NVIDIA DLSS 5 power consumption and AMD DLSS compatibility tests

Recent technical analyses and developments are highlighting the evolving landscape of GPU upscaling technologies. Tests on NVIDIA’s DLSS 5, specifically using the GeForce RTX 5080 in NBA 2K27, indicate that the transition to 3D-Guided Neural Rendering increases GPU power consumption. This energy increase varies significantly depending on the specific GPU model and the resolution being used, as the technology introduces neural processing directly into the final scene rendering rather than just reconstructing images or generating frames.

Simultaneously, the d4r project is exploring ways to bring advanced upscaling to non-NVIDIA hardware. Developer “countervolts” has updated d4r with experimental support for AMD’s RDN4 architecture, used in the Radeon 9000 series. This allows for the compilation of native DLSS 4 and DLSS 4.5 kernels on cards like the RX 9060 and 9070. While the project is highly experimental and currently lacks extensive hardware verification beyond the Radeon RX 7700 XT, it serves as a proof of concept for running advanced upscaling models on AMD hardware.