We tested DLSS on a curated selection of games to see what it’s all about. That might not seem like a smart choice, given that NBA 2K27 is the only official implementation of the tech, and as such, we were forced to resort to mods to check out what it can do. That’s relevant since we cannot judge NVIDIA or a game’s developers for our results as they stand, but they should give us all a good idea of where things are at with NVIDIA’s controversial addition to its lineup of software.
We’ve seen things, both good and bad, in the process, and we can safely say that the tech works very well to make an older title or one with splendid visual fidelity even better, making such titles look substantially more modern and more detailed. However, things get murkier the closer you look, and there’s always the performance cost that the magic it can work would bring.
Well, we put DLSS 5 to work on a beefy setup that includes a Ryzen 7 9850X3D, 64GB of 6000MHz DDR5 RAM, and a 5080 GPU. That gave us a lot of power to play with, and the tech some breathing room to operate in. There were bugs/oddities that are attributable to the mods too, but the experiment was enough to get a good grip on what works and what doesn’t with DLSS 5. Let’s dive right into the games, beginning with:
1. Cyberpunk 2077
A sprawling, first-person open-world title that boasted a lot of detail and some substantial demands on any system, it felt like an obvious choice for our experiment. Wanting to hang out with Johnny Silverhand again might have had something to do with it, of course, but Cyberpunk’s close and personal shots of NPCs you’re in a conversation with are perfect places to see DLSS 5 in action.
Well, that’s just what we did. Getting to the marked location on our map, with all of our settings tuned up to the max, was an already visually astounding experience to begin with, and you might not notice just how much DLSS 5 manages to smooth out details in the open world. We must mention its effect on the game’s lighting systems, though, as it does a great job of creating more natural, authentic reflections and gives a more authentic look to spots lit up by rays of light. However, getting to the meeting with our contact was where things got really interesting.
The dimly lit room with bright neons was a perfect place for the rendering to do what it did best, and it ironed out a lot of glare from a red light nearby, which was reflected quite unrealistically in the NPC’s eyes, while casting a weird glow on their face. Well, not with DLSS working in the background to balance things out, and the resulting image was not only cleaner, but more detailed.
The difference was tangible, with the textures on the man’s skin looking so much more realistic, the light gently glinting off pores in his skin, while his eyes still caught the light, but didn’t make him look like an unhinged maniac in the process. Materials on clothing and the like also got wrinkles and reflections to make what we were seeing look quite authentic indeed. It’s equally impressive that we were able to maintain a consistent 60fps at 4K with everything maxed out.
It’s easy to see why people are excited about what DLSS 5 can do after that hour in Night City. Of course, that was only the first stop on our journey with NVIDIA’s latest. We’re joining Naked Snake in a remake that brings out more of what the tech can manage to light.
2. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
Konami’s remake of the popular classic was already quite a looker to begin with. But turning DLSS 5 on and off in the game’s opening moments showcased a tangible difference between the original image and the new one. The clouds looked more detailed, while the sun’s rays glanced off the plane’s metal surfaces ever so gently with DLSS running in the background.
Inside the cockpit, Major Zero’s skin tone and face might have been too much of a deviation from the original for our taste, but it wasn’t too distracting to be an issue. Naked Snake’s dive from the plane benefited from the better lighting, although the software did behave quite strangely with the fake hair, its color often switching from an ashen-blonde to brown, so darn tangible. That issue solved itself once Snake peels off the mask he’s wearing to conceal his real face, but it does bear mentioning nonetheless.
The jungle you find yourself in benefits greatly from the enhancements that DLSS brings, no complaints there. But as far as Snake is concerned, we did think its enhancements came with the price of looking a tad too artificial. Konami’s meticulous detailing might not be necessarily enhanced by DLSS 5. Instead, it just looks different, and that’s a bit of a problem.
Snake does still look like Snake, yes, but his eyes seem strangely devoid of expression, an unfortunate side effect of the original game’s representation of an operative who is calm and collected at all times, his expressions never giving away what he’s thinking. We can’t safely say it was the case with DLSS running, though, as his face did look more realistic in terms of textures, skin, and hair, but felt strangely devoid of expression in his eyes.
It’s kind of like the effort to make him look more human kind of had the opposite effect, and while we think all of that can probably be ironed out by some optimizations, things were on the fence for DLSS in the game’s take on Russia. We’re off to Gotham City next, where Rocksteady’s deliberate stylization stands to clash with NVIDIA’s new neural rendering.
3. Batman: Arkham Knight
Here’s where things get interesting. We expected DLSS to have a lot to do in an older game, and Arkham Knight’s unique art style and the dark, gritty vibe that Rocksteady brought to it felt like a good choice to see how the tech performs in environments where the lighting isn’t as bright as the last two games we tested.
It turns out that DLSS 5 was surprisingly good at preserving Rocksteady’s original vision for what its characters should look like. The kind waitress from the game’s unforgettable opening looked quite similar to the original game’s rendition of her, although the tech did well to bring out stray strands in her messy bun and improve her reflection on the cafe’s polished floors as she walked on over to the kitchen.
But it’s when you stand on Gotham’s streets and turn it on that you see a kind of accidental remaster of what the game looks like. The lighting gets an instant, very welcome boost, with rays of light now falling softly on the concrete, lighting it up while the pitter-patter of rain becomes ever so slightly more tangible as a result.
This one’s a great showcase of how an older game stands to benefit from neural rendering, generating a better image while not replacing any of the original assets. It wouldn’t have been ideal if DLSS had changed Batman’s iconic jawline too much, or perhaps tried to make Gordon look like he’d just stepped out of a salon. Instead, it preserves that grimy look that most of the characters whose night has gone on too long have, while working its magic on the world around you to make Gotham look even more resplendent despite the grim situation it faces in the game.
We expected exaggerated materials and perhaps even skin thanks to how close the game likes to get to faces, but that was blissfully absent from the experience. However, we couldn’t stay in Gotham no matter how melancholically beautiful it looked, as we had one more stop with our superpowered rig: the Nora heartlands in Aloy’s debut adventure.
4. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
We’ve had a fairly good amount of praise for DLSS 5 so far, but this is where things get interesting, and where a few cracks begin to show in its armor. It does a good job of making Aloy’s whole world look more realistic, with better facial textures and more details in the world; there’s no doubt about it. However, as another relatively older title, it presents an interesting contrast to Arkham Knight.
It was evident from the very second we turned on DLSS 5 in this one, but it totally interferes with what Guerrilla originally envisioned the world to look like. It adds a sort of reddish hue to it all, sort of like the software decided that every minute of every day in-game was stuck in perpetual twilight, the reddish glow of the setting sun bathing the world in a color that was far removed from the original image.
Your returns with all the good things it does in Zero Dawn then become subjective, and quite hard to defend from anybody who argues that the tech can interfere with existing art styles that are deliberate choices from artists and developers. Greater realism doesn’t necessarily mean that the image is better looking in this case, and it’s the first loss for DLSS 5 in our testing. But we’ve been holding back. There’s another part of our experiment that we’ve saved for last, and it’s where the tech met its match!
5. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
We saw what DLSS 5 could do with the remake of Snake Eater on a powerful system, but we wondered if it could do the same on a title that was a port of a PS3 game, and manage to make enough of a difference to matter. Additionally, we did our testing on a PC with significantly lower specs, with an RTX 3080Ti working with 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 5950X powering it all.
As you can imagine, trying to run things in 4K with DLSS 5 on tore into our performance, with low framerates interfering with our ability to enjoy the experience. Going down to 1440p made the game playable, but it was at 1080p that we were able to get somewhat stable, consistent performance out of the game. There’s no denying that it did improve environmental details, character models, and lighting and shadows by a considerable margin, but at the cost of a significant nerf to resolutions as it worked behind the scenes to improve on textures and assets that were designed for an era long past.
It’s rather ironic that something called DLSS can demand a lower resolution, but Guns of the Patriots is a great example of how computationally expensive it can be, and how lower-specced systems struggle to make effective use of it.
The Intent Behind Good Performances
There you have it. We put DLSS 5 to work across a variety of games that were chosen to test out what it can do, across two vastly different systems. There are great things like how it immediately improves the lighting and details in environments and on character models, but what it does with a few faces might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Making deliberately stylized imagery more photorealistic might not be the best use of what it can do, and that’s an area that is definitely in need of improvement thanks to how vocal concerns about preservation of artistic visions currently are.
More details do not necessarily mean better graphics, too, and an important question to consider is whether graphical tech should simply reconstruct images to make them better, or attempt to reinterpret them with results that currently seem a tad too unpredictable for the tech to be called consistently good. There is a degree of subjectivity involved, and we must say that things looked really good when DLSS 5 worked as intended, but we can see how others might not like what it does with the images it works on.
We’d say that the tech is impressive, but its implementation is a mixed bag at the moment. We’d say that it needs to be more subtle about what it’s doing, its improvements being subtle enough to make a tangible difference to any scene without it completely switching things up in some cases. Developer control becomes more important than ever with software that threatens to override it from time to time. It’s important to remember that our results were via modded use of the software, and you should take a look at 2K27 to see what it looks like when developers take control of its output.
What it produces is more in line with NVIDIA’s claim that the software is guided by artists and developers, and you can see what Visual Concepts has done to ensure that it doesn’t overdo its job.
It’s why the results of our experiment were both exciting, thanks to what it could achieve in good hands, but equally concerning if it’s left to do its thing without some guidance from the people whose artistic visions it aims to enhance. It cannot become a universal solution to making things look realistic, and its implementation needs to focus on improving instead of replacing aspects of an image that an artist places in it with deliberation.
DLSS 5 adds details and makes games look better in most cases, but whether those improvements would be in line with what the developers of each experience intended is another story altogether. It’s only the beginning of the journey, but NVIDIA would do well to set a path to a more cautious use of its new tech if it‘s going to make it as awesome as what it has managed to achieve so far.
