For PC gaming enthusiasts, the past week has brought plenty of DLSS 5 discussion after a leaked version of NVIDIA's groundbreaking real-time Neural Rendering model hit the internet. Without an official response from NVIDIA or the GeForce team, we've seen dozens of impressive DLSS 5 demos from modders, and the discussion has shifted from the technology's controversial debut earlier this year to a more positive, nuanced take on its transformative capabilities. Is DLSS 5 the next big thing? Based on what we've seen, that's entirely possible.
First and foremost, NVIDIA created DLSS 5 to deliver photorealism, which it says has been GeForce's goal for over 20 years. This is evident in NVIDIA's leadership in bringing programmable shaders, CUDA, ray tracing, DLSS, and path tracing to PC gaming over the years. With DLSS 5's 3D-guided neural rendering, it's positioned to deliver the next major step toward photorealism, with image fidelity that can rival the visual effects we see in movies.
And with that, NVIDIA sees DLSS 5 as the next "revolutionary technology to come along that will make image fidelity and real-time rendering leapfrog the previous generation." And PC gamers will be able to see DLSS 5 in action for the first time, officially at least, in NBA 2K27 on September 3, where it will use its 'Pixel Space Diffusion Transformer Model' to improve character and environmental detail and lighting in a way that looks more cinematic and realistic without impacting the overall tone and look of the game.
Partnering with Take-Two to bring DLSS 5 to NBA 2K27 makes sense because it's a game designed to deliver an authentic basketball experience akin to watching a live broadcast in HD or 4K. The NBA 2K series has led the way in character rendering in sports games for years, from accurately recreating real-world players through cloth simulation to rendering beads of sweat. For the developers of NBA 2K27, photorealism is the goal, and DLSS 5 delivers immediate improvements, making everything look and feel more "real."
With DLSS 5 Neural Rendering in NBA 2K27, the overall effect doesn't alter characters, textures, or even the overall colors or tone-mapping. At a glance, it can look subtle, but once you add up all of the little things like more realistic-looking hair, dramatically improved shadows, and little details like how player jerseys interact with skin, and how light can be visible through ears, it's transformative.
DLSS 5 delivers its best results with more detailed input, so you get better results with ray tracing enabled. With DLSS 5's developer controls, the NBA 2K27 development team has also fine-tuned the look and feel to match the game's original style and the TV-style broadcast while still respecting that it depicts real-world people.
Developer controls include adjusting effect intensity, tone-mapping, and choosing from different presets. More importantly, DLSS 5's powerful model takes game data, including motion vectors, and lets developers fine-tune exactly which objects in a scene DLSS 5 applies to - and at what intensity. This also means objects like, say, a basketball or a player's face, which can be excluded from the DLSS 5 pass.
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DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 is designed and optimized to run on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards - with 1080p recommended for the GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, 1440p for the GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, and 4K for the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. This is for 250+ FPS with DLSS Multi Frame Generation and Super Resolution also enabled.
