17-year-old GTA IV looks like a next-gen game thanks to DLSS5

Modders keep proving that old-game graphics are limited less by hardware and more by the year they came out. The moment a new rendering technology shows up, someone drags it into a decade-old title just to see how far it can go.

That's exactly what happened with GTA IV, which suddenly looks like it got remastered for 2026.

Gamer shared screenshots and a short clip showing Rockstar 2008 classic run through a technology called DLSS5 Neural Rendering. The result turned out so striking that the shots spread across gaming communities – wet asphalt in Liberty City, realistic puddle reflections, and noticeably sharper character faces make the game look like it's running on a next-gen engine.

This is a version of DLSS5 that hasn't officially launched yet, originally built by NVIDIA for neural-network graphics enhancement. Ahead of a full release, the tool already leaked into the hands of modders, who bolt it onto random games via RTX Remix and crank the effect intensity sliders all the way up manually.

That explains the uneven results – some scenes look photorealistic, while in others the neural network overdoes the smoothing and skin textures.

Performance takes a noticeable hit, though nothing dramatic. The person behind the original shots played on an RTX 4080 and got a bit over 30fps, noting that most of the load comes not from DLSS5 itself but from the RTX ray-tracing mod required to run neural rendering at all.

For a game that turned 17 this year, those requirements sound almost funny, but they line up with what you'd expect from a technology built for the newest graphics cards.

The big question around these screenshots is how consistently the neural network renders the same character from frame to frame. The tool is still unofficial and unfinished, so it's too early to talk about full consistency, but even in this rough state it hints at where upscaling tech is headed.

If DLSS5 Neural Rendering ships in the form shown here, fan-made remasters built with RTX Remix could end up as real competition for official remasters from studios.