NVIDIA DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering in NBA 2K27 - Performance, Analysis, and More

Introduction

DLSS 5 is described as 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, representing a major evolution in NVIDIA's DLSS suite, which includes AI-powered Super Resolution, Frame and Multi-Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction. Like the rest of the DLSS 5 family, DLSS 5 Neural Rendering takes a game's rendered frame, on-screen objects, and motion data. With that information, plus an understanding of objects, materials, and characters in a scene, it enhances materials and lighting effects like subsurface scattering, contact shadows, ambient occlusion, and more.

It's worth noting early that DLSS 5 refers to the full DLSS suite of technologies, including the new 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, which necessitated the formal version-number change. However, much like Frame Generation was initially tied to DLSS 3 in gamers' eyes, the same applies here: DLSS 5 includes the new 3D-Guided Neural Rendering alongside Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction (if available), and Multi Frame Generation. And from our testing, it's safe to say that only with the full DLSS stack enabled can you achieve a smooth, maxed-out 120+ FPS presentation.

On its own, DLSS 5 is heavy with a massive performance cost, but it aims to transform real-time graphics to deliver, as NVIDIA puts it, "Hollywood-grade photorealism." A look that wouldn't be possible with modern GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs with traditional rasterization or even with modern DLSS 4.5-powered path tracing.

It's also additive, in that the higher the quality of the input, the better the results. This makes its debut in NBA 2K27 feel more like a tech demo, but one that makes sense. As developer Visual Concepts has always aimed to deliver visuals that represent what it would look like to watch an NBA broadcast in high definition, adding "Hollywood-grade photorealism" with DLSS 5 certainly brings the series closer to that goal on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards. It also lets DLSS 5 debut more subtly than its controversial announcement earlier this year. Let's dig in.

DLSS 5 Primer and Artistic Controls

DLSS 5 Primer - How It Works and How We Got Here

With DLSS 4.5 reconstructing frames to render higher-resolution images, generating additional frames for smoother presentation, and leveraging AI to deliver cleaner, more detailed ray-traced lighting, DLSS 5 is the next step. NVIDIA describes it as the "final rendering stage of the graphics pipeline," a complex and powerful 3D-Guided Neural Rendering model that uses a game's geometry, texture, lighting, and more to "infuse" each frame with lifelike lighting.

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If you've been tracking DLSS 5's progress and its eventual leak, you'll no doubt recall how controversial its initial GTC debut was earlier this year. There we saw an early version in popular titles like Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield, and Hogwarts Legacy, with the results being so dramatic that many felt that it altered the underlying art direction to the point where it looked more like a 'generative AI beautification filter' than an additive tool that enhanced the original image. This sentiment came up more in relation to how it transformed characters as opposed to environments, and it's feedback that NVIDIA has seemingly taken to heart.

With that initial demo, which required two GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards to run, NVIDIA has spent the last six months optimizing DLSS 5 to the point where it can now run on a single GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU, while also expanding developer controls to ensure that any DLSS implementation preserves artistic intent, with developers in control of the outcome.

DLSS 5 isn't AI image generation; it's training, and the model uses a game's rendered frame to enhance visuals. What does this mean? Broadly speaking, the DLSS 5 model analyzes the rendered frame and considers geometry, textures, and lighting buffers. It can recognize materials like wood, leather, steel, and organics. It can break down a character to understand their face, silhouette, and clothing. It considers all objects in a scene and how they interact, what's touching what, and their physical properties. It gathers various lighting information across intensity, direction, and even the "mood." It also accounts for the camera, viewpoint, and perspective. It then uses all this data, along with motion vector information, to produce the final result.

Frequently Asked Questions

Open a question for an answer from TweakTown's coverage of this article, or ask your own below.

Question #1

Does DLSS 5 require Multi Frame Generation to reach smooth 120+ FPS in NBA 2K27?

Yes. The article states that DLSS 5 on its own has a massive performance cost and is effectively a 60 FPS technology, and that Multi Frame Generation is required to reach smooth 120+ FPS (examples show DLSS 5 + Multi Frame Generation 4X reaching 170 FPS and the article explicitly says it needs Multi Frame Generation to hit 200+ on an RTX 5090). The Pros and Cons summary also lists "Requires Frame Generation to deliver a smooth 120+ FPS experience."

Question #2

How does DLSS 5 change player visuals like skin, hair, jerseys, and contact shadows?

DLSS 5 enhances player visuals by infusing frames with lifelike lighting and material detail, improving skin subsurface scattering for more realistic skin tones and translucency. It produces more detailed hair and adds better contact shadows on necks, arms, hands, and where player jerseys meet skin, plus more realistic shadows in small creases and folds on jerseys and arm sleeves. It also enhances ambient occlusion and other lighting effects to make players look more photorealistic.

Question #3

Does DLSS 5 improve ray-traced reflections on the court in NBA 2K27?

Answer question

Question #4

Which GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs can run DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27?

DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 works on all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs. The article explicitly states it supports the entire RTX 50 Series family, including mainline cards down to models with 8GB of VRAM.

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At 60 FPS, DLSS 5 does this 60 times every second, so from a purely technical standpoint, it's an impressive achievement for real-time rendering. This is also why the performance cost is so high: without further optimization to the model itself, running DLSS 5 right now has a fixed cost, regardless of the input frame rate. This means that for a game that runs exceptionally fast like NBA 2K27, we see the performance drop sit much higher than in leaked DLSS mods in more hardware-demanding titles.

For example, the GeForce RTX 5080 can run NBA 2K27 in 4K with ray-traced reflections and native DLSS DLAA rendering at 145 FPS. Enabling DLSS 5 drops performance by 65%, down to 50 FPS. Switching from DLAA to the DLSS Super Resolution 'Performance' preset only sees performance increase to 55 FPS. With Multi Frame Generation (2X), performance increases to 97 FPS, and with Multi Frame Generation (4X), performance increases to 170 FPS. Interestingly, even when native DLAA drops by 20-30 FPS during close-ups, DLSS 5 performance remains impressively consistent and stable. Still, it comes at a massive cost.

DLSS 5's debut in NBA 2K27 is interesting because it lets developer Visual Concepts rein in the technology's more controversial aspects and deliver an impressive, subtle photorealistic look. This is thanks to the in-depth controls NVIDIA gives developers looking to add DLSS 5 to their game.

Artistic Controls For Game Developers

"What's great is the level of control that it gives us," Peter Kavic, Senior Producer at Visual Concepts, said. "We can set the overall tone and style to match our existing art direction and then really get precise where it matters most, using a per-pixel uplift control mask to fine-tune detail on characters. Given that we want to respect their likeness with the utmost care."

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With DLSS 5 being very different from anything that has come before with the DLSS branding, the developer controls created for the technology are artist-centric. NVIDIA notes that its photorealistic output can deliver results no compute or VRAM budget would allow, which is why it includes multiple models and controls that let artists specify where and how it's applied. DLSS 5 doesn't alter a scene's geometry or object proportions; instead, it uses advanced rendering and lighting techniques to enhance the look and feel of a character or scene.

Developers can pick and choose models for different scenes; they can mask or select specific objects or groups of objects in a scene to apply the effect to (or exclude them from the DLSS 5 pass). Artists also have control over Structure Intensity and Tone Intensity sliders. Structure Intensity covers all of the effects like ambient occlusion, reflections, and subsurface scattering on a character's skin. It's a photorealism slider for lighting, while Tone Intensity lets artists and developers fine-tune broader lighting and color intensity. A tone intensity slider set to zero retains the exact colors of the original rendered frame.

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All of these controls are available at the engine level, with NVIDIA confirming that a DLSS 5 Unreal Engine 5 plugin is already available or coming soon. The artist controls UI is clear and simple, with automatic object masking and sliders and checkboxes that let developers make granular adjustments to achieve their desired result. However, because DLSS 5's 3D-Guided Neural Rendering aims for photorealism, it delivers its best results with ray-traced or path-traced lighting. This also makes it best suited for titles that aim for photorealism in their characters, like NBA 2K27, or for games that want that cinematic, path-traced look.

DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27

DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 - The Great and The Not So Great

For its NBA 2K27 debut, NVIDIA worked closely with Visual Concepts and 2K to level up the authenticity of its NBA broadcast look and feel. Although at a glance the effect is subtle or simply "slightly darker" because there's so much more shadow detail alongside enhanced ambient occlusion, it's best described as an almost never-ending series of subtle enhancements that, when viewed in motion, delivers a photorealistic look that can at times feel like you're watching an NBA game on a 4K TV.

For players, one of the biggest improvements is the more lifelike, detailed skin subsurface scattering. It also adds better contact shadows on necks, arms, hands, and even where player jerseys meet skin, plus more detailed hair. Add all of this together, and the DLSS 5 Off-to-DLSS 5 On transformation is a real-time rendering achievement. It's the little things, like seeing realistic shadows in small creases and folds on jerseys and arm sleeves that deliver on that photorealistic promise.

Because NBA 2K27 includes ray-traced reflections, DLSS 5 also enhances reflections and lighting on the court surface for a more realistic look. Everything from the ball to the rim, net, and backboard all looks more realistic with DLSS 5, which also applies to the crowd - to an extent. Because the crowd and various people on the sidelines aren't as detailed as the players, we see a DLSS 5 limitation here: even with enhanced contact shadows and other improvements, the underlying models lack the finer detail to look photorealistic.

Another, potentially unintended, outcome of DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering in NBA 2K27 is that a more photorealistic look makes some jarring animation transitions stand out. In a way, DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 can trick your brain into thinking that you're watching a real NBA game, so animation that looks like it's from a game does stand out more than when DLSS 5 is turned off. The biggest downside, though, is the performance cost. DLSS 5 is groundbreaking, and it requires the full neural rendering power of the RTX 50 Series Tensor Cores to deliver a playable experience.

DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 - Comparison Videos

DLSS 5 Performance Analysis

Kosta's Test System

DLSS 5 Performance Analysis - The Cost of Photorealism

It's hard to argue for any graphics setting that drops performance by 60%, which is why DLSS 5 is best experienced with Multi Frame Generation enabled, at least in 2X mode. DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 is currently only available for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, and for our testing, we ran extensive benchmarks across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K on the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, GeForce RTX 5070, GeForce RTX 5080, and flagship GeForce RTX 5090. Now, NBA 2K27 is playable with DLSS 5 enabled without any upscaling or frame generation, but that means going from 140 to 200+ FPS down to around 50 to 80 FPS in 4K on the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.

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To kick things off, let's look at 4K performance on the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. Here, the natively rendered game using DLAA delivers solid triple-digit performance on both cards. For reference, we captured our benchmark data using the game's TV-like broadcast camera mode, recording 90 seconds of gameplay after tip-off.

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To match or exceed performance with DLSS 5 off in NBA 2K27, you basically need to enable Multi Frame Generation at 4X. Yes, that means the cost is huge, with performance dropping by 65% on the RTX 5080 and 62% on the RTX 5090. Interestingly, switching from DLAA to DLSS Performance only offers a 10% performance increase, highlighting the model's rendering cost measured in milliseconds. Basically, there's no way to avoid it; the only solution to hitting super high frame rates (or smoothness) is to enable frame generation. This means that, like path tracing, the best results come from using the full DLSS suite of technologies.

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Switching to 1440p and the GeForce RTX 5070, it's a similar situation here for what is one of the most popular GPUs among PC gamers. With DLSS Super Resolution 'Quality' and Multi Frame Generation 4X, you can hit 200 FPS or so in the game running with DLSS 5 turned off. Of course, relying on frame generation to hit 100 FPS isn't ideal, but it reinforces how expensive DLSS 5 is when rendering time is limited. The good news is that DLSS 5 delivers a solid 70+ FPS experience when using DLSS 5 Super Resolution. The bad news? You're going from 200 FPS to 75 FPS.

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Switching to 1080p and using a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB model instead of the more VRAM-friendly 16GB variant, DLSS 5's performance stays consistent. The fact that it runs on an 8GB GPU with DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and the new 3D-Guided Neural Rendering is impressive, as all of these technologies, alongside rendering the game itself with ray-tracing, require a decent VRAM budget. Still, you're looking at a 65% performance drop when enabling DLSS 5, going from 177 FPS down to 62 FPS. Again, Multi Frame Generation is required to get things back into triple-digit territory.

Okay, so with the numbers out of the way, DLSS 5 is certainly impressive to look at (albeit subtle at times) in NBA 2K27. And after spending several hours with DLSS 5 turned on at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, image stability is impressive and consistent - with only a handful of times when we noticed any artifacts or issues when viewed in motion. In fact, DLSS 5 is best experienced in motion, as screenshots only highlight the various changes.

Conclusion & The Pros and Cons

Conclusion, or 'Is DLSS 5 More Future Tech than Right Now Tech?'

After spending a couple of days with DLSS 5 in its official NBA 2K27 debut, it's clear that it's a potential game-changer, but one that comes with a hefty performance cost. However, it's a very different kind of performance cost than, say, enabling ray tracing or path tracing. The DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering model itself is complex, large, and more render-time intensive than any other DLSS technology we've seen so far - including the new Transformer-powered DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction.

This is why there's a 60+ percent performance drop when enabling it in NBA 2K27. Even though it's impressive that it can run in real time, it's more of a 60 FPS piece of technology than a 120+ FPS one because of the render cost. This is why it needs Multi Frame Generation to hit 200+ even on an RTX 5090. In fact, even when you switch out DLSS Super Resolution modes, like going from Quality to Balanced, there's no real impact on performance. So when it comes to the question of it being worthwhile to 'turn on,' that all depends on what you're willing to accommodate.

DLSS 5 also pushes every GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU to its power limit. When turned on, the RTX 5090's power draw increases by 100W, hitting its 575W limit on the reference design. Likewise, the RTX 5080's power draw also increases by almost 100W to hit its 360W power limit. So for those concerned about power efficiency, DLSS 5 is the most intensive piece of rendering technology we've seen to date. That said, when it comes to delivering photorealistic lighting, it delivers the sort of visual fidelity, from a technical standpoint, that we haven't seen before. Although NBA 2K27 isn't exactly an immersive cinematic single-player action-adventure, DLSS 5 does cross into that "it looks real" territory more than ever before.

Ultimately, DLSS 5 feels like the beginning of something new. A groundbreaking and impressive bit of technology that adds a layer of neural rendering to take ray tracing and path tracing to the next level. It also feels like the sort of bleeding-edge tech that will take a while to mature, similar to how real-time ray tracing took a minute (or two). The high performance cost, increased GPU power draw, and reliance on frame generation mean it's not for everyone, or every game. But if you have an RTX 50 Series card and a copy of NBA 2K27, it's worth experiencing for yourself, as these sorts of advances in visual fidelity are pretty rare. Even with the performance cost, we're excited to see the next official developer-tuned DLSS 5 release and what the technology can deliver when the GeForce RTX 60 Series eventually turns up. Or, until then, more performance optimization

The Pros and Cons aka The Quick TLDR

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Pros

• Delivers photorealistic lighting and visuals in NBA 2K27
• The detail on NBA players is light-years ahead of anything we've seen in a sports game
• Works on all GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs
• When enabled, performance is consistent
• Image fidelity looks great in motion as well as still shots
• Multi Frame Generation performance is responsive, smooth, and playable
• Supports all mainline GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, even those with 8GB of VRAM

Cons

• Massive performance cost due to the required rendering time
• Requires Frame Generation to deliver a smooth 120+ FPS experience
• Power-intensive; DLSS 5 pushes RTX 50 Series GPUs to their TGP limit
• The overall effect in NBA 2K27, mostly when the camera is zoomed out, can be subtle
• DLSS 5 looks best (and noticeably better) when paired with Ultra graphics settings and ray tracing enabled