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NVIDIA Confirms DLSS 5 RTX 40 Series Support Is Coming
NVIDIA has only just officially launched DLSS 5, but one of the biggest restrictions surrounding its new neural rendering technology is already set to change. The company has confirmed plans to bring DLSS 5 to GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards after initially launching its 3D-Guided Neural Rendering technology exclusively across the RTX 50 family.
There is a catch, however. NVIDIA is not providing a release window yet, and RTX 40 support will only become a development priority once performance on Blackwell hardware is further improved. For now, NVIDIA’s own compatibility information still lists DLSS 5 Neural Rendering as an RTX 50 Series feature.
The confirmation follows a particularly eventful few weeks for the technology. We previously covered modders getting a leaked DLSS 5 implementation running on RTX 40 Series GPUs, despite official support being restricted to Blackwell at launch. Those experiments did not necessarily deliver ideal performance, but they showed that Ada hardware was technically capable of running the model with some modification.
NVIDIA Wants to Improve RTX 50 Performance First
NVIDIA told The Verge that its immediate priority remains tuning DLSS 5 for the RTX 50 Series.
“Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series,” the company explained.
NVIDIA says DLSS 5 has already achieved a fivefold performance improvement since its March reveal, when the technology originally required two RTX 5090 GPUs for demonstration. The current model can now operate on a single RTX 50 Series card, with another model update expected this autumn.
That optimisation work is still necessary. Independent testing found DLSS 5 imposing a significant fixed rendering cost in NBA 2K27, with the impact becoming increasingly difficult to absorb on lower-tier RTX 50 cards. Even at 1440p, an RTX 5070 lost more than half its performance when Neural Rendering was enabled in its testing.
RTX 30 and RTX 20 Series Support Remains Uncertain
RTX 40 Series owners now have an official path forward, but NVIDIA has made no equivalent commitment for Ampere or Turing cards. Modders have experimented with DLSS 5 on RTX 30 and RTX 20 hardware, though these implementations required compromises and could suffer from extremely low frame rates or instability.
NVIDIA is also keeping the most granular DLSS 5 controls away from players. The consumer-facing implementation will remain primarily an on/off setting, while developers receive controls over model selection, structural intensity, tone, and masking.
That developer control has become particularly important following the initial backlash surrounding DLSS 5, in which early demonstrations raised concerns that AI rendering could change artistic intent. The technology officially debuted in NBA 2K27 on September 3, giving players their first opportunity to judge a finished developer implementation rather than experimental modded versions.
For RTX 40 owners, the bigger question has now changed. DLSS 5 is coming, but NVIDIA still has to determine when its previous generation will be ready to handle it.
