Nvidia has not yet announced the specific release date for DLSS 5. The technology sparked widespread controversy when it was announced earlier this year. However, a recent leak has allowed PC players and mod creators to inject this "neural rendering" technology into almost any game, and related tests are now showcasing DLSS 5's AI face filter features.
According to VideoCardz, an early version of DLSS 5 accidentally appeared in the build of NBA 2K27. Subsequently, the RenoDX Mod community obtained this version and put it into use. They quickly created a simple tool that allows ordinary players to use DLSS 5 in various games.
The games currently tested include Control, The Last of Us Part II, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and even GTA: San Andreas. These tests showcase some of the benefits brought by Nvidia's highly AI-dependent post-processing technology, while also exposing some issues.
The Elder Scrolls V DLSS 5 Test:
Control is one of the most interesting cases, as it demonstrates both the advantages and disadvantages of DLSS 5.
After enabling DLSS 5, the character model of the protagonist, Jesse Faden, indeed looks more refined, with richer facial shadows and increased detail on the skin surface.
However, at the same time, her face also clearly looks different from the original model. This sense of dissonance becomes more apparent during movement, as other objects in the game world are enhanced in a similar way, but not uniformly. Some environmental details have indeed improved, especially some models that were starting to look outdated. However, the overall effect looks very unnatural in many places.
Another very interesting case is GTA: SA, especially considering how old the game is.
GTA: SA DLSS 5:
When DLSS 5 was announced, Nvidia claimed that the technology only enhanced existing geometry in games without fundamentally changing it. Considering the examples shown at the time, this claim was hard to believe, but when you see the changes it makes to GTA: SA, a PS2 game, this argument completely falls apart.Almost no one believes this is the "super good-looking version" of Rockstar's classic creation, as it makes significant changes to character and environment models that look quite incongruous.
Furthermore, this test has made the performance of DLSS 5 even more noteworthy.
Mod creators have successfully gotten DLSS 5 running on multiple RTX 50 and RTX 40 graphics cards, but without exception, enabling these filters results in a very noticeable drop in game performance.This AI model consumes a large amount of GPU VRAM because it needs to run the model locally and perform real-time image conversion. In some cases, enabling DLSS 5 can even halve the game's frame rate.
Of course, this is currently just an early version that was not intended for public release, and it will surely be further optimized in the future. However, this test does confirm some of the concerns raised when DLSS 5 was first announced. At that time, Nvidia even needed two RTX 5090s to run the technology during its demonstration.
This week, Nvidia released DLSS 4.5 at Gamescom, introducing the next generation of Ray Reconstruction technology to improve the visual quality of games supporting ray tracing and path tracing. DLSS 5 is expected to officially launch later in 2026, but Nvidia has not revealed much additional information since its initial announcement.
In Nvidia's most recent statement regarding DLSS 5, the company emphasized that game developers will have full control over this post-processing effect, allowing them to decide how much it modifies the game's visuals. However, several game developers have publicly expressed doubts about the significance of this technology.
