Just last week, Nvidia’s controversial DLSS 5 technology leaked when a DLL file was found in the NBA 2K27 beta. It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that the technology will be officially launching on September 3 in, well, NBA 2K27.
Nvidia bills DLSS 5 as a 3D-bound neural rendering technique, which takes geometry and color data from the game you’re playing, and then draws an AI-generated image on top of the rendered frame. The goal is to maximize photorealism, without the massive computational cost that would require in more traditional methods. Nvidia insists that because the model is constrained by the geometry and color information in the original scene, that it won’t add extra elements to the scene or misplace objects. But that’s something I’ll have to test when the tech becomes available Thursday.
Regardless of the aesthetic changes that DLSS 5 has in games, it doesn’t come for free. While some of the mods that materialized after the leak on Friday had some massive performance hits, I assumed that was partly because of a lack of optimization. However, even according to Nvidia, enabling the DLSS 5 neural renderer in NBA 2K27 will hit performance by around 50–60%. Although, it will have a noticeable impact on how the game looks.
To offset that performance hit, Nvidia encourages folks to enable the other parts of the DLSS software suite, like super resolution and frame generation to keep your frame rate high. The technology will also only work on RTX 5000 graphics cards at launch, but I’d recommend only enabling it if you have an RTX 5070 or better.
You can, of course, lower graphics settings or resolution to give yourself more leeway, but according to Nvidia, the better the source, the better the final image is going to look. I’m not sure what minimum graphics settings at a low resolution will do to the final image once DLSS 5 actually launches, but that’s definitely something I’m going to test later this week.
Regardless, while DLSS 5 has had a controversial lead up to its release, I’ve definitely seen plenty of people in my own comments who think it makes games look much better. And now that it’s going to be officially supported in a game by its developers we’ll finally be able to see it in action beyond Nvidia’s own marketing – and I know I’m excited to see exactly what it can do, and where it falls short.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
