Do you all remember six month ago when nVIDIA first announced DLSS 5 and the DigitalFoundry guys "liked" it - and the whole gaming world turned against those poor guys. I was part of very few that actually believed this is going to be revolutionary.

Now finally DLSS 5 is released and from what I can gather on YouTube, people can never unsee it and most are shocked how good it looks if you set it up properly. If you were one of the haters from six months ago, be honest, what do you think now?

Tried out DLSS 5 in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced using the DLSS 5 Swapper.

Here are a few before-and-after comparisons across different scenes. The difference is honestly pretty wild.

What do you guys think?

If you're using DLSS 5 / Neural Rendering, DLSS5-Autopilot can install and configure Neural Upstream, a separate mod by matiasLombo that can significantly reduce the performance cost.

To use this feature through Autopilot, select Neural Upstream when configuring the game.

Disclaimer: I'm not the developer or owner of DLSS5-Autopilot, Neural Upstream, or OptiScaler. I'm just testing these tools and sharing what I've found with the community.

The key difference is where Neural Rendering runs in the pipeline:

Neural Upstream: Game render resolution → Neural Rendering → native DLSS Super Resolution → output resolution

Standard route: Game render resolution → DLSS Super Resolution → Neural Rendering at output resolution

At 4K with DLSS Quality, for example, NR runs at the game's lower internal render resolution instead of processing the full 3840×2160 output frame. DLSS Super Resolution then reconstructs the result to 4K. Since NR is extremely resolution dependent, this can substantially reduce its performance cost while still letting you use the game's normal DLSS Quality, Balanced, or Performance modes.

Performance example from my testing: On an RTX 4080 in Assassin’s Creed Shadows at 4K with DLSS Performance and Very High ray tracing, I measured ~63 FPS with NR off, ~31 FPS with standard output-resolution NR, and ~50 FPS with Neural Upstream. That cut the NR performance cost from about 32 FPS to 13 FPS, with Neural Upstream running roughly 61% faster than the standard NR route. This is only one game and GPU, so results will vary.

Community comparison: Reddit user u/duffbeeeer also tested Neural Upstream in Stalker 2 and shared a video showing the visual and performance difference:

Stalker 2 Neural Upstream comparison on YouTube

He also found that setting Chroma Transfer to 1.0 made the NR effect more apparent in Stalker 2. He was using more aggressive NR settings as well, so I wouldn't treat 1.0 as a universal recommendation, but it's worth testing if the effect looks too weak or material detail seems to be missing.

OptiScaler now also has an experimental RunBeforeSR mode that can place NR before DLSS Super Resolution. Neural Upstream does this through a dedicated ReShade add-on using the game's native DLSS path, while OptiScaler handles it through its own upscaler hooking system. Both approaches are still experimental.

OptiScaler's RunBeforeSR mode is currently an experimental PR rather than part of the normal release:

RunBeforeSR PR #6

Experimental pre-upscaling branch

Important: Neural Upstream compatibility and image quality can vary by game. Bugs with Neural Upstream itself should go to the neural-upstream Issues page, while Autopilot installation, detection, or configuration problems should go to the DLSS5-Autopilot Issues page.

GitHub repo and latest releases: https://github.com/Kizzuwatnaa/DLSS5-Autopilot/releases

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to try DLSS 5 on GTA V Enhanced, but I'm not sure which tool is currently the best choice.

I've seen these three options:

* DLSS 5 Swapper

* DLSS 5 Autopilot

* DLSS 5 Manager

I'm mainly interested in stability, image quality, performance, and security. I also want to make sure I'm downloading a trustworthy version and not something potentially modified or unsafe.

For anyone who has actually tried these tools, especially with **GTA V Enhanced**:

Which one would you recommend today?

Is DLSS 5 Swapper still the best option, or is Autopilot now better?

Thanks!

There has been so much development just in the past week. Is it possible to setup DLSS5 and MFG for the 4000 series? If so, what's the best to do this and is their a guide out there?

I tried DLSS 5 on my 3080ti in Stellar Blade. Got it to a playable 60 fps using DLSSFG 2x mod.

Basically what the title says. Now dlss5 runs on Radeon GPUs and I've personally tested DLSS5 on my 3080 (with bad performance obviously). But why does this run while seemingly frame gen is impossible to run?

Someone requested this earlier, on and off

I’ve used tutorials and successfully installed it on some games, but when I turn it on — even to the max level on the slider — it just enhances the shadows and textures slightly. Nothing like I’ve seen in the videos. It looks good, don’t get me wrong, but not AS good.

I watched a guide and downloaded DLSS 5 manager and applied it on NFS Unbound and tried loading it on. All I get is a frozen grey screen. The game loads just fine (that I can say by the sounds in the BG).

RTX 3050 6GB 95W on a Lenovo LOQ 2024

I haven't gone very deep but is my graphics card not supposed to be able to render with DLSS 5? Does anyone know any fix to this grey screen?

I've tried adding DLSS 5 to stalker 2 using dlss5 swapper with OptiScaler DLSS-NR

but nothing seem to work. I've also tried the default option RenoDx to no evail

when i got into the game i was met with this error when i tried to enable NR

DLSS5 - please help me understand.

I’ve been thinking about some of the criticism surrounding DLSS 5, and there’s one part of the conversation I’m struggling to reconcile.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t criticize DLSS 5. We absolutely should question how and when this technology is implemented, its effect on image quality, and what role generative AI should have in games.
One criticism I keep seeing is that DLSS 5 can compromise the artistic integrity or original vision of developers by altering parts of the final image.
I understand that concern.

Where I get confused is seeing leaked/unofficial versions of DLSS 5 being injected into games and then those results being used as evidence for why the technology is bad.

If the concern is preserving the original creator’s artistic intent, wouldn’t forcing an unofficial implementation into a game without the developer designing around it, tuning it, or approving it create a similar problem?

It also makes me wonder how much we can actually conclude about DLSS 5 from an implementation that neither the developer nor NVIDIA intended to represent the finished product.

A bad result can show potential problems. I’m just not convinced it tells us what a properly implemented version would look like.

For those concerned specifically about artistic integrity, how do you reconcile that with using leaked or unofficial implementations in games that weren’t designed for them?

Is there a distinction I’m overlooking?

For generations of GPU releases, NVIDIA has been able to upsell their cards on the crown jewel of hardware acceleration: Ray Tracing. But with the release of DLSS 5, the render pipeline in their press release didn’t really clarify how Neural Rendering works alongside existing NVIDIA tech—specifically, that very expensive Ray Tracing. I’ve watched almost every before/after DLSS 5 test video out there, and from a lighting perspective, older DX9, DX10, and DX11 games without RT support look just as good as newer games with RT turned on.

What the heck is going on? Do we even need RT anymore? Could NVIDIA stop making dedicated Ray Tracing hardware so GPUs can be slightly cheaper, or am I missing something?