NVIDIA Confirms DLSS 5 for RTX 40, but RTX 50 Gets the Huge Performance Boost First

NVIDIA plans major DLSS 5 performance optimizations that could dramatically reduce the technology’s current performance cost, with updates expected later in 2026.

The company says it will optimize DLSS 5 much faster following its initial release, targeting both higher performance and better image quality.

NVIDIA targets up to 10x better DLSS 5 performance

NVIDIA expects upcoming optimizations to improve DLSS 5 performance by around 7x to 10x compared with its initial implementation.

DLSS 5 currently produces an average performance hit of roughly 50% to 60%. If NVIDIA reaches its optimization targets, that cost could potentially drop to around 10% to 15% by the end of 2026.

That would make DLSS 5 far more practical in games where its current processing requirements significantly reduce frame rates.

The modding community has already managed to add DLSS 5 to unsupported games, showing that adoption could extend beyond officially supported titles.

RTX 50 GPUs are getting optimized first

NVIDIA is initially focusing its DLSS 5 optimization work on RTX 50-series hardware.

The company plans to extend those improvements to RTX 40-series GPUs afterward. This matters because RTX 40 cards lack Multi Frame Generation, which makes DLSS 5’s current performance cost harder to offset.

Better optimization could therefore make DLSS 5 significantly more usable on Ada Lovelace GPUs.

Older RTX GPUs can run DLSS 5, but performance remains poor

Older NVIDIA GPUs can also run DLSS 5 through unofficial modifications, although the performance penalty can become extreme.

An RTX 3080 can run DLSS 5 with mods, but testing showed performance dropping as low as 4 FPS.

The upcoming optimizations mainly target newer RTX hardware, so it remains unclear how much older generations could benefit.

In other NVIDIA news, the company has confirmed the RTX Spark launch in October.

Via Wccftech