Nvidia's DLSS 5 came at a time when little else was going on in the GPU world, and it shook its very foundations.People loved it, people hated it.It had several big problems, and the AI slop was not even the worst of it.
I had little hope for it improving anytime soon, but Nvidia surprised me in a big way by addressing some of the most major issues DLSS 5 had faced since its introduction.DLSS 5 had a serious problem when it launched Not even the RTX 5090 felt comfortable with it Close The GPU market has been more bare than ever, but at least Nvidia's been keeping us on our toes on the software front.It introduced DLSS 5 in March 2026, and it finally launched in September with NBA 2K27.
Unlike traditional DLSS upscaling, DLSS 5's new 3D-guided neural rendering uses AI to enhance lighting, materials, and other visual details.That was the first "questionable" thing about DLSS 5, though.The way it changed how games looked, often turning characters completely unrecognizable, was quickly deemed to be "AI slop." And while I don't hate it, I have to admit that some implementations of DLSS 5 looked ...
well, less than stellar, to put it mildly.Then, there's the performance tax.Putting this tech under the DLSS umbrella may feel a little misleading, as it never gave you any extra performance; instead, it took away what you had to begin with.
In fact, even Nvidia's mighty (and overpriced) RTX 5090 struggled with the performance penalty.In TechSpot's original testing, NBA 2K27 ran at 192 fps at 4K with maximum settings and DLSS 5 disabled.But turn neural rendering on, and that dropped to just 76 fps, which is a whopping 60% performance hit.
Worse still, lowering graphics settings barely helped.DLSS 5 had a heavy performance tax, and you had to be prepared to pay it if you wanted your games to look prettier.Nvidia just made DLSS 5 dramatically less demanding Twice as fast, with a smaller memory footprint As these kinds of results weren't outliers, but rather the norm, it was only a matter of time before Nvidia fixed DLSS 5's outrageous hit on performance.
Now, it's finally happened.Earlier this month, Nvidia rolled out a new DLSS 5 model for NBA 2K27, and the improvements are pretty massive.Nvidia itself claims that the updated neural rendering model is twice as fast as the September version, with 24% fewer parameters and 20% lower VRAM usage at 4K.
That cuts GPU overhead in half while (supposedly) maintaining the same visual quality.(Which, depending on which side of the fence you're on, can be a good thing or a bad thing.) Nvidia also claims up to 1.4 times higher in-game frame rates.The independent benchmarks are impressive, but there's a catch Your fps still takes a beating Promises are one thing, real performance is another, but independent benchmarks of the updated DLSS 5 show huge improvements.
Various publications report boosts of up to 50%, and not just on the RTX 5090, but also on slightly more "affordable" GPUs like the RTX 5070 Ti.With that said, DLSS 5 is still incredibly demanding.You're still sacrificing heaps of performance to enable neural rendering, but at least now, the game should be playable even when you do toggle it on.
Your mileage may vary, though; I wouldn't dare to try this tech on a midrange GPU.RTX Remix might be the best reason to care about DLSS 5 Your favorite old games are next I like performance improvements just as much as the next person.In fact, I think it's perhaps the most exciting thing about any new GPU launch (something we're unlikely to experience for quite some time).
But there's something really exciting in this bunch of updates, and it's unrelated to performance.Nvidia is bringing its updated neural rendering model to RTX Remix.If you're unfamiliar, RTX Remix is a modding platform that lets enthusiasts give classic PC games a serious visual overhaul, complete with path tracing and improved textures.
Adding DLSS 5 to Remix means putting the tech in the hands of modders, which is a great choice coming from Nvidia.They'll now be able to use AI to improve lighting, materials, and other stuff.Nvidia has already demonstrated it in two community projects: Fallout 4 RTX and Mirror's Edge RTX.
This genuinely has me hyped for what DLSS 5 could do for older games.I also trust modders to try to hit the right balance between improvements and performance, so we might end up with results better than what Nvidia itself has shown us.More importantly, the outroar about Nvidia's "AI slop" shouldn't apply here, as I know modders will be in tune with what each game's fanbase wants.
Nvidia also snuck in a faster Frame Generation mode And you can try it through the Nvidia App beta Nvidia also decided to make things nicer for those of us who love frame gen, by introducing a new performance mode referred to as Preset C.It's available through the Nvidia App for the RTX 40- and RTX 50-series GPUs, and it's currently in beta.You can also find it on RTX Spark laptops.
This mode replaces one of Nvidia's frame generation AI models with a lighter, faster algorithm, which Nvidia promises will improve processing performance by up to 35% on an RTX 5060.It comes with some minor quality trade-offs, but hey, better performance is almost never something I'll complain about.The AI slop problem is still alive and well All these updates are fantastic, but if you didn't like the way DLSS 5 made games look, you may still not like it now.
There are still things like inconsistent skin tones, lighting flicker, and a strange halo around characters.So, while this is huge, we're not out of the woods yet, but I'm hopeful that we're closer than ever to an iteration of DLSS 5 that most people can fully get behind.Related RTX Remix Makes Your Old PC Games Look New Again It's now out of beta, and NVIDIA is showing off what it looks like with Half-Life 2.
Posts By Jorge A.Aguilar
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