DLSS 5 is really something, it’s the product nobody asked for, nobody seems to want, only really works on the most expensive graphics cards very few of us either have or can afford, and it’s barely even hit the market and it’s already branded a power sucking, frame rate killing, AI slop filter.
NBA 2K27 With DLSS 5
It gets better though, or I guess, much worse, as it’s already claimed its first hardware victim. The MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC is hardly a pile of scrap when it comes to graphics cards, it’s a very powerful card and built well. However, of its users has reported that while using DLSS 5 Naural Rendering during their testing of NBA 2K27, the cards power draw shot from an already pretty high 450 W to over 600W. Given that MSI rating is 575 W, seeing this card being pushed to 613.5 W by “standard” gaming and “standard” Nvidia graphics settings that are meant to be a feature not a bug, is pretty alarming.
It is worth pointing out that while the user did use GPU-Z to show peak board power, they also said it spiked and held steady at above the rated wattage while gaming. However, GPU-Z tracks total board power, which means it adds the PCIe slot as well as the 12V-2×6 together, rather than that being the whole load on the cable and connector.
GPU-Z
It could be somewhat of a coincidence, as melted connectors are nothing new, and this is just the latest casualty in that regard. However, there’s no getting away from the fact that DLSS5 appears to be extremely power demanding, while also taking a sledgehammer to your frame rates. We’ll need to see more data to be 100% certainly, but if we can get back to optimisation and efficiency instead of melting £1000’s of hardware for AI filters, that would be lovely.
