GoKawiilNvidia's first DLSS 5 benchmarks left out the one number we actually wanted to see: how much performance you lose by enabling the technology. Those "official" NBA 2K27 results leaned heavily on 6X Frame Generation to inflate the output frame rates, a laughable attempt at benchmarking with frame gen enabled in every chart and every configuration.
What we didn't get were proper before-and-after figures showing how much performance is lost simply by turning DLSS 5 on. So we're fixing that today. No 6X Frame Gen, proper on vs. off testing, and results across the full RTX 50 series lineup. Even the RTX 5050.
We've only had a day to test this first official implementation of DLSS 5, using an early access copy of NBA 2K27 and Nvidia's supported driver. That's why this article is focused exclusively on performance.
For now, there's plenty to dig into. DLSS 5 is available in NBA 2K27 as this article goes live, so it's worth exploring its performance and, more importantly, why DLSS 5 performs the way it does. Because there are some quirks here.
DLSS 5 Has a Huge Fixed Performance Cost
DLSS 5 performance appears to be largely dictated by two key factors: the first is that DLSS 5 is extremely performance-intensive. The neural network pass, which post-processes the final rendered frame, takes a very long time to complete relative to other effects and shaders you might be familiar with.
Crucially, this is largely a fixed cost based on the output resolution. Lowering in-game settings does not make the DLSS 5 portion of the render time faster. What this means in practice is that when you enable DLSS 5, performance is capped by the time required to run this intensive effect, and changing game settings doesn't have a significant impact.
On an RTX 5090 running NBA 2K27 using DLAA and max settings, we achieved just 76 FPS with DLSS 5 enabled. Dropping the preset to High increased performance by only 2 FPS, less than a 3% gain. This is despite a 5% increase in performance when DLSS 5 is disabled.
Dropping all the way to the Low preset runs directly into what appears to be a 240 FPS engine cap when DLSS 5 is disabled. But with DLSS 5 enabled, performance improves by only 9 FPS compared to max settings, just a 12% increase.
There's very little scalability here. It's pretty much a case where the performance you get with DLSS 5 enabled is what it is.
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