Nvidia has officially confirmed that its DLSS 5 rendering technology will be expanded to RTX 40 series graphics cards after the company finishes performance optimizations for its newer RTX 50 series lineup.
The graphics hardware manufacturer stated that official software development for cards built on the Ada Lovelace architecture will begin once performance tuning on the Blackwell-based RTX 50 GPUs is complete.
Nvidia stated that its current priority remains improving the performance of DLSS 5 on GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs. The company confirmed that a new software update for the artificial intelligence model is being prepared for release this autumn.
According to Nvidia, DLSS 5 represents the most computationally demanding artificial intelligence model the company has developed to date. Early demonstrations of the technology required two flagship RTX 5090 graphics cards to execute properly before subsequent engineering work reduced the requirement to a single RTX 5090 processor.
Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, is the primary developer of discrete graphics processing units for personal computers and artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company first introduced Deep Learning Super Sampling in 2018 to leverage machine learning algorithms, using neural networks to upscale lower-resolution images into higher-resolution frames to boost gaming frame rates.
Optimization and performance gains
Engineers at Nvidia achieved significant efficiency gains during internal testing over the summer. Performance improved by approximately two and a half times in July, reaching a cumulative five-fold increase in August that enabled DLSS 5 to run across the entire RTX 50 graphics card range.
Nvidia noted that the latest iteration of the model is both smaller and faster than the version originally demonstrated. The company stated that the refined version generates more realistic images while giving game developers greater control over rendering parameters.
Despite these improvements, Nvidia reported that DLSS 5 currently causes an average performance penalty of 50 to 60 percent on hardware. Ongoing optimization work aims to make the model even higher performing in the coming months.
The RTX 40 series GPUs are built on Nvidia's Ada Lovelace microarchitecture, which debuted in 2022 featuring fourth-generation Tensor Cores for AI execution. However, those chips lack the specialized hardware features found in the newer Blackwell microarchitecture that underpins the RTX 50 series, including hardware support for Multi-Frame Generation.
Hardware requirements and launch timing
Because RTX 40 series graphics cards lack hardware support for Multi-Frame Generation, Nvidia must perform additional optimization work to allow the DLSS 5 model to run with sufficient performance on older hardware. The company confirmed that this work will only begin after the RTX 50 optimization phase is finished.
Nvidia has not announced an exact release date for DLSS 5 support on RTX 40 series graphics cards. However, if the upcoming autumn update completes the optimization work for RTX 50 GPUs, support for RTX 40 cards could arrive a few months later, making the first half of 2027 a reasonable target.
Older hardware generations remain excluded from official rollout plans for the time being. Nvidia stated that it has no official plans to bring DLSS 5 to RTX 30 or RTX 20 series graphics cards, although third-party modifications have shown that older cards can run the technology under certain conditions.
Unreal Engine 5 is a widely adopted 3D game creation engine developed by Epic Games, powering high-end PC and console video games. The engine relies heavily on neural upscaling and rendering technologies to maintain smooth frame rates while displaying complex graphics and lighting effects.
Game integration and engine support
Nvidia confirmed that software development kits are already available for game developers to integrate DLSS 5 into their titles. A native plugin has also been created for Unreal Engine 5 to simplify the implementation process for game studios.
The company is offering the technology under the name 3D-Guided Neural Rendering. The sports simulation title NBA 2K27 will be the first video game to feature official support for DLSS 5.
