Nvidia plans to bring its controversial DLSS 5 AI rendering technology to older GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards following initial exclusivity for the RTX 50 series, though desktop gamers will receive a simplified on-off toggle rather than granular controls, according to The Verge.
Nvidia DLSS 5 Shift for GeForce RTX 40 Series
The rollout marks a significant shift in strategy for the hardware giant. Officially, Nvidia’s controversial DLSS 5 AI rendering was supposed to launch with only a single game, only on Nvidia’s latest RTX 50 GPUs, and with developers in full control of their artistic vision. But unofficially, modders have already ported a leaked version of DLSS 5 to run on just about anything while cranking sliders to the max. Originally positioned as an exclusive feature for the newest hardware generation, the technology came under fire for being labelled exclusive to RTX 50 Series
GPUs, while the leaked build, which everyone was tested online ahead of the official release, was being tested on 20, 30, and 40 Series models.
Now, Nvidia is changing its plans. DLSS 5 is still launching first on RTX 50 GPUs, but it’s officially coming to older RTX 40-series GPUs as well, Nvidia spokesperson Rajal Maharaj confirms to The Verge. The tech has officially rolled out with support for one game, NBA 2K27. Unofficially, modders have been able to implement the tech into essentially everything, including emulators and even video you can play on your PC. That’s because DLSS 5 is essentially just a filter that runs over whatever you’re doing and uses AI to scan the content and do the work.
Expansion Plans for GeForce RTX 40 Series
Rajal Maharaj Confirms RTX 40-Series Support
While the new AI rendering suite launched alongside support for NBA 2K27 on RTX 50-series hardware, Nvidia has confirmed that official support will eventually extend to previous-generation cards. Unofficial community testing demonstrated that early builds could run on older hardware architectures, though earlier generations encountered hardware limitations and stability hurdles. Modders successfully targeted earlier RTX 30 and RTX 20-series GPUs as well, assuming you count not exactly playable framerate and plenty of crashes
as successful.
“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,” reads part of Nvidia’s statement provided by Nvidia spokesperson Rajal Maharaj to The Verge.
When questioned about older RTX 30 and RTX 20-series hardware, Rajal Maharaj tells The Verge: Right now the focus is of course on 50-series. Once we feel like the 50-series is in a good place, we’re going to look at the 40-series.
While modders successfully injected early versions into a wide array of software, official optimization remains centered on modern GPUs, and keep in mind that while the tech does run on these older GPUs, they do struggle as of now because it is a taxing process. The tech is now available for all RTX 50 Series owners.
Customization Limits and Developer Controls
DLSS 5 Toggle Limits for Gamers
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, will gamers get full control over DLSS 5’s sliders the way modders already do? Nvidia says no. The decision to bring the software to older cards comes with distinct operational boundaries for end users. Nvidia confirms that consumers will interact with the system through basic parameter choices rather than advanced configuration menus.
For gamers, DLSS 5 is a simple on-or-off toggle,
the company confirms. The more granular artistic controls are for developers, including model selection, Structure Intensity, Tone Intensity, automatic masking and custom per-pixel masking.
Advanced parameters remain restricted to software creators. That said, the company tells The Verge that developers could pass along certain controls in their own settings menus, like they’ve done with other graphics tech. Early DLSS Super Resolution was also just an on/off toggle, but today’s games let you pick between varying levels of quality or even an exact percentage, depending on the game. If you want more control, you’ll have to look into modding the tools.
AI Masking and Integration Across Game Engines
Unreal Engine 5 and Nvidia SDK Integration
Assuming you don’t mind DLSS 5, one of the benefits is that it’s easy to integrate. Developers don’t need to tell DLSS 5 which objects are “silverware” and which are “furniture” because the AI models can automatically recognize and isolate objects in a scene, distinguishing between faces, textiles, foliage, and more to apply different amounts of AI processing. Game engines that already know which video game objects are which can help DLSS 5, too.
For more targeted control, semantic AI masking can automatically recognize scene objects, while engine-level masking allows artists to isolate specific props or groups of assets, such as glassware, water droplets or foliage, and apply custom neural lighting adjustments to those elements. Unreal Engine 5 has a native plugin, and Nvidia also has SDKs. Nvidia says developers can apply DLSS 5 to their entire game this way, or do it differently for different scenes, cutscenes, or portions of gameplay, and the company tells The Verge that its DLSS 5 models run on every single frame, so there’s no minimum framerate for it to work.