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Nvidia has announced DLSS 5 at GTC 2026, a new iteration of the company’s gaming AI suite that it is describing as “the GPT moment for graphics.”
DLSS debuted back in 2018 with the RTX 2080, and it was initially just the Deep Learning Super Sampling that it’s named after. The idea was to take a game, render it at a lower resolution and then upscale it using AI back to your native resolution. DLSS has evolved a lot in the years since, including features like Frame Generation, Reflex, and now an AI model that injects new lighting and materials to make the scene more “photorealistic.”
In its blog post, Nvidia acknowledges the challenges that AI video models have faced in the past, namely their unpredictability. Nvidia’s solution is to tie the model to the color and motion vector data taken from the game engine – just like with Frame Generation – to keep the output grounded in the original scene.
According to Nvidia, the model is trained to “end to end understand complex scene semantics such as characters, hair, fabric and translucent skin, along with environmental lighting conditions like front-lit, back-lit or overcast – all by analyzing a single frame.” The model then uses that information to generate images.
Nvidia showed off the new technology in a new trailer that shows it running in Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy and EA Sports FC, and it definitely makes a difference, making it look like the frame was run through some kind of AI filter. It remains to be seen just how much of an impact to gaming performance this new technology will make, or whether or not it will be as popular as Nvidia’s previous iterations of DLSS.
Nvidia hasn’t released an exact release date for DLSS 5, but it will be coming sometime in Fall 2026, starting with games like Aion 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Resident Evil Requiem. Nvidia also didn’t announce which of its graphics cards would be compatible with this new AI filter, but it’ll likely be limited to Blackwell cards like the RTX 5090, and whatever next-generation GPUs Nvidia has cooking up for 2027.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
