Nvidia’s DLSS 5 Arrives This Week, and NBA 2K27 Is About to Become Gaming’s Biggest AI Graphics Test

Nvidia is launching DLSS 5 with NBA 2K27 on September 3. It promises more realistic lighting, skin and materials, but the performance cost and AI-generated look are already dividing players.

Nvidia has finally dated DLSS 5. NBA 2K27 will become the first official game to support it on September 3, initially on RTX 50-series GPUs and GeForce NOW Ultimate.

The new system is called 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, and this time DLSS is doing more than rebuilding pixels. It can change how skin, hair, shadows, materials and lighting appear in the final image.

So yes, Nvidia is now letting AI get much closer to the art itself.

This Is Much More Than Upscaling

Traditional DLSS was simple: render fewer pixels, reconstruct the image and gain performance.

DLSS 5 goes further by using game data such as geometry, motion and materials to generate additional visual detail.

Nvidia says this can improve skin scattering, facial hair, contact shadows and lighting.

Official DLSS 5 Overview

Developers can also control how strongly DLSS 5 changes different parts of a scene, which is important because the early examples were not exactly subtle.

The Early Results Got Weird

Some leaked implementations made familiar characters look older or noticeably different. Final Fantasy VII's Cloud became such a meme that players started calling the altered version “Claude Strife.”

That created the biggest question around DLSS 5:

Is this better graphics, or just an extremely expensive AI filter?

NBA 2K27 now gets to answer that properly.

NBA 2K27 Is Actually a Smart First Test

Sports games are already chasing photorealism, so NBA 2K27 is probably one of the safest places to use this technology.

Nvidia says DLSS 5 improves the skin, hair, lighting and shadows of real NBA players, including Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton and Cade Cunningham.

More importantly, recent hands-on impressions from journalists have been much more positive than the reactions to Nvidia's earlier demonstrations.

Apparently developer tuning helps.

Who knew.

Inside NBA 2K27's DLSS 5

The Performance Numbers Are Ridiculous

DLSS 5 itself can be expensive to run, but Nvidia expects it to work together with Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation.

At 1440p Ultra with ray tracing, Nvidia claims:

• RTX 5090: up to 590 FPS

• RTX 5080: up to 410 FPS

• RTX 5070 Ti: up to 350 FPS

• RTX 5070: up to 260 FPS

These are Nvidia's own numbers, so independent benchmarks will matter much more.

Still, 590 FPS in NBA 2K is absurd.

RTX 4090 Owners Might Not Be Happy

Official DLSS 5 support is currently limited to RTX 50-series hardware.

That means even an RTX 4090 does not officially qualify.

Modders have already managed to get leaked DLSS 5 technology running on some RTX 40-series cards, which makes the restriction even more controversial.

Now Nvidia Has to Prove It

The real question is not whether NBA 2K27 looks slightly better.

It is whether DLSS 5 can improve games without changing their intended visual style too much.

DLSS 5 launches on September 3, and more supported games are expected later.

If NBA 2K27 looks genuinely better, this could become another major part of modern PC rendering.

If everyone still looks like they have been passed through an AI beauty filter, Nvidia has a much bigger problem.

Either way, September 3 is going to be interesting.