NVIDIA shipped its faster DLSS 5 Neural Rendering model with NBA 2K27 on October 16, and it didn't take modders long to pull it out and test it elsewhere. Renan Maniero on X extracted the new 310.9.16.0 build of the DLL. That lets people inject it into games that don't officially support DLSS 5 through tools like RenoDX and OptiScaler. The new DLL also keeps the older model around as Preset A, with the new one sitting under Preset B, so comparing the two is as simple as switching presets. Gaming Optimized on X did exactly that, and found the new model running up to 90% faster than the old one in The Witcher 3. The channel points out that the gain varies from game to game, so 90% looks like the best case rather than the norm.

That roughly aligns with NVIDIA's own claims. The company says the October update shrinks the model by 24% to roughly 118 million parameters, cuts VRAM use at 4K by 20%, and runs the neural rendering workload up to 2x faster than the September version. NVIDIA also quoted up to 40% higher frame rates in NBA 2K27 specifically. Officially, DLSS 5 is still limited to RTX 50-series GPUs and GeForce NOW. NVIDIA plans to bring it to the RTX 40-series, though there's no date yet, and there's no word on RTX 30 or RTX 20 support. Modders, apparently, aren't waiting, since the OptiScaler README notes a modified runtime that gets it running on RTX 20-series cards as well.

NVIDIA has launched the NBA 2K27 DLSS 5 Poster Challenge, giving away four custom RTX 5090 graphics cards as prizes. Given what the card actually costs to buy right now, the timing is a little funny. To enter, players capture an in-game NBA 2K27 screenshot or clip with DLSS 5 enabled on an RTX 50-series GPU, or through GeForce NOW Ultimate streaming from RTX 5080 servers, then post it tagging @NVIDIAGeForce with the hashtag RTXPoster. Easier entry paths exist too, like voting on other posters or replying to prompts on GeForce's social channels. The contest runs through December 31, with winners announced by the end of January 2027.

NVIDIA values each card at $2,599, including the custom NBA 2K27 wrap. That number looks almost quaint next to what the RTX 5090 actually sells for. Multiple retail trackers put US street prices well past $5,000 this month, more than double the card's $1,999 launch price, largely thanks to the GDDR7 memory crunch that has been squeezing the entire GPU lineup. Prices have kept climbing for months now, with no sign of letting up. So, oddly enough, winning a poster contest might be one of the more realistic ways to grab an RTX 5090 without draining your bank account. It's a fun bit of marketing for a card that's become something of a punchline for how far GPU pricing has drifted, though I doubt NVIDIA meant it that way.

Today, 2K announced that NBA 2K27, the latest iteration of the NBA video game franchise developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K, is now available worldwide on PlayStation 5 (PS5), XBOX Series X|S, PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch 2. NBA 2K27 arrives with overhauled gameplay and new depth across every mode, from the court to The City to the front office.

Greg Thomas, President at Visual Concepts"With overhauled, balanced gameplay at its core, this year's release introduces a depth of content and features to satisfy every kind of player," "From the new MyCAREER Eras mode and the first Co-Ed City in franchise history, to a 100-year MyNBA Legacy and Player XP on every MyTEAM card, every aspect of NBA 2K27 has been built to give players more ways to compete."

NVIDIA late Thursday released the latest version of its GeForce Game Ready drivers. Version 616.64 adds day-zero (Game Ready) optimization for "NBA 2K27." Besides this little change, the company did not fix any new issues with this release, but identified a couple of new issues that will be fixed in a future release. This is a minor update, and is recommended for those playing NBA over the weekend. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 616.64 WHQL

NVIDIA has officially confirmed that the company is working to bring DLSS 5 neural rendering to the previous-generation GeForce RTX 40-Series "Ada Lovelace." Previously, it was believed that DLSS 5 technology would be exclusive to the latest GeForce RTX 50-Series "Blackwell" and future models, without looking back. As NVIDIA continues to focus on hardware-software cooptimization, we now have official confirmation that the GeForce RTX 40-Series will also receive a DLSS 5 port. However, the launch of DLSS 5 on the GeForce RTX 40-Series is secondary, as NVIDIA is still preparing and optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50-Series to ensure that the model won't significantly impact the final game performance, despite reportedly being very compute-heavy.

NVIDIADLSS 5 is our most computationally demanding model to date. Since we initially announced it in March, we've achieved a 5X performance gain and there's more to come. Our current focus is on optimizing performance for the GeForce RTX 50 Series with model updates expected later this fall. Once RTX 50 Series performance is more fully tuned, we plan to work on expanding official support to the GeForce RTX 40 Series.

NVIDIA has shared its first-party performance numbers for DLSS 5, the neural rendering feature arriving September 3 in NBA 2K27. The company says the model is now five times faster than when it was first shown at GTC in March, which required two RTX 5090 GPUs just to run. It now works on a single card across the whole RTX 50-series lineup, from the RTX 5060 up to the RTX 5090. That is a commendable improvement in a span of just 6 months, but DLSS 5 will still incur a significant performance penalty compared to native rendering, contrary to what we have come to expect from DLSS.

In NBA 2K27, running at 4K with the Ultra preset, ray tracing, and Multi Frame Generation, NVIDIA's own figures put the RTX 5090 at roughly 370 FPS with DLSS 5 on, and the RTX 5080 around 233 FPS. At 1440p, the RTX 5090 gets close to 600 FPS, while even the RTX 5070 stays above 260 FPS. NVIDIA also shared some 1080p benchmarks with the RTX 5090 hitting nearly 800 FPS, but those are not relevant to how these cards will be used in the real world. NVIDIA did not provide performance figures without DLSS 5 enabled.

NVIDIA has confirmed that DLSS 5 will officially launch on September 3 alongside NBA 2K27, and it will remain exclusive to GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. When asked directly at a Gamescom technical briefing whether older cards would ever receive support, NVIDIA gave a flat answer: "It's RTX 50-series only." The model runs on Blackwell's fifth-generation Tensor cores, and there's no fallback path for RTX 40-series or anything older. That confirmation lines up with what modders had already found by digging through the leaked DLSS 5 DLL that surfaced through an early NBA 2K27 build last week, which contained executable code gated specifically to Blackwell hardware.

According to NVIDIA, DLSS 5 is its largest and most complex model to date, and the priority has been optimizing it specifically for RTX 50 hardware rather than stretching it across older Tensor core generations. However, that didn't stop modders from finding workarounds for RTX 40-series, 30-series, and even 20-series GPUs. After the DLSS 5 DLL leaked through an early NBA 2K27 build, a modder patched around the CUDA binaries and got Neural Rendering running on an RTX 4090, with performance dropping by roughly 36 to 39 percent in Control. That's still a significant hit, but nowhere near the collapse seen on RTX 30-series cards, which lack native FP8 support and saw frame rates fall off a cliff in the same tests. Given that the RTX 40-series already has native FP8 acceleration built in, official support for it seems like it could've been on the table, even as a lower-tier experience

Welcome to September and we kick off the new month with a AAA RPG game set in 14th-century Europe that might involve vampires. The rest of this week is packed with big game releases and we start with a new take on an oldie first person shooter, which is followed by an action RPG, but this one is of the online co-op variety. Next up we have another online co-op game, but this time we're talking monkeys, bananas and bombs. If you want something with a bit more speed, then we might have what you're looking for in this week's sequel and finally we end the week with another major single release that's full of samurai's and swords. Don't forget to check out this week's other new releases as well.

The Blood of Dawnwalker / This week's AAA release / Thursday 3 September
14th-century Europe. Bloody conflicts sweep the lands, and the Black Death comes for the survivors. It's a moment of weakness - and that's all they needed. Vampires seize their opportunity to walk out of the shadows and claim what they've been denied for centuries: freedom, and the power that comes with it. Other creatures of the night follow their lead. Legends turn into reality, and history as we know it will never be the same. Steam link