60 percent.

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At launch, DLSS 5 will be officially available only on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and through GeForce NOW. Older GeForce RTX 20, 30, and 40 Series cards aren’t included. NBA 2K27 will be the first real game to show it off, rather than another tech demo, which makes this feel very much like a headline feature for Nvidia’s newest hardware.

Nvidia says DLSS 5 introduces 3D-Guided Neural Rendering. The idea is to combine the rendered frame with engine data such as color, motion vectors, and lighting, then use that information to improve reflections, materials, texture behavior, and light bounce. In practice, it seems like a much bigger step forward from what DLSS 3.5 began with Ray Reconstruction.

Nvidia has already acknowledged that the feature is heavy on hardware, and early demos reportedly ran on two GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs before later being tuned for a single GeForce RTX 50 Series card. If you’re after the best possible image quality and don’t mind taking a performance hit, DLSS 5 could make sense as a showcase setting. Critics, though, are already questioning the cost, along with what it does to a game’s art style. Leaked tests on unsupported older RTX cards were reportedly awful.

DLSS 5 goes live on September 3 through Nvidia’s Game Ready Driver for GeForce RTX 50 Series PCs and on GeForce NOW.

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