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Nvidia have confirmed that DLSS 5 support will extend to RTX 40 series GPUs, reversing what had looked like a 50 series exclusive since the tech was launched with NBA 2K27.
RTX 40 series owners have been vocal about wanting DLSS 5, and plenty didn't have to wait for Nvidia to do it. Modders successfully patched a leaked DLSS 5 DLL, originally found in NBA 2K27's early access build, to strip out the CUDA binaries tying it to RTX 50's Blackwell architecture, getting it running on cards like the RTX 4090 in games such as Control. The results came with a real performance cost, roughly a 36% frame rate drop in that case, but it proved the tech wasn't actually locked to newer hardware for technical reasons.
Nvidia say performance, not exclusivity, was the holdup
Nvidia's official line is that DLSS 5 is their most computationally demanding model yet, and that RTX 50 series needs to be properly optimised first before the studio turns its attention to RTX 40. Nvidia say they've already achieved a 5x performance gain since March, with further improvements expected this fall. Once that work on RTX 50 is done, official RTX 40 support follows.
It's worth being a little sceptical of the framing here though. RTX 40 GPUs remain a huge chunk of Nvidia's install base, so keeping a flagship feature like DLSS 5 exclusive to RTX 50 for as long as possible also happens to make the newer cards a more attractive purchase. Whether that was the primary motivation or a convenient side effect of genuine technical constraints, the timing lines up either way.
DLSS 5 has launched with support for RTX 50 series GPUs, starting with NBA 2K27. Official RTX 40 series support is planned to follow later this fall, once RTX 50 optimisation work is complete. No specific date has been confirmed.
