DLSS 5 offers abysmal performance on Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs

While modders have gotten Nvidia DLSS 5 running on RTX 30 series GPUs, its performance is abysmal

Modders have been running wild with Nvidia’s leaked DLSS 5 files. Last week, modders got DLSS 5 working on RTX 40 series GPUs. Now, gamers can run DLSS 5 on RTX 30 series GPUs, and the results are far from impressive.

On X, a gamer called Flourek tested Deep Rock Galactic with his RTX 3080. Enabling DLSS 5 lowered the game’s framerate from 138 FPS to 4 FPS. That’s a drop of over 97%. Clearly, DLSS isn’t intended to run on RTX 30 series graphics cards. Remember, this test uses a leaked, pre-release DLSS 5 DLL that was hacked to work on pre-RTX 50 series GPUs.

I GOT DLSS 5 RUNNING ON MY RTX 3080!! pic.twitter.com/fiSnGKtwPW

— Flourek (@flovreq) August 29, 2026

On the RenoDX Discord, several users have detailed how DLSS 5 runs with RTX 30 series GPUs. One user saw their Flight Simulator 2020 performance drop from 43 FPS to 13 FPS. Another user with an RTX 3090 GPU ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1440p max settings with DLSS in Quality mode. They saw their performance drop from 180 FPS to 42 FPS when enabling DLSS 5.

If this testing makes anything clear, it’s that DLSS 5 doesn’t run well on Nvidia’s older-series GPUs. This could be because their AI capabilities are lower than those of newer RTX 40/50 series GPUs. After all, RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs offer higher AI compute and support for FP8 precision. Older RTX GPUs may not have the AI compute needed to make DLSS 5 performant.

Note that Nvidia’s leaked DLSS 5 DLL file only supported Nvidia’s RTX 50 series GPUs natively. This could mean that Nvidia plans to make DLSS 5 an RTX 50 series feature, offering no official support for older GPUs. We will find out if this is true when Nvidia launches DLSS 5 later this year.

You can join the discussion on Nvidia’s DLSS 5 not running well on Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs on the OC3D Forums.