DLSS 5 fixed Crysis biggest graphical flaws – at the cost of 50 FPS on RTX 5090

Crysis, released back in 2007, spent years as the benchmark for graphics and the ultimate test of PC hardware. But the game had its share of visual shortcomings, and those flaws stand out even more today than they did at launch.

Turns out a mod adding NVIDIA DLSS 5 support fixes nearly all of these problems.

YouTube channel Lumin Visual published a comparison video showing the original version of Crysis side by side with a version running the DLSS 5 mod. The technology uses AI to enhance lighting and materials directly during rendering.

In open areas, the difference barely registers. Crytek carefully tuned the time-of-day system across several levels, so the original still holds up well in sunny conditions. Things look different in scenes without direct lighting.

The original Crysis shows its age in a few specific types of scenes:

• interiors of wooden huts and sheds

• dense dark forests where sunlight cannot reach

• areas that rely solely on ambient lighting

In these moments, the original image looks flat and rough. DLSS 5 fixes these issues, and the game maintains high visual quality regardless of lighting conditions.

Crysis owners have long had ways to improve the graphics manually. Configuration files with console variables (CVARs) let players enable and adjust ambient occlusion.

The comparison also includes Crysis Remastered, released in 2020. Crytek reworked the lighting for the remaster, and those same wooden huts look noticeably better than in the original. Still, when placed side by side in the second video, the DLSS 5 version comes out ahead of the remaster too.

The main cost of this upgrade is performance. On an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, frame rates drop from 120 to 70 FPS, meaning a top-tier graphics card is needed for a smooth experience, especially at higher resolutions.

DSOGaming testing confirms that DLSS 5 currently demands high-end hardware. Results across two graphics cards broke down as follows:

• the RTX 5080 handles the technology, but keeping a stable base frame rate requires lowering the render scale

• the RTX 5090 can run at default settings, provided DLSS is set to "Performance" or "Quality" mode alongside Multi-Frame Generation

Keep in mind this is a mod, not a native implementation. NVIDIA continues optimizing DLSS 5 for its GPUs, and official integration could potentially run faster.

Native support for Crysis or Crysis Remastered seems unlikely though, and for now these mods remain the only way to try the technology in these games.

According to testers, characters in the DLSS 5 version gained a significant boost in detail and now hold up against protagonists from many modern games. The environments also transformed noticeably – without context, you could easily mistake the footage for a 2026 release rather than a title nearing its twentieth anniversary.