DLSS 5 Brings Substantial Performance Hit, Power Draw Increases
The highly anticipated DLSS 5 has finally been released, but its performance is underwhelming. According to recent benchmarks, enabling DLSS 5 results in a significant drop in frame rates, with the RTX 5090 experiencing a 51.2% decrease at 4K resolution.
DLSS 5's visual results are impressive, particularly when it comes to atmosphere and character rendering. However, this comes at the cost of substantial performance loss. The Nvidia flagships, including the RTX 5080 and 5090, suffer from significant frame rate drops, with some tests showing a 58.4% hit.
Nvidia's favorite trick, Frame Generation, may be able to salvage some of the lost performance, but it cannot address the issue of latency, which is significantly increased with DLSS 5 enabled. The power consumption implications are also concerning, with some cards drawing up to 50% more power when using DLSS 5.
These findings raise questions about whether the visual benefits of DLSS 5 outweigh its performance costs and potential for increased latency and power consumption.