NVIDIA Confirms DLSS 5 Support For RTX 40 GPUs — SkimNews
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- NVIDIA confirmed DLSS 5 will reach RTX 40 (Ada Lovelace) GPUs, but only after the model is fully tuned on RTX 50 (Blackwell) cards, with no exact date given yet.
- DLSS 5 is NVIDIA's most computationally demanding model to date, achieving a 5X performance gain since its March 2026 announcement through hardware, software kernel, and co-design optimizations.
- NBA 2K27 became the first title to offer DLSS 5 support, featuring 3D-Guided Neural Rendering.
- The DLSS 5 model evolved from requiring dual RTX 5090s in March to running on a single RTX 5090, then improving roughly 2.5x in July and 5x by August across all RTX 50 cards.
- NVIDIA projects further optimizations could push performance 7-10x from the initial unveiling, potentially cutting the current 50-60% performance hit down to 10-15% by year's end.
- RTX 40 GPUs lack Multi Frame Generation support, meaning DLSS 5 must be fine-tuned further before it becomes viable on that hardware.
Why it matters: RTX 40 owners represent a massive installed base of current-generation NVIDIA gamers who would otherwise be locked out of the company's flagship neural rendering technology. The projected drop to a 10-15% performance hit would let gamers run DLSS 5 without aggressive MFG modes or Performance-mode upscaling, turning it from a Blackwell-exclusive showcase into something broadly usable across NVIDIA's recent lineup.
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