Summary
DLSS 5 in General:
- DLSS 5 is a lighting diffusion model likely trained off professional photography
- Primary aim is to modify lighting and material qualities to make subjects more realistic looking
- After blowback of initial reveal NVIDIA changed the marketing approach more towards a subtle lighting and texture engine
- DLSS 5 best suited for games that are trying to look realistic, not nearly as effective for stylized games
- John thinks it does look good in certain circumstances, after being skeptical initially
- DLSS 5 settings allow users to apply the layers several times over, creating some ridiculous results
- NVIDIA's strategy has changed from 40xx to 50xx series - can't simply add more transistors and power - have to resort to neural networking and AI to advance graphics
Testing on NBA 2K27:
- John thinks NBA 2K is a perfect game for DLSS 5, since it is aiming for realism
- John notes that implementation in NBA 2K27 is very subtle and it looks great, especially effective when upgrading crowd detail
- John points to a new shadow between the player's jersey and body as a big upgrade with DLSS 5 that wouldn't be possible to accurately render otherwise
- Oliver notes that DLSS 5 improves detail shadows and shadow degradation and also improves shadowing of "African" hair
- NBA 2K27 has subpar animations and paired with the more realistic visuals of DLSS 5 it creates an uncanny mismatch of photo realism with dated animations
- The team agrees this applies to any realistic looking game, not just games with DLSS 5
- Performance has greatly improved from initial reveal when two 5090's were being used to run DLSS 5
- NVIDIA says performance has improved 5x since then, with more performance improvements to come
- Testing NBA 2K27 on a RTX 5060 at 1080P with DLSS 5 - the game runs around 55fps to 65 fps
- DLSS 5 has about an 8 milli second cost when running at 4K on a 5090 which Richard says is very heavy
- DLSS 5 uses a peak of 731 MB of GPU memory
- NBA 2K27 runs at about 128 fps at 4K max settings w/o DLSS 5 on a 5090 - with same settings and DLSS 5 it falls to about 63 fps
- RTX 5080 runs the game around 40 fps at max settings with DLSS 5, w/o DLSS 5 it is about 95 fps
- Richard notes frame time dramatically increases with DLSS 5 on the 5080 - from 8 ms to 13 ms - 5080 takes the highest hit %-wise on the 50xx stack using DLSS 5
- Richard suggests dropping resolution from 4K to 1800p to make up the performance difference
- RTX 5070 goes from 120 fps at max settings and 1440P to around 53 fps with DLSS 5
- RTX 5060 runs NBA at around 70 fps at 1080P with High settings and RT, with DLSS 5 it drops to around 40 fps
- Richard notes that NBA is not a particularly heavy game to begin with
- Oliver notes that DLSS 5 is tailor-made for frame gen, because the model runs after upscaling but before frame gen in the rendering pipeline
- 5070 gets 190 fps at 1440P with DLSS 5 using frame gen
- Due to fixed time cost of DLSS 5, you basically have to use frame gen unless you have a 5090 or it's a very light game
- The team questions if the frame time DLSS 5 uses would be better used on other graphical methods
Testing on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth:
- DLSS 5 provides some lighting enhancements to Rebirth
- But character faces don't fair as well because it adds too much detail to the character's faces relative to the game's art style
- Shader injector mod compared to DLSS 5 - the team notes DLSS 5 improves the lighting in some respects, but the shader injector works better on character faces
- But Oliver notes the shader injector mod was made carefully and specifically for this game, while DLSS 5 wasn't
- Richard notes DLSS 5 makes a lot of characters' lips excessively pink
Testing on Forza Horizon 6:
- John says DLSS 5 is a noticeable upgrade for FH6
- DLSS 5 greatly improves occlusion shadows and adds depth to environment lighting
- John notes subtle implementation and the game lacking human character faces makes it ideal for DLSS 5
Testing on Monster Hunter Rise:
- Oliver notes similar environment lighting gains for Monster Hunter Rise - and he thinks the characters look better too with subtle implementation
Testing on Starfield:
- Oliver says that Starfield looks better with DLSS 5
- Oliver notes that since the original reveal back in March, DLSS 5 doesn't enhance the SSR as much
- Oliver notes that faces look more consistent from distance and under different lighting circumstances than how it looked back in March
- And DLSS 5 doesn't erase facial shadows now as much as it did back at initial reveal
Conclusion and General Thoughts:
- Oliver notes that individuals will have to play with the DLSS 5 settings to achieve a desirable outcome, and individual taste will have a lot to do with if it looks good or not
- Richard notes that DLSS 5 is a tool, that requires expert implementation to get best results - it is not replacing the art so much as it is a graphical effect and engine (like Lumen) that artists apply
- John has mixed feelings on this topic but he agrees it is not remaking the underlying art
- John notes that any developer that tries to lean on DLSS 5 to replace artists and devs will fail, the underlying game still has to look good for this to work
- John compares it more to a lighting engine and overall he likes it more now than he did at initial reveal
- John spoke to the NBA 2K dev team about DLSS 5 implementation and his impressions were positive to what those devs said
- Biggest factor will be the cost - both $$$ and graphical grunt
- Is this better than path tracing? - John thinks maybe not
- Team agrees that the tech will likely improve over time and individual implementation will improve
- Right now individuals are cranking it up to see what it can do but will likely implement it more tastefully over time
- No denying this is impressive tech with enormous potential, but this is just a first gen pass at it - much more optimization needed and people needing to learn how to use it properly
- Oliver compares it to a sophisticated screen-space lighting solution
- "May not be the future of rendering but it is a future rendering" - likely copycat programs to come from the other GPU makers
- Richard says DLSS 5 offers transformative rendering gains, but not currently worth the cost
- John praises NVIDIA's new G-sync pulsar displays - big gains in motion clarity for flat panel displays