Official DLSS 5 in unsupported games runs up to 90% faster than the leaked version

A new version of DLSS 5 launched alongside NBA 2K27, and modders extracted it almost immediately. The tech is now running in games that don't officially support it, and people are comparing the fresh Neural Rendering (NR) model against the previous one.

Early measurements show the new model running up to 40% faster than the old one, with even bigger gains in some cases.

While many enthusiasts are still experimenting with leaked and first-release builds, modder Renan Maniero has already extracted the DLSS NR library version 310.9.16.0. That let other modders plug it into unsupported games and run their own tests.

Gaming Optimized on X compared the old and new models and recorded a performance boost of up to 90% in The Witcher 3 running DLSS 5 natively.

I Uploaded a new Video about the new DLSS 5 Model that got released by Nvidia. The new model can be up to 90% Faster (The Witcher 3) compared to the older one, but the performance boost varies depending on the game tested.

A full NR model that reworks the image in a game is resource-hungry. Just as large language models need a lot of RAM, DLSS NR works in a similar way, only the load lands on VRAM. To lower the requirements, Nvidia made several changes in the new version:

• The AI model is 24% smaller

• At 4K resolution, it uses 20% less VRAM

• Neural rendering is processed up to 2x faster

Improving an AI model usually means adding parameters and size, essentially giving it a bigger "brain." That approach doesn't work for graphics cards, since VRAM on consumer GPUs is limited and can't be upgraded. Instead of scaling the model up, Nvidia had to make it more efficient while cutting resource usage at the same time.

Comparing the versions turned out to be easier than expected. The new DLL still includes the old model as a separate preset, so there is no need to switch back and forth between updates. Preset A is the old model, while Preset B enables the new one.

As with other DLSS 5 experiments, including the work of Valery Kryzhanovsky, the tech is injected into the graphics pipeline using RenoDX or OptiScaler. Both tools allow flexible tweaking of DLL settings to get different results. To get DLSS NR running on older RTX cards, the community also modified the runtime to support the RTX 20 series, as noted in the OptiScaler README on GitHub.

Nvidia officially plans to release DLSS 5 for RTX 40-series GPUs. There are no reports of official support for RTX 30 or RTX 20 cards, but modders have already gotten the tech running on those generations anyway.