Following the recent discovery of an Nvidia DLSS 5 DLL in NBA 2K27, modders now have the feature working across multiple games. While this likely isn’t the final version of the neural rendering tech, this mod at least serves as a sneak peek of what we can expect when the feature launches later this year.
The folks responsible for the RenoDX (Renovation Engine for DirectX Games) tool shared instructions and the necessary file to get Nvidia DLSS 5 running in Control via their Discord. Within hours, however, others had the feature running across an ever-growing list of games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and more.
The visual results of the mod line up with the several simultaneously impressive yet uncomfortable demonstrations of Nvidia DLSS 5 we’ve had over the past several months. The most notable effect of the tech is on character models, which adopt a hyper-realistic uncanny look that wouldn’t look out of place in an AI generated video.
I appreciate some may prefer the look DLSS 5 gives, and will admit there are clear benefits to detail and lighting as shown in the side-by-sides above, from YouTube channel MxBenchmarkPC. However, I think we’re in for a long teething period with this technology, as developers and gamers each acclimate to what the tool can do.
Having DLSS 5 out in the wild also allows us to see its performance impact, and the feature is seemingly very expensive to run. Using a Core i7-14700F and GeForce RTX 5080, performance drops from ~90fps all the way down to 40fps, more than halving frame rates. Hopefully the final version isn’t as heavy on graphics cards, as I doubt many would be willing to make such a trade.
DLSS 5 will be available later this year. In the meantime, if you have any GeForce RTX graphics cards, you can reap the benefits of DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction right now.
