Community-Modded DLSS 5 Cuts RTX 5090 Performance by Up to 49% as Power Draw Tops 800W
Updated
Updated · Tom's Hardware · Sep 2
Community-Modded DLSS 5 Cuts RTX 5090 Performance by Up to 49% as Power Draw Tops 800W
3 articles · Updated · Tom's Hardware · Sep 2
Summary
Tests of leaked, community-packaged DLSS 5 on RTX 5090 cards showed frame-rate losses of 39% to 49% across Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy and Control.
4K runs with DLSS Performance upscaling, ray tracing or path tracing, and no frame generation suggest the model itself is costly; Nvidia’s paper cites about 8 ms per 4K frame, close to the mod’s measured overhead.
RTX 5090 Founders Edition repeatedly neared its 575W limit, dropping 42% in Cyberpunk, 49% in Hogwarts Legacy and 42% in Control, indicating power constraints may be capping performance.
MSI’s RTX 5090 Lightning Z, with a 1000W limit, held up better in some cases but drew far more power—723W in Cyberpunk, 720W in Hogwarts and 802W in Control with DLSS 5 enabled.
The results suggest official DLSS 5 releases may not be dramatically lighter and that the feature could be better suited to future, higher-power Nvidia GPUs than today’s RTX 5090 designs.