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Nvidia plans to expand DLSS 5 support to RTX 40 graphics cards, but IGN reports that RTX 50 optimization remains the company’s immediate priority.
Nvidia plans to expand DLSS 5 support to GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards, according to an Nvidia employee cited by IGN. The technology currently supports only the newer RTX 50 Series, so the planned expansion could eventually give owners of older cards access to Nvidia’s latest neural rendering system.
The timing remains uncertain. IGN reports that Nvidia is currently concentrating on optimizing DLSS 5 for RTX 50 hardware, with model updates expected later in the fall, before work begins on official RTX 40 support. That means the announcement is a confirmation of intent rather than a release update for RTX 40 players.
In the Nvidia forums, an employee said the company’s immediate focus is improving performance on GeForce RTX 50 Series cards. IGN reports that Nvidia expects to address RTX 40 support after the newer hardware is more fully tuned. The statement does not provide a launch date, a supported-card list, or a specific game rollout schedule.
That distinction matters because DLSS 5 is already available in a limited form. IGN reports that Nvidia’s neural rendering technology debuted in NBA 2K27 and initially works only on current-generation RTX 5000 graphics cards. The planned RTX 40 expansion would therefore broaden access, but the source does not confirm when that will happen or whether every RTX 40 model will receive identical support.
IGN describes the intended transition as an effort to bring the system from Nvidia’s current Blackwell-generation hardware to its older Ada Lovelace architecture. That is the context for the delay: Nvidia appears to be treating RTX 50 optimization as the first stage, with RTX 40 compatibility following later.
There is also no confirmation in Nvidia’s forum statement that RTX 30 or older graphics cards will be supported. The reported plan specifically concerns the GeForce RTX 40 Series. Any wider compatibility should be treated as unconfirmed until Nvidia provides more information.
Analysis: RTX 40 owners are now waiting on two separate questions. The first is whether Nvidia will deliver official DLSS 5 support at all, which the forum statement indicates is the plan. The second is how the feature will perform once it reaches that generation. A compatibility announcement by itself cannot answer the performance question.
For players, official support could make DLSS 5 a more relevant option without requiring an upgrade to an RTX 50 graphics card. That is an implication of the planned expansion, not a confirmed benefit. The source does not establish that RTX 40 cards will run the feature smoothly, maintain a particular frame rate, or offer the same image quality as RTX 50 hardware.
The hardware difference is especially important because IGN’s report raises concerns about the demands of the technology. The article notes that RTX 40 cards use older Tensor Cores than RTX 50 cards, and questions how a model such as the RTX 4080 would handle DLSS 5 based on early performance observations. Those observations are not a test of RTX 40 hardware, so they should be read as a warning about an open technical question rather than proof of a result.
DLSS 5 could also create a more complicated choice for players if support arrives with a substantial processing cost. The feature may improve the appearance of a supported game, but the value depends on how much performance it consumes and what other reconstruction or frame-generation settings are active. Nvidia’s forum statement confirms the support plan, not the final balance between visual quality and frame rate.
IGN reports that its author briefly tested DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 on an RTX 5090. In that test, enabling the technology reduced the pre-frame-generation frame rate from approximately 57 to 60 frames per second to around 37 frames per second. IGN calculates that as roughly a 43 percent performance drop.
Those figures belong to IGN’s reported test, not to OnlineGamesVIP testing. They also come from one game and one graphics card, so they cannot establish how DLSS 5 will behave across the wider PC ecosystem. Still, the result provides concrete context for Nvidia’s focus on optimization: even the company’s most powerful current graphics card was reported to lose a substantial amount of performance in that scenario.
IGN’s account says the visible changes in NBA 2K27 were relatively subtle compared with some extreme examples circulating online, while also reporting that the technology made the game look better. The article therefore presents a mixed early picture. Image-quality improvements were noticeable in that testing, but they came with a significant frame-rate cost.
Nvidia has already made progress compared with its earliest demonstration, according to IGN. The report says DLSS 5 originally required two RTX 5090 graphics cards to run, while Nvidia now claims model performance has improved by about five times. That is a company claim reported by IGN, and the source does not provide a full independent test methodology for the improvement.
Further optimization could reduce the performance hit, but that remains a possibility rather than an established outcome. IGN says its author remains skeptical until the reduction is demonstrated in testing. For RTX 40 players, this is likely to be the most important part of the eventual rollout: not simply whether the cards can launch DLSS 5, but whether they can run it at a useful cost.
What remains unknown about the rollout
Nvidia has not, in the information reported by IGN, supplied a release window for RTX 40 support. The company has also not announced which games will add the feature beyond the report’s discussion of NBA 2K27, or explained whether developers will need to update their games before RTX 40 owners can use DLSS 5.
The phrase official support is also significant. Nvidia’s statement points to a planned expansion, but it does not describe the technical requirements, driver version, game-side implementation, or minimum RTX 40 model. Until those details arrive, it is not possible to say whether the experience will be consistent across cards such as the RTX 4060, RTX 4070, and RTX 4080.
The future model updates mentioned by Nvidia are another item to watch. IGN reports that those updates are expected later in the fall and that Nvidia wants to tune RTX 50 performance before beginning the RTX 40 effort. The source does not say whether those model updates will also improve image quality, reduce the performance cost, or affect compatibility with later hardware.
Players should therefore watch for three kinds of evidence. First, Nvidia needs to publish a clearer schedule and hardware-support list. Second, developers need to identify which games will expose DLSS 5 to RTX 40 users. Third, independent testing will need to show how the feature behaves across different RTX 40 cards and game settings.
For now, the confirmed news is limited but meaningful: Nvidia intends to expand DLSS 5 beyond RTX 50 graphics cards, and RTX 40 support is part of that plan. IGN’s early testing also explains why the expansion may take time. Until Nvidia provides a date and performance data from RTX 40 hardware, owners should treat the feature as a future possibility rather than an imminent upgrade.