NBA 2K27 Review: A Better Game Than DLSS 5 Suggests

Every year the NBA 2K series sells a visual upgrade, and most years it is a coat of paint. This year’s headline technology is new, and NBA 2K27’s is the part most PC players will never see.

What DLSS 5 actually does

NBA 2K27 is the launch title for DLSS 5, NVIDIA’s 3D-Guided Neural Rendering. It is not an upscaler and does not work like the DLSS most people know.

NVIDIA describes it as a real-time neural rendering model that takes each frame’s colour data and motion vectors and generates photoreal lighting and materials into the image. Older DLSS reconstructed an image the renderer produced, while DLSS 5 generates the final image at up to 4K. In 2K27 it drives skin subsurface scattering, hair lighting and contact shadows, and our earlier coverage details the artistic controls.

DLSS 5 runs on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and GeForce NOW, and nothing older. NVIDIA told TechPowerUp it plans official RTX 40 support once RTX 50 tuning is done, but has named no date and committed to nothing for RTX 30 or RTX 20. You also need Game Ready Driver 616.64 or newer for the toggle to appear.

NVIDIA told PC Gamer that enabling DLSS 5 costs 50 to 60 percent of frame rate, and that six months earlier it took two RTX 5090s to run at all. Our own measured runs say something different, and we come to that below.

We could not test DLSS 5 the official way. Our RTX 4090 is one generation short of the requirement, so every detail above comes from NVIDIA’s documentation rather than a supported install. There is an unofficial route, and we took it. That gets its own section below.

Photo above: DLSS 5 Off (left), DLSS 5 On (right)

Where NBA 2K27 actually improved

The shot contest system shows colour-coded feedback on the quality of your contest and the direction it came from, so you can read why a shot was affected. Hands-up defence lets you choose how aggressively to contest, and AI defenders use the same mechanic.

On offence, the expanded dribbling suite breaks signature packages into 29 decoupled movements you can mix freely, ending recognisable animation strings. Step-through up-and-unders, the move Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic use to create separation, are replicable for the first time, and the Dynamic Layup Engine adjusts finishes mid-air.

The dunk meter is the change most likely to divide people. Every dunk needs manual timing, and the meter reads defensive positioning from takeoff to finish. Takeover is rebuilt around five disciplines across six tiers, so being cold penalises your shooting meter while anchoring the paint surges your defensive one.

Graphics beyond the neural rendering

ProPLAY remains the engine behind the animation work, and 2K27 adds over 7,000 new animations captured from real NBA footage.

Photo below: DLSS 5 Off (left), DLSS 5 On (right)

The mod route, and why it is not a feature

There is a version of DLSS 5 running on RTX 40 hardware right now, and it is not the one NVIDIA plans to ship. Modders found a DLSS neural rendering DLL in an early access build of NBA 2K27 and patched it to run on Ada Lovelace cards.

We tried it. Using the DLSS 5 Swapper Mod we forced neural rendering on in an RTX 4090 system and logged two matched runs, DLSS 5 off and on, so we can show what the game does in each state rather than guessing from marketing slides. The effect is visible, particularly on faces and hair.

Be clear about what this is not. It is not an NVIDIA feature, it does not run through a Game Ready driver, and it will not be supported if it breaks. Treat it as a curiosity rather than a purchase justification. If you want DLSS 5 to simply work, you are waiting on NVIDIA.

The numbers: DLSS 5 on and off

Both runs were captured on the same system a minute apart, with Auto Resolution Scaling set to Quality and NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation enabled in both. The only variable was neural rendering.

Read the average and the story looks thin. Average frame rate moves from 50.3 to 52.5 and median from 51.7 to 54.1. Neural rendering did not transform the frame rate here.

Read the lows and it does something real. The 1 percent low integral goes from 14.8 to 19.9, and the minimum from 6.9 to 9.1. Those are the frames a player feels, and they are markedly better with neural rendering on.

Two results cut against each other and both are worth printing. The 1st percentile slips from 29.3 to 28.1, and frame time deviation rises from 12.7 to 15.5. The experience improves at the bottom while becoming marginally less consistent overall.

One caveat matters more than any figure. With Frame Generation active the numbers include interpolated frames, so 52.5 is not 52.5 rendered frames. Both runs share that, so the comparison holds, but neither is a throughput figure. Two short runs on one system is directional evidence, not a verdict.

What holds it back

The modes remain uneven. MyCareer Eras, which drops a created player into one of six historical periods, looks better in a trailer than in hour six.

NVIDIA has kept DLSS 5 in one game since September 3, and NBA 2K27 is still the only shipping title with it. Buying a GPU for DLSS 5 today means buying it for one basketball game.

That is the strangest thing about 2K27. Its marketing leads with a technology most of its PC audience cannot enable officially, and underneath sits a game that improved the part of basketball needing no new graphics card at all.

Testing notes. Reviewed on PC via Steam on a Minisforum UM890 Pro with a Ryzen 9 8945HS and an RTX 4090 Founders Edition in an OCuLink eGPU dock. Official DLSS 5 was not tested: it requires a GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU and our 4090 is one generation short, so its figures are NVIDIA’s own data, not our measurement. The DLSS 5 runs above are unofficial, captured with the DLSS 5 Swapper Mod, and should be read as directional.

Sources: NVIDIA DLSS 5 · 2K27 Courtside Report · 2K Newsroom