Nvidia halves DLSS 5 overhead ahead of Hogwarts Legacy rollout

Nvidia said Tuesday that its revised DLSS 5 neural-rendering model cuts GPU overhead in half ahead of the technology’s November 5 rollout in Hogwarts Legacy. Nvidia says the October revision is also smaller and uses less memory at 4K than its September model.

Nvidia said the October DLSS 5 update reduces the model’s footprint by 24% to about 118 million parameters and cuts VRAM use at 4K by 20%. The company attributed the twofold performance improvement to pipeline optimizations and neural-model refinements, adding that the revised system maintains comparable visual fidelity. The performance and memory figures are Nvidia’s and were not independently verified for this article.

Nvidia describes DLSS 5’s 3D-Guided Neural Rendering as the final stage of the graphics pipeline. It starts with the game engine’s rendered frame, geometry, textures and lighting buffers, then uses AI to generate additional lighting and material detail.

The faster model will first ship in NBA 2K27 on October 16 for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, RTX Spark laptops and GeForce NOW, Nvidia said. It is also set to become the default model for future DLSS 5 games.

For Hogwarts Legacy, Nvidia said developer Avalanche Software used controls in the DLSS 5 software development kit to tune the integration around the game’s artistic intent and style. The November 5 update will bring 3D-Guided Neural Rendering to GeForce RTX 50 Series, GeForce NOW and RTX Spark while upgrading the game’s other DLSS technologies to their latest versions.