NVIDIA has released DLSS 5 with 3D-Guided Neural Renderingand NBA 2K27 is the first game to support it. The feature became available on September 3 at 9 p.m. Pacific Time for GeForce RTX 50 Series desktop GPUs and laptops. GeForce NOW Ultimate members can also use it when their session runs on an NVIDIA-operated RTX 5080 cloud rig.
What DLSS 5 changes
Earlier DLSS features concentrated on reconstructing images, generating frames, and improving ray-traced lighting. DLSS 5 adds a final rendering stage designed to create richer lighting and material responses. It begins with the frame produced by the game engine, including its geometry, textures, motion vectors, and lighting data, instead of generating a scene from a text prompt.
NVIDIA says the system is deterministic and built to remain stable from frame to frame. In NBA 2K27, Visual Concepts uses it to improve effects such as skin subsurface scattering, light passing through hair, ambient occlusion, and contact shadows while retaining facial geometry scanned from real athletes. The practical result is an optional visual treatment rather than a replacement for the underlying game assets.
Developer and player controls
Studios can select different neural models for different scenes and adjust structure and tone intensity. Semantic and engine-level masks can limit where an effect is applied, including specific characters, scenery, or materials. Players receive a simpler choice: DLSS Neural Rendering can be switched on or off, including during gameplay and replays with the F9 key.
To enable it, RTX 50 Series users need NVIDIA's September 3 Game Ready Driver. The setting then appears under NBA 2K27's Video Settings, alongside DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and NVIDIA Reflex options. NVIDIA's own performance figures show the complete DLSS feature set reaching up to 370 frames per second at 4K Ultra with ray tracing on an RTX 5090; that number is a vendor result for the stated configuration, not an independent benchmark.
What players should know
The important compatibility limit is hardware: the local version of DLSS 5 is available across the GeForce RTX 50 Series, while cloud access is tied to qualifying GeForce NOW Ultimate sessions. Other games may add support later, but NVIDIA's announcement identifies NBA 2K27 as the technology's debut title.
Official evidence
- Official NVIDIA announcement