DLSS 5 leaks via NBA 2K27, looks terrible and tanks performance by up to 60%

An experimental build of Nvidia's DLSS 5 Neural Rendering leaked through NBA 2K27's early access build, and modders wasted no time forcing it into other games — with results that are equal parts hilarious and alarming. The library file, identified as version 310.8.0.0 of NVIDIA DLSSNR, was spotted within hours of the early access launch, and the RenoDX modding community had it running in Remedy's Control roughly five hours later.

The visual results have not been kind. Control's protagonist Jesse Faden came out looking decades older, Skyrim characters gained a dead-eyed, uncanny valley stare, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Cloud was somehow transformed into what one outlet described as a Scarlett Johansson-lookalike leading a post-apocalyptic resistance. Beyond the aesthetics, the performance hit is severe: modders in the RenoDX Discord reported nearly 50% frame rate losses when running the leaked build. That lines up with what PC Gamer confirmed after attending an official Nvidia demo — the company itself acknowledged DLSS 5 currently carries a 50–60% performance penalty across all games, regardless of hardware. Nvidia's own benchmark charts show that while an RTX 5060 can display 258 fps in NBA 2K27 at 1080p with DLSS 5 and 6x Multi Frame Generation enabled, the underlying game is actually rendering at around 43 fps. Nvidia noted that six months ago DLSS 5 required two RTX 5090s to run, framing the current state as a 5x efficiency improvement — though that framing is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

DLSS 5 was first unveiled in March 2026, and the backlash was immediate. Jensen Huang pushed back, insisting critics were "completely wrong" and pointing to Capcom and Bethesda as studios embracing the tech's "artistic control" capabilities. The fall 2026 release window is still on the table, and the fact that the DLSS 5 library file was bundled into NBA 2K27's early access — a game launching worldwide on September 4 — suggests the official rollout could be weeks away. It's worth stressing that what modders are running is an unfinished, unsupported build being forced into games with no official integration, which likely explains some of the visual and performance ugliness.

The community reaction has been a mix of mockery and genuine concern. Screenshots of the mangled character faces are spreading fast, and the performance numbers are giving even curious observers pause. Nvidia says optimizations are coming, but with GPU prices already at painful highs and many players on older hardware, it's an open question who DLSS 5 is actually for right now.