Mod brings back the golden era of SLI, with DLSS 5 running on its own dedicated GPU for big FPS gains

With the official release of DLSS 5 Neural Rendering, it's clear that NVIDIA's new tech is a big step toward actual photorealistic lighting in games. Although it's only officially available in a single title, NBA 2K27, with DLSS 5 leaking ahead of its debut, modders and PC gamers have been going a little DLSS 5 crazy, tweaking and modding it into just about any game you can think of.

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That said, when it comes to DLSS 5, enabling it comes with a massive performance cost - to the tune of around 60%, even on the flagship GeForce RTX 5090. Although NVIDIA has confirmed it's still working on improving DLSS 5 performance, modders are already coming up with their own solutions. The latest is a blast from the past: offloading DLSS 5 to a second GPU.

Developer Marcelo Guibout has seemingly brought back the SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU era, connecting two GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB cards to the same motherboard (via PCIe 5.0 x8). You can probably guess where this is headed: one GPU renders the game, while the second GPU handles the final DLSS 5 render pass. This isn't really like an old-school SLI setup where both GPUs work together, since each GPU works independently, but it's still impressive.

Basically, the second GPU applies DLSS 5 to the rendered frame, doing all of the neural heavy lifting. The second GPU also displays the final frame, so there is some additional latency there. However, offloading DLSS 5 to a second GPU boosts performance because the DLSS 5 rendering cost and performance aren't tied to DLSS Super Resolution's output resolution.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Question #1

Does running DLSS 5 on a second GPU add noticeable input latency?

Yes, the setup adds some additional latency because the second GPU applies DLSS 5 and also displays the final frame. The story does not say whether that latency is noticeable in practice, only that it is there.

Question #2

Can Neural Coprocessor be used in Cyberpunk 2077 or only in the games shown by the developer?

Neural Coprocessor is shown running in Cyberpunk 2077, so it is not limited to only the games shown by the developer. The piece also says modders have been tweaking DLSS 5 into just about any game, and that the mod is available as a ReShade add-on on GitHub.

Question #3

Why does DLSS 5 carry such a large performance hit on a single GPU in the first place?

Because DLSS 5 Neural Rendering does all of the neural heavy lifting on the same GPU, and its rendering cost is not tied to DLSS Super Resolution's output resolution. The article says that is why enabling it can carry a massive performance cost, even on a GeForce RTX 5090. NVIDIA is still working on improving DLSS 5 performance.

Question #4

Is Neural Coprocessor limited to DLSS 5 Neural Rendering, or can it also offload other DLSS features?

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The mod is called Neural Coprocessor, and it's available via GitHub as a ReShade add-on. So, if for some reason you have a second GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU sitting around, and you've been playing around with DLSS 5, it's probably worth looking into. Here's a video of the developer showcasing it in Cyberpunk 2077.