At its GTC 2026 event, NVIDIA officially announced DLSS 5, a new version of its Deep Learning Super Sampling technology. The next generation of its AI-powered graphics technology introduces neural rendering techniques designed to produce more realistic lighting and materials in games. The feature is expected to launch later this year.
DLSS has long been used to use AI to upscale lower resolution images to higher resolution images, increasing performance while maintaining visual quality. DLSS 4.5 is the latest update. The new version takes this concept further by using neural networks to support parts of the rendering pipeline itself, rather than just reconstructing pixels.
What’s new in DLSS 5?
The biggest change in DLSS 5 is the introduction of neural rendering, a technique in which AI helps generate elements of a scene such as lighting, materials and surface details, rather than relying solely on traditional rendering methods. The system can produce photorealistic lighting effects and more accurate material reflections, potentially improving realism in ray tracing environments while maintaining high frame rates.
The technology builds on previous DLSS features such as Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction and Frame Generation, but moves further towards an AI-powered graphics pipeline where neural networks play a larger role in creating scenes.
Which hardware supports DLSS 5?
NVIDIA has not yet officially confirmed which GPU architectures will support DLSS 5, but the company has announced that the technology will be available alongside RTX 50-series GPUs later this year. According to Digital Foundry, NVIDIA called the lighting improvements shown in its demo “transformational,” with the feature expected to launch in fall 2026.
Interestingly, the demo setup used to showcase DLSS 5 did not run on a typical gaming PC. Digital Foundry reports that NVIDIA used two GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs: one to run the game itself, while the second handles the DLSS 5 workload for neural rendering. This setup is currently necessary as the technology still needs significant optimization, particularly in terms of power efficiency and VRAM usage.
However, NVIDIA says that DLSS 5 is ultimately designed to run on a single GPU, and it is expected to ship that way when the technology launches publicly later this year.
